Ubisoft says always-on DRM is 'a success,' fans are confused

@FuzzyPierce I don't see this game selling too well, but I bet they could at least increase some sales to ppl who wanted to try the game.

@FuzzyPierce
Yeah you'll notice the phrasing they use.

"And from that point of view the requirement is a success"
'from that point of view' being the key phrase here.

It leaves out its effect on sales, doesn't it?

We've seen how Ubisoft has been performing financially though through the last year or so...nothing too impressive. Granted correlation is not causation, but you can definitely see the spin on this.

With the information I have it would SEEM sales have been effected.

@FuzzyPierce People pirate for two different reasons:

1. They don't want to pay.
2. It's more convenient.

Given the fact the games are cracked to work offline and are infinitely more convenient to the end user, AND are free, lower piracy rates by definition mean lower sales figures.

It means pirates saw their product available for download and by their inaction said they didn't want to bother. Not a single pirate saw the higher price tag and drawbacks of the retail version and said, "boy, that's the version I want", so none of those would-be pirates converted to sales, either.

I'd be willing to wager that a good percentage of gamers in-the-know actively avoided purchasing their game because they were aware of the restrictive DRM that wouldn't work for them. Another segment of their buyers bought it unaware of the DRM, only to find out painfully the first time they try playing on a laptop that they can't play their game, and vow not to purchase anything else from that company. A percentage of those users google around for a solution to the issue of not being able to play untethered and discover piracy, converting formerly paying customers into pirates.

...lower piracy rates are not really something I'd brag about.

@FuzzyPierce Obviously it also doesnt mean a significant decrease in sales. They do not care about you and neither do their investors. You are insignificant to Ubisoft.

that is what he said and he is right.

@onan "lower piracy rates by definition mean lower sales figures. "

Stopped reading there. "By definition" means it's an absolute, and it is very obviously not.

@onan And what about the pirates that weren't that interested in the game in the first place yet piracy gives then an oppurtunity to try it? What about the pirates that try before they buy? What about the pirates that after playing a game recommend it to all their friends of whom a couple buy it?

There isn't any evidence that piracy=lower sales. Its all speculation. You say piracy definetly lowers sales? Well I might say that the ability to try before you buy and greater exposure to games means that pirates actually buy the exact same number of games as non pirates but they have the oppurtunity play more games.

@onan - "lower piracy rates by definition mean lower sales figures."

Yeah.......... No.

I'm not saying that your sentence couldn't have some possibility of being true in certain situations but "by definition"? Not even close.

@Mcmax3000 All things being equal, if a game has been cracked and available (for FREE), and people STILL aren't downloading it... There's probably a good chance the sales numbers for that title aren't that great either.

So yes, it may sound crazy to you, but I believe a lack of interest shows a lack of interest, by definition. I'll go out on a limb and stand by that statement.

@FuzzyPierce

I agree. A reduction in piracy is meaningless. If developers and published made their games good enough, piracy would be so insignificant. The "try before I buy" excuse would be nonexistent.

@onan
I believe you are wrong here. And I would think a guy with a Dreamcast as his logo would have a little more understanding of the impact of piracy. You have to think of pirated games as something of a puzzle. If the puzzle is easy, more people will just download and enjoy, if the puzzle is hard, well then the number of of people playing pirated games is reduced.
The Dreamcast is a prime example of this! It was FAR too easy for play burned games and the piracy was totally out of control. It was too easily accessable and the masses could jump on board and play burned games. It crossed over from just people that didn't want to pay, into people that said "why bother paying". These are two different classes of people.
The industry understands that piracy will never be eliminated, but it should at least be a challenge, bucause it's the challenge that will tip the scales in favor of a purchase over a download.
When it comes to consumers it's never black and white. There are a whole range of laziness levels out there.
So if you decrease the amout of pirated games being played you will ALWAYS increase the sales.
Interest in a game and it's sales numbers are not relative when you're talking piracy. If say 40 out of 100 people are interested in a game, and the game is easily cracked/downloaded, then more people will do that. If it's hard to crack/download than less people will do it. You see? Interest is the same either way, but by discouraging piracy to gain even ONE sale is an increase.
That's how I see it anyway.

@AMonkey

"And what about the pirates that weren't that interested in the game in the first place yet piracy gives then an oppurtunity to try it? What about the pirates that try before they buy? What about the pirates that after playing a game recommend it to all their friends of whom a couple buy it?"

HAHAHAHA. I an no angel. I pirate stuff. I don't need to rationalize that I am so how helping the developers by increasing sales. If this crap helps you sleep better at night, more power to you.

@xreadmore I'm not sure how I can get any more clear here:

Making piracy a "challenge" is a moot point. It's only a challenge to the few hackers that want the prestige of being the first to pirate something, and they consider the challege to be "fun". For everyone else, it's even more convenient to pirate games for PC than it ever was to do it on the Dreamcast. You don't even have to get up from your chair.

Also, make no mistake: For all their crowing, Ubisoft has done NOTHING to decrease the amount of pirated games being played. They can't. Their protection schemes only affect hackers, and usually for less than 24 hours. They've definitely decreased the number of willing paying customers, however, with their consumer-hostile DRM solutions.

In this case, piracy has dropped ON ITS OWN. For whatever reason, people just don't feel like getting it. That's not good for sales. How do I know this? Ubisoft DIDN'T MENTION increased sales figures in statement. After all, part of the piracy statistics also includes paying customers who downloaded the pirated version to get around the hassles of their legitimate DRM'ed version just for the convenience. We've all done this. We've all gotten CD cracks for our legit games. With these Ubisoft games, they're not downloading the games because they're not buying the games. It's just gotten to be too much.

Their anti-piracy schemes have done nothing except frustrate legitimate consumers. Their games are available for download from various sources just like everyone else's. Fewer people want them, so fewer people are downloading them. Fewer people want them, so fewer people are buying them. It has left a bad taste in their mouths. As they say, they've seen "a clear reduction in piracy of our titles ... and from that point of view the (DRM) is a success." Yikes. Statements just don't come more qualified than that.

____

Separately addressing the Dreamcast dig:

Wow man, hit me where it hurts.

Piracy didn't kill the Dreamcast. Sega likes to point to that because it takes the blame off of them, but in all honesty they killed the Dreamcast themselves before it was born by killing consumer confidence. Diehard Sega fans had been burned already by the 32X, the Sega CD, and the Saturn. Sega went from selling 40 million Genesis units to only 10 million Dreamcast consoles worldwide. If what you're saying held water, then the PS2 (being more difficult to mod/pirate for) wouldn't have been the one to go on to sell 150 million units. People would have gone for the path of least resistance instead, but it was completely ignored. Similarly, the Wii is just as easy to pirate for as the Dreamcast was, yet it has already "won" this console generation, with sales outstripping their competitors by 30 million units or more. 14 Wii games have gone on to sell over 5 million units. New Super Mario Bros alone has sold 22 million units. The top-selling game on the notoriously difficult to crack PS3 are the only ones that broke 5 million sold: Grand Turismo 5, and GT5 Prologue.

Now why is that? Wii piracy is incredibly high. By your logic, Wii game sales should be way lower. (And yes, for some Wii titles, sales are way lower, because there's a lot of shovelware on the platform that nobody buys. But guess what? No one's downloading them for free, either.)

Maybe, just maybe, when all things are equal (and piracy is just as easy as heading to the shop to buy something legit), lower piracy rates will indicate an overall lack of interest in a product.

@FuzzyPierce

Completely agree with your statements. This whole DRM thing is just a marketing department totally out of control. Pretending that they're helping the company, but really they're just chasing away legit game buyers. I for one, have avoided several Ubisoft games on the PC for this specific reason. But it seems clear that they are way more concerned with fighting piracy than driving sales. As a result they will probably be out of the PC market in a few years.

@Andrew12h

"Most people who pirate games are people who would never buy the game in the first place"

What a stupid argument. Sure, there are times when people get a game simply because they can and they're bored, but the majority of things people pirate they would buy. Music might be the one exception to this, as it's very quick to download tons of it and you can very quickly filter through to see what you like, but look at movies. No one downloads a movie they thought looked like garbage. No one is going to pirate the smurf movie because no one wants to watch it. The bottom line is that pirates WOULD buy many of the games they pirate if it was the only way for them to play games. It's just plain stupid to act like people would pirate things they have no interest in.

@Andrew12h he just said making it more of a hassle improved sales. What you say certainly is the voice of an idealist but it doesnt create an environment of reading comprehension.

READ IT STUPID.

@chimpsmith "The bottom line is that pirates WOULD buy many of the games they pirate if it was the only way for them to play games."

People always like to say this, but nobody ever backs it up with evidence.

@Faceless Troll

It would be impossible to have evidence for it. Only evidence that points to hypothetical conclusions. If piracy didn't exist and someone really wanted to play a game then they would pay for it. You can't justify stealing something by saying you wouldn't have gotten it anyways. In that case I'm going to pirate every single valve game, but it's okay because I wasn't going to spend money on it anyways. I'm not saying every game ever pirated would have been a sale otherwise, but many would have, especially when it comes to popular games. If you really want to see the Dark Knight, you might pirate it as it's easy to do. But if you couldn't pirate it then you'd go rent it for a couple dollars. Pretending like this would never happen is just naive.

@chimpsmith It's a pie in the sky solution that doesn't do anything except let people try to sound clever. You might wind up making a few more sales, but how many more people would you alienate because they couldn't try something before they buy?

I'm not saying piracy is justified (if you think that's the case you're an idiot), but if people couldn't rent games, buy them used or borrow them from friends I would expect you're going to see a lot fewer sales than anything else.

@chimpsmith

"What a stupid argument. Sure, there are times when people get a game simply because they can and they're bored, but the majority of things people pirate they would buy."

[citation needed]

@Faceless Troll

"but if people couldn't rent games, buy them used or borrow them from friends"

When did I ever say that? I said if piracy didn't exist. No one buys something after they pirate it unless they want to play the online. Renting games has nothing to do with this whatsoever. I know you have a weak argument but at least try to stay on topic.

@chimpsmith

"No one buys something after they pirate it unless they want to play the online."

As unlikely as I ever thought it'd be for me to agree with someone with "Troll" in their name, you are absolutely wrong. I'm not condoning piracy, but I know for a fact that there are times people pirate a single-player only game, play it, enjoy it, and then purchase a legal copy of the game. So don't say that no one does it unless they want to play online.

@chimpsmith
I know many people who pirate movies, and games that they would not have bought. I think this is because if you live on a budget, and you're normalised to things being quite cheap (and more filled with 'value', than say, a $60/£40 8-hour game. If you have the facility to get any game free, then you're going to be much more motivated to give it a try than risking the big money.

You talk about people justifying it to themselves, but that's not how theft works; the world is not filled with Robin Hoods. Fact is most people are predominantly selfish, or rather disassociated by internet pipes from moral cause-and-effect; and thus, normal people just treat piracy as a norm for game acquisition. Personally, I'm addicted to boxes and a well-ordered shelf - but things like Steam mega-deals, free-to-play, streaming music services, youtube and easy torrenting are normalising us to free content as our right to culture. Regardless of whether we've paid for it.

@chimpsmith Your argument is essentially "More people will pay for it if there's no other way to get it", which is wrong. If that's not your argument then it's nothing more than you getting up on a soapbox and not actually contributing a useful idea.

It's kind of like saying "People wouldn't shoot each other if there weren't guns in the world." Which while it may be correct, is stupid.

@chimpsmith said "No one buys something after they pirate it unless they want to play the online. Renting games has nothing to do with this whatsoever. I know you have a weak argument but at least try to stay on topic."

I've got 200+ Xbox, PS2, and PC games sitting on my shelf that say otherwise.

I've beaten games on a pirated copy and then gone out and bought them with no intention of ever even taking them out of the shrinkwrap.

I'm not the only one.

Here's how it works, and it's not rocket science:

Everything for sale in this world has a personally perceived value, and a general associated cost. If that cost is seen as "worth it" to you, you'll get the item. That's why a game you see at $60 holds no interest for you, while if you catch it on sale on Amazon for $15 you might jump all over it.

Things that increase perceived value: Trying out the item (listen to music on the radio, watch a trailer for a movie, play a demo of a game), perceiving a "good deal" (due to a temporarily lowered price, and that's enhanced by a time constraint), peer pressure.

Generally speaking, as the price of something drops, the more willing you are to buy it. There comes a point when you're so disinterested in a thing that you value the physical space it would take up in your home or the time it would take to obtain more than the object, and even $.01, or free, is too much money (perhaps if someone paid you to take it away...).

Piracy falls under the "trying out" category, and can only serve to INCREASE the value of a product in a consumer's eyes. Now, don't get me wrong, this doesn't apply to everyone. There are people that are incapable of actually paying for things: Children, people without credit cards or income, people in other regions. There are people who WON'T pay for things: Criminals, amoral people, people who pirate stuff for the thrill, or for profit. Generally speaking though, piracy enables people that aren't familiar with something to become a fan of it. Fans do crazy things like buy the blu-ray version of a DVD they already own, or pay a premium for deluxe editions that come with silly extras when the main product remains the same.

So your statement "No one buys something after they pirate it unless they want to play the online." is false. They may not go out and buy it at full $60 price (although that does happen), but they'll jump on it at $30, $20, $10. Even if they already have access to it, people will pay what they think something is worth to them.

Seriously, raise your hand if you *haven't* purchased a second copy of a game you *already a hard copy of* on Steam just because the convenience of not having to go get the box was worth their sale asking price.

@Dance Mofo (

@Dance Mofo (785 posts)
You'd think I'd know by now not to use brackets....

@xiLeShadow 449 Comments
Yeah i hope so too. I thought about getting the second game though from Steam

@HedonisticKai

Thats what they called broadband.... before broadband.

Always-On Internet.

Bah.

@DigitalEmporer
I think it has to do with when Ubi's servers were down for a bit, which prevented you from playing these games with the "always on" DRM.

@RickGhastly
i made a game but didnt release it because i didnt want it to be pirated. and guess what, ive seen "a clear reduction in piracy of my title"!

cant argue with "success"!



...right?

@UnnDunn That is only because it was new and they had to figure out how it worked. Now its been done, the cracks will come much faster.

@Ender7 The nature of this DRM means Ubisoft can control the pace at which the game is cracked. Because the game doesn't merely check to see if you're online, it actively retrieves keys to decrypt on-disc content as as it is needed. This means someone has to play through the entire game, triggering every possible in-game event at an accelerated pace to get all of the possible decryption keys before a 100% fully working crack could be released.

Ubisoft would easily be able to detect brute-force attempts to retrieve all the required keys, so it will take hundreds of man-hours of play to get them, even with foreknowledge of the DRM technology involved. Such a task will not be achievable overnight, or even within a few weeks, especially if the keys are individualized and machine-specific (which they weren't for the first few games that used this.

@RicoGlox
Stop giving them ideas.

@Androu1

Agreed, please shut up before they start rolling that into the next set of games they put out.

@Digital Viking

Did nobody else notice that's a Joystiq photoshop?
Original logo: http://www.zippygamer.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Driver-Logo.jpg

...or were you being sarcastic? The internet makes it hard to tell.