Ubisoft has decided to adopt a new and ridiculously draconian form of DRM for their games, one that requires an Internet connection at all times. If your connection is dropped, you don’t get to play anymore and your progress is lost. Plenty of gamers have cried foul, but Ubisoft is sticking to their (foolish and poorly aimed) guns.
Now I read that their shiny new scheme has already been cracked with Silent Hunter 5, roughly one day after its release. A quick check of a couple of sites shows me that the full game is easily downloadable alongside the crack for pirates’ convenience. While I don’t condone piracy, it warms the cockles of my heart to see an option for legitimate users to free their property from its idiotic DRM shackles.
So here’s what you need to learn, you software-fascist morons at Ubisoft: DRM does nothing to stop piracy. All it does is irritate the paying customer. I would surely have bought Assassin’s Creed 2 and Silent Hunter 5, and I’ve been intrigued by the new game in the Settlers franchise as well. But you won’t get a dime from me until you drop your ridiculous DRM.
I’m with you. I’ve been a fan of Silent Hunter since the first one. SH5 was on my list and so was AC2 (Splinter Cell’s on their too) but if this is what I have to look forward to, I will just stick with games that allow you to play them. Go figger.
I should have known SH5 would have been on your radar (grin). I’m pretty sure I played the original all the way back in 1996. I can still remember the box art, and I can still remember being really excited to hear that SH2 was coming out. It’s a sign of the times that Ubisoft has screwed up SH5 so badly. The day they lift the DRM is the day I buy the game; I hope they don’t sell a single copy until it’s gone.
Their DRM servers went down. No one could play the games over the weekend. http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/07/ubisoft-drm-authentification-server-is-down-assassins-creed-2/
Well, let’s be a bit more precise, Faust: no one who bought the game legally could play it. I’m sure the pirates all had fun without any service interruptions. So that’s DRM at it’s best: completely screwing the paying customer while doing nothing to stop piracy.
Ahh.. My mistake.. you’re absolutely right. Glad I didn’t get any of these games! Let’s see what they do for Splinter Cell with all this press… Although official word from Ubi is that this problem (which occurred between 2:30pm and 9:00pm Paris time) only affected about 5% of the userbase?!? I guess when you count Pirates it increases the amount of people not having problems eh? Am I right?! LOL
ROFL! I didn’t think of that, but I suppose counting pirates lets you make your support center look all that more productive! I keep hoping Ubi will come to its senses, but then I remember they’re French.