Ubisoft ditches controversial always-on DRM for PC games

ShiverinEskimo

Finally some sense being shown.

Eurogamer wrote:

Ubisoft has discarded its much-derided always-on DRM for PC games, the company has announced.
The U-turn comes after sustained criticism of the anti-piracy measure, which required players to remain online at all times for their games to function.
Ubisoft worldwide director for online games, Stephanie Perlotti, told Eurogamer sister site RockPaperShotgun that the company had implemented the change in June.
"We have listened to feedback, and since June last year our policy for all of PC games is that we only require a one-time online activation when you first install the game, and from then you are free to play the game offline," Perlotti explained.
All of Ubisoft's future PC titles will now be free from always-on DRM - including this year's blockbuster Assassin's Creed 3. Obviously, an internet connection will still be required for any online services.
"Whenever you want to reach any online service or multiplayer, you will have to be connected, and obviously for online games you will also need to be online to play. But if you want to enjoy Assassin's Creed 3 single player, you will be able to do that without being connected. And you will be able to activate the game on as many machines as you want."
Ubisoft's DRM policy hit the headlines when it was announced that PC versions of Driver: San Francisco and From Dust would require users to log on to the internet every time they played the game.
A number of Ubisoft PC games, including Driver and Anno 2070, were completely unplayable online and offline when the company moved its gaming servers over to a third-party.
The always-on DRM furore sparked debate throughout the industry, with Minecraft creator Marcus 'Notch' Persson chiming in to say: "Protip: if you pirate Ubisoft games instead of buying them, they will work fine if your internet connection goes down."
Regardless, in July last year Ubisoft claimed its DRM strategy was a "success", noting a "clear reduction in piracy". What a difference a year makes.

Retr0gamer

I hope this marks an increase in ubisoft game sales just to show how horrible this was in the first place.

Monotype

Ubisoft just can't stay consistent with their DRM. A while ago, they had a load of DRM free titles on amazon... I'd buy more of their games if they did that more often.
They probably have to show some level of leniency if they want their own digital platform to take off, which I would guess why they're stopping the always-online-DRM. I can imagine that the servers are expensive to maintain too.

CastorTroy

Are they patching existing games to not require "always on", I wonder. Didn't they do that with either an Assassin's Creed game or a Prince of Persia game?

ShiverinEskimo

They may do so after it becomes non cost-effective to maintain server capacity for those games.

Can't imagine there's too many people still playing Prince of Persia for example so why bother having the few live connections operating.

dreamers75

CastorTroy wrote: »

Are they patching existing games to not require "always on", I wonder. Didn't they do that with either an Assassin's Creed game or a Prince of Persia game?

They will just release NO CDs made by crack groups again. They "accidently" did that when they made GRAW No CD, used reloaded or someones no cd.

marco_polo

CastorTroy wrote: »

Are they patching existing games to not require "always on", I wonder. Didn't they do that with either an Assassin's Creed game or a Prince of Persia game?

They have previously patched out the most draconian early version of their 'always online' DRM from the games that use it, in so far as you only need to be online to initially launch the game and can then play offline rather than needing to remain connected for the entire session. So they may well patch these games further based on this most recent development. As ShiverinEskimo says there is probaby little point in paying good money to keep those servers going now.

Something like UPLAY I can live with so that their upcoming sales of Far Cry 3 have increased by one here anyway (Unless it is absolute rubbish of course).

TPD

So is Driver San Francisco now playable? It was ridiculous when I got it during the Steam sales, freezing every minute or so for about 10 seconds each time. The hassle involved in getting that game running made me uninstall it very shortly after.

Sarky

That's good to hear. I'd vowed never to buy from Ubisoft as long as that awful DRM was used. So they'll be getting some sales out of me.

Well, as long as they make interesting games.

Retr0gamer

Another Ubisoft U-turn, they're trying to 'clarify' their recent comments about PC piracy being between 93-95%. Seems that different regions data was lumped together, more than likely developing countries like Russia and China were piracy is incredibly high and likely the people pirating can't afford new games.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-09-05-ubisoft-clarifies-93-95-percent-pc-piracy-rate-comments

gizmo

"So we are not saying that it applies to all PC games for all territories, and we're not saying that the same situation would apply for any game."

I would have thought that was blindingly obvious to anyone with even a modicum of intelligence. Of course the various comments sections on the sites I've seen the story appear on seem to indicate otherwise.

Nice to see them ditch their horrific DRM anyway. It'll be even nicer to see sales increase in line with these moves.

ShadowHearth

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Another Ubisoft U-turn, they're trying to 'clarify' their recent comments about PC piracy being between 93-95%. Seems that different regions data was lumped together, more than likely developing countries like Russia and China were piracy is incredibly high and likely the people pirating can't afford new games.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-09-05-ubisoft-clarifies-93-95-percent-pc-piracy-rate-comments

I would e surprised they even sold 1% of games in eastern Europe and Russia. When I was still living there almost all my games were pirated ( not proud of this and this was almost the only option, no stupid "if you can't afford, don't play it" bull**** please). We had no shops like gamestops etc. in capital city we had only one shop which sold legitimate copies of some games. I still remember owning Diablo 2 and Lod big box oldschool versions. Those costed like 1 month full time wages.
I doubt situation is any better there now. Almost all games are/were pirated there. This is one of the reasons consoles are not popular in eastern Europe. Stupidly expensive. So that piracy rate of 95% would not shock me. I would really doubt year sort of number would apply for western Europe though.

Myrddin

Yay good move Ubisoft

marco_polo

ShadowHearth wrote: »

I would e surprised they even sold 1% of games in eastern Europe and Russia. When I was still living there almost all my games were pirated ( not proud of this and this was almost the only option, no stupid "if you can't afford, don't play it" bull**** please). We had no shops like gamestops etc. in capital city we had only one shop which sold legitimate copies of some games. I still remember owning Diablo 2 and Lod big box oldschool versions. Those costed like 1 month full time wages.
I doubt situation is any better there now. Almost all games are/were pirated there. This is one of the reasons consoles are not popular in eastern Europe. Stupidly expensive. So that piracy rate of 95% would not shock me. I would really doubt year sort of number would apply for western Europe though.

Most what I would consider fairly reasonable estimate of total software piracy seem to range from roughy 20-30% in the Western countries (with the US usually amongst the lowest) all the way up to 80-90% in developing economies like China, much of Eastern Europe etc. I don't see there is are many compleling reasons to believe that games would have a hugely different piracy distribution figures, which is why I found Ubisofts original blanket statement hard to credit.

Myrddin

gizmo wrote: »

I would have thought that was blindingly obvious to anyone with even a modicum of intelligence. Of course the various comments sections on the sites I've seen the story appear on seem to indicate otherwise.

To be fair, the headline looked more like sensationalist rubbish with an agenda behind it...of course people are going to react

gizmo

EnterNow wrote: »

To be fair, the headline looked more like sensationalist rubbish with an agenda behind it...of course people are going to react

Based on the figures that were examined in the other thread along with their probable sources, that incredibly high figure wasn't rubbish at all. Would it apply to all games on all platforms in all territories though? Of course not, I would have assumed that was obvious.

If one wanted to criticise them even in the face of this good news though, one could instead look to the follow up question in the interview.

RPS: But last year it was said that the so-called “always-on” DRM had shown a clear reduction in piracy. The quote was, “A clear reduction in piracy from our titles, which required a persistent online connection, and from that point of view the requirement is a success.” Have you any data to evidence this, and if so, are you going to publish it?

Perotti: I’m not going to comment on data. That was an unfortunate comment. We have listened to feedback, and since June last year our policy for all of PC games is that we only require a one-time online activation when you first install the game, and from then you are free to play the game offline.

So if one was to turn their cynicism up to the max, one could claim they lied to either the public or themselves regarding the success of this policy.

Regardless of which one it is however, it's clear that at the end of the day it proved to be not worth it, financially speaking of course, so we don't have to deal with it anymore.

Myrddin

gizmo wrote: »

Based on the figures that were examined in the other thread along with their probable sources, that incredibly high figure wasn't rubbish at all. Would it apply to all games on all platforms in all territories though? Of course not, I would have assumed that was obvious.

The way it was worded was that it did, hence the backlash.

Varik

On to the next step of massive amounts of micro transactions.

Skerries

Ubisoft? they be soft!

Overheal

Tarnished reputation. They'll be like Norton for years to come.

gizmo

EnterNow wrote: »

The way it was worded was that it did, hence the backlash.

I disagree. If you really wanted to take Guillemot's original comment at its most literal then he was specifically talking about countries which feature such high level of piracy.

"We want to develop the PC market quite a lot and F2P is really the way to do it," said the French CEO. "The advantage of F2P is that we can get revenue from countries where we couldn't previously - places where our products were played but not bought. Now with F2P we gain revenue, which helps brands last longer.

"It's a way to get closer to your customers, to make sure you have a revenue. On PC it's only around five to seven per cent of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it's only about five to seven per cent who pay anyway, the rest is pirated. It's around a 93-95 per cent piracy rate, so it ends up at about the same percentage. The revenue we get from the people who play is more long term, so we can continue to bring content."

In my replies in the thread, however, I didn't. I looked at the more general case based on the figures we have available, the Torrentfreak annual download charts, which along with other individual cases (The Witcher series, Football Manager etc...) , indicated that the figures Ubisoft gave seemed fairly reasonable.

On the other hand, if you're saying that he really was implying that all of their games on the PC suffered the same level of piracy within a couple of percent of each other then by all means. As I said previously though, I assumed people would have more sense.