So, I'm sure everyone has heard about the new DRM that UBIsoft is putting out on Assassin's Creed 2. There have been several comics about it.

Here they talk about the 'benefits' of their new system and how it is for the sake of the customer as well as being able to stop piracy.

So, that had me wondering very strongly if any of their potential customers actually saw it this way. I've read through alot of stuff, and not once did I see anyone say 'Gee, that's great, I'm sure glad that UBIsoft is providing all those great features with AC2' and I'm not even sure I ever saw 'Well, that really sucks, but I guess I'll suck it up and buy the game anyway'

So, thus the reason for this little poll. Just curious what a potentially different group of people think about all this. Feel free to discuss your selections, but don't just rag on UBIsoft, plenty of that already.

I once saw somebody make a point that I still think is one of the smartest observations I've seen about software piracy: the people who pirate software wouldn't buy it regardless of whether it had DRM or what kind. They don't pirate to save money, or to make any kind of socioeconomic/political point. They pirate because they can.

I don't know how big a problem piracy really is. I am reasonably convinced, though, that developing more and more extreme forms of DRM is not going to significantly reduce it and, hackers being the challenge junkies that they are, stands a real chance at increasing piracy.

the hard core pirates probably do it out of some combo of "became i can", "gotta get them all" and being a cheap bastard.

i suspect most casual "pirates" are teens with limited funds or adults with similar economic issues. These are people that try to stay in the social loop, but have limited funds to do so. By social loop i refer to being able to talk about the latest movies, music and games thats been released with big ad campaigns and lots of pundit opinions.

Obligatory other option: I rarely play games any more. I don't hate Ubisoft, I simply have no desire to play these games. Any of them, no matter who made them.

I've actually gotten pirated copies of software I already own just to sidestep DRM issues, or to downgrade to a previous version, or because the disc got scratched all to heck, but the user agreement says I've purchased the rights to install the software on one PC, but never specified the medium from which I get it.

You know, the people who are hurt the worst by DRM are the troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. This DRM is just Ubiosoft's way of covertly supporting Al-Qaeda.

i recall reading a article in a gaming magazine actually suggesting people should get a cracked .exe for elder scrolls: morrowind, as it would potentially boost the speed of the game by 30%. Looking back, that may well have been a watershed moment.

I remember that. I bought morrowind for my PC (After trying it out on a rented XBox) and noticed it ran kinda slow, then cracked it and it ran faster. I believe there was a C&C game that had the same issue. My store bought copy ran slower than my friend's pirated copy, so I ended up cracking my own game so it would run faster.

And like Nezumi I've pirated some of my own games just because I've lost/scratched the disk, or because the game is something I haven't played in years and has been stored in the attic from which nothing is ever retrieved.

Oh, and the occasional game that is so old that you can't really find it to buy anywhere.

My opinion:

A) Ubisoft games are not especially good anyway, so who cares
B) PC gaming is dead, so who cares.

That's quite a bold assertion, there.

Indeed. I play nothing but PC games. I finished up Fallout recently, you may have heard of it.

I'm assuming the DRM is only for the PC version.

DRM is one of the main reasons I target PS3 over PC. It's just simpler to do things on the consoles compared to PC.

This won't affect me too much as I tend not to PC game terribly often. I'm not a hardcore gamer anyways (I recently made my first ever preorder, in fact, with Red Dead Redemption), but what gaming I do tends to be on my 360 rather than my PC. Maybe it's because I spend so much time writing, working on school, writing some more, then idly checking forums, all on my desktop...but when I want to hit buttons and smash faces, it tends to be on a console instead, with a very few exceptions.

AC-2 is the only Ubisoft game I can even think of off the top of my head, and if/when I ever buy it, it's going to be for the 360. That said? I'm against annoyances and intrusions, as a general rule. A DRM checking up on you like this is, in my book, an annoyance and an intrusion. I can understand that a company wants to make money, but the last thing I want to do is go pay good money for an annoyance and an intrusion, for me to be punished -- however mildly -- for someone else's piracy.

Agreed. I almost exclusively game PC, though I admittedly tend to not play the more cutting edge games (Bioshock 2 on release day being a rather notable exception recently). I'm happy playing simple things like dwarfort.

All new major games are developped on console, for console. There's still plenty of people playing on PC, but commercially, it is dwindling and now considered really a secondary, make a few extra buck market. Developer have always hated PCs, and now they are increasingly able to ignore this market. The exception being obviously the MMG - for now. You can bet your ass they are looking at how to move that to consoles too. Hence, PC gaming is dead, from a mainstream perspective. In a debate about DRM rights and shit, the mainstream perspective is all that matters.

Fuck it. This DRM means that I'm not going to buy AC2. That doesn't mean I'm going to pirate it, I don't do that. It means that I will be content not to play. My hope is that enough people feel the same way that it hurts sales.

It's part of the reason I never got Windows Vista. Because I don't want corporations to think of my PC as their property, their corporate entertainment center, and that I'm a stupid consumer who has no idea how software and hardware works. If I were stupid and didn't have any technical knowledge and couldn't tinker to make things work I'd have got a console.

It's just like how ever since the Napster debacle, I stopped buying music CDs. I don't pirate, either. But I don't want to support the music industry at all, because of what they did to Napster.

Anyway, there is years of content and abandonware for PC. I'm just as happy playing a classic game from 1989 on DOS emulation as I am with a new release. I've got years worth of software all stacked up so I don't ever "need" to buy a product with obnoxious DRM.

At the same time, though, I can't be completely upset at Ubisoft, because I realize there are a lot of little shits out there who will pirate even if they could afford to buy the software. If someone could have afforded to shell out 20-50 bucks for the software, and support the development of more games, but chooses not to for some self-serving reason, I have a problem with that.

There is/will be a console version of Empire: Total War? Or Dawn of War II? Or Supreme Commander 2? Or Civilization V?

Please don't overgeneralize.

Look, PC is a residual market. Period. It should be abundantly clear by Ubisoft's DRM handling, for example, that they don't give a flying fuck about losing PC gamers for their games.

There is no how. It has been done and done successfully. Final Fantasy XI is the first MMO that I can think of that was done well on the console. Plus the console and PC players were playing together instead within their own community.

A couple of years ago this was simply taken for granted, now they sell it to us as a feature...

it could be. While these games makes a keyboard and mouse a requirement, at least the PS3 have support for usb (or bluetooth) keyboard and mouse. The one problem is that it do not ship with it by default, and so the game companies fear that the sales numbers would be limited if the game cant be played by what the console ships with out of the box.

even "better", some companies are now making special controllers that recreate the mouse as a special "gamepad".

i really do wonder what would happen if sony or microsoft did a official game that came in a box complete with a keyboard and mouse.

I chose "other" on purchasing the game because to even do so, I'd have to go buy a computer that could actually handle the game.
Then I'd buy the game and get a DRM crack.
They can keep their #@$^%&^* paws off of my property, as it's mine when I buy it from them.

Oh, and as for everyone claiming that consoles will replace the PC:
The primary reason for this is that the companies want the PC to be completely removed from the gaming community because an old computer can still run some new games if you upgrade it properly, but an old game console can't play the new games and you have to pay to fully replace it.
Upgrading is cheaper for the customer and doesn't get as much profit for the companies, so they have to get rid of it.

The only way to pull this off would be to make peripherals for the consoles and cut the PCs off from the video games completely to make it where no one wants to buy a PC and they will all use disposable computing hardware for maximum profit.

Who cares if the end user is completely satisfied with their purchase, that's just something to hype up the next model.
And you'll buy it if you want to keep up your video game fix.
You'll buy it. Or else.

I've found myself buying steadily fewer and fewer video games over the years. I also find myself less and less interested in the consoles and such. When PS3 and XBox360 first came out I thought "Wow, it would be cool to have those, but I don't have that kind of extra cash." and now I just don't even consider them at all. I'm not sure if it is because I'm secretly worried they'll be replaced soon, or because I just don't care enough about the games they have to want to fork over several hundred for the console and then an extra $60 for each game I want to play.

Personally a game doesn't even seem to (usually) enter my radar as a consideration if it is over about $20. Oh well, whatever. If the PC market for games is really dying (Which I'm not so convinced that it is) then I guess I'll just get along with my library of older games, and maybe pick up the occasional 'new' game once it goes on sale for half price.

I have seen situations where DRM is helpful (example Steam where the DRM is used to tie your games to your account so you can transfer your games and saves to a new computer), but I feel that if companies like Ubisoft, EA, Sony, etc continue to create restrictive DRM that hurts players (and arguably doesn't touch pirates but in fact validate their existence) you will soon see the PC market tank like the music industry.

You want to know the best way to stop piracy (or at least minimize it to the point that it doesn't effect your bottom line), sell your software at the "why not" price. It has been proven time and time again on Steam that when you drop the price of your software from the "why should I buy this" price to the "why should I not buy this" price, your profits (not sales, but actual dollars in your pockets) increase over 800%. It is the same reason why iTunes is so popular and why songs that cost $0.99 sell like hotcakes while songs that cost $2.99 don't. In the next generation you will see consumers that will shun physical media (mainly to avoid product keys, DRM, and other registration annoyances) for a strictly digital download (as long as they can transfer their games from computer to computer). I would go as far as to say that this generation would even pay a subscription fee if it meant they could get what ever games they wanted, whenever they wanted it, on what ever computer they have available to them (with all their saved games, and achievements).

Nobody without Broadband can reliably play their games anymore with this.
People with mobile Internet-Connections won't be able to play reliably too.
Heck, even DSL/Cable goes out from time to time.
DSL usually disconnects at least once every 24 Hours.
Wireless LAN is even worse with micro disconnects.

And Ubisoft, as we all know, is the be-all and end-all of game publishers.

It's kinda funny, actually... Sony gets into video games, DRM increases, players get frustrated, turn to piracy. However, computer gaming seriously dealt with piracy loooong before music did. Rather than going around suing everyone and shutting down networks, they ran an ad campaign saying, basically, 'if you steal our product, we won't make it in the future'. The campaign was, by and large, successful. Tie this in with games generally being $20 and not $60, and it's a pretty successful tactic.

I really wouldn't mind if we stopped focusing on graphics, which take so much time and cost to program, and just worried abotu making a GOOD GAME. I could have enjoyed Fallout at half the resolution it was at, and would have enjoyed it more had they put some of that cash on the plot. Like many other gamers, i'm falling back on abandonware for exactly that reason. We'll see what happens though.

There are new games being made that focus on gameplay over graphics, nezumi. Check out Sword of the Stars if you like strategy. The base game came out in 2006, and the third expansion just last summer. It's a ton of fun, despite the graphics not even being up to Homeworld standards.

Not to mention there are some ISPs (mine is an example) that will only allow you to have a certain number of constant transactions at a time before they starting thinking all the communication is a potential virus and the connection is blocked. My ISP says that but really they just want to stop the bit torrents. God I hate their guts.

Steam is selling the entire X-Com series for around $10. A real steal of a deal (funny that Hasbro has made more money in the first week that the series was priced at $10 then the entire time the entire X-Com series sold on the shelves at $60 a piece) (if that isn't an example of "Why not" then I don't know what is).

$15 right now. Any good? What genre is it even? Looked like RPG but maybe a few other things thrown in.

The later games decline in quality, but X-Com 1 is IMHO one of the best games ever ever ever made. It's definitively a strategy game, but trying to define it any deeper than that gets confusing.

Yeah, what he said!

strategy for the most part, tho the troops have various stats that can improve as they survive missions (as well as trained, iirc).

Sad how suddenly STEAM becomes the BETTER alternative.
Steam is basically the mother and father of the ubisoft DRM.
All Games are tied to ONE account. Which can be banned just like that.
Imagine you have 10 games in there, for which you have paid 50 to 60 bucks each.
And your account gets banned for whatever reason. Boom, 500 to 600 Bucks of Games you don't have anymore.
Because SOMEONE decided he did not like SOMETHING about you/your account.
And the games being tied to one account only means you can't sell them again either.
And steam ain't that much cheaper most of the time, considering they don't have to pay for discs, packaging, storage capacity, paper and all that stuff.
Oh, and if you want goodies like shirts and maps and the such? you still have to buy the hard copy version.
And even then, you still need to download huge chunks to play the game.
I still remember how i had to wait for 6 fucking hours to get to play HL².
Yes, i only have a 2MBit connection. BUT I BOUGHT THE FRIGGING DISC!
I should not have to download gigabytes if i have the DVD RIGHT HERE!
And look at how big Savegames can be today. Think about what can and will happen when you have to wait for your UPLOAD to the server to finish.
Or your download so you can resume from where you left of.

I admit being unable to resell your steam games does kind of suck. The possibility of being banned from your several hundred dollar game collection by steam does seem somewhat scary, but on the other hand, I doubt you're really going to get banned just because 'someone doesn't like you'

From what I've read of the DRM though, you won't have to worry about uploading/downloading you're save files. First off it is optional, so you can turn it off, second off, it stores games locally first, so it'll load from there if you're on the same computer. Only time you'd have to worry about downloading is when you switch computers, and in that case there is actually a small benefit to the DRM because you can do so easily (Not that it was hard in the past to get a cloud program of some kind)

I don't recall having to download anything to play HL2 when I got the disk.

Overall I actually like Steam alot. Saves me having to find the game in a brick and mortar store (And where I live that is actually a huge convenience). Since I have a home computer and a laptop, it is nice to be able to download any of my games to my laptop, and be able to play them without carrying around a stack of disks.

Also, going over their agreements, I don't see anything even mentioning that it is possible to have your steam account banned. I really doubt it is an issue, unless of course you're doing something illegal in the first place, in which case it still isn't an issue.

Direct2Drive is selling each game for $5 (and the bundle for $15). My brother bought Pirates! for me from that site and, as far as I can tell, it's a direct download to your hard drive. (Holy cow, the disc on Amazon is $70!!!)

I really think computer game companies need to take a step back and learn a lesson from professional software companies (like IBM) and the military. From professional software companies they need to learn how to write good software, efficiently. Most games shops still use Ad Hoc programming methods (shudder), which is one of the reasons we have game delays, buggy games, and overall poorer quality (to what could be offered). From the military they need to learn the lesson of punish bad behaviour, reward good behaviour. This means they should create anti-piracy methods that make it easier to not pirate (ie patches are installed in the background with no user interaction, installing is done seamlessly with little to no user interaction, registration of software is done with no user interaction (make it part of the install process), and as long as a legit version of the CD is always used, don't sweat what machine it is being used on). Known pirates of your software should be sued into the stone age (make an example of them every chance you can). Doing this basically tells good customers (ie the ones paying for your software) that you value their service, while it tells pirates that you don't value them at all.
Instead games companies don't make examples of pirates (thus encouraging piracy) and they punish their customers (with shitty DRM) thus pushing them towards piracy. To me this is like shooting yourself in the foot.

I would disagree about suing software pirates. That's bad PR (with the exception of people who are actively SELLING pirates copies of your product). Very many PC gamers also pirate. I can't think of any I know in person who don't, to some degree or another.

However, you're right, you want to reward those people who play by the rules, and punish those who don't. One easy way is through collectible kitsch, special discs, artwork, etc. Things that have relatively low cost to produce, are difficult to copy, but somehow add value. You can't pirate a Fallout bobblehead, but for any fan of the game, it has a value beyond the $.25 it costs to manufacture. Alternatively, offering some sort of recognition of registered users - discounts on future games, a giant awards board, additional free DRM downloads, so on and so forth, or just a touchy-feely 'we really appreciate your business - it's what allows us to make this game in the first place' (imagine that as one of the splash screens as the game boots up. You'd guilt-trip a good proportion of the pirates into paying up!)

And indeed, yes, don't try to shaft your players by messing with the prices, artificially inflating them, sending out inconvenient, incompatible, whatever else games. Make sure they get a good deal for their money - or you won't be making any at all.

i'm a team fortress 2 player and I got that off of Steam, overall, I enjoyed the download and playing experience.

That's probably a collector's disk or something, I got it new from amazon.com for far less on disc.

I wish you were working for the gaming industry.

That's why old games tend to still be awesome. Back when gaming was young, it was much more 'gamers making games for other gamers', and since graphics were basically all exceedingly limited, you had to have a good game for it to sell. Even when graphics got (relatively) good, you tended to get alot more wow and attention for your game by having it be good as opposed to churning out the best graphics. So yeah, that is why I like dwarffort which uses ANSI graphics, and why I like civilization II which has really simple graphics, and Wesnoth, which once again has simple graphics but great gameplay (And being free helps).

Now adays though many games are produced as products to make money (Well, all are, but some companies care more about making a good game because they are run by gamers, and some just care about making some $ because they are run by businessmen). And the fact is that what gets people to buy your game now isn't a good game, but some really good screenshots, some clips of CGI sequences that likely took longer than the entire rest of the game, and tons and tons of hype. The main reason for this is the lack of demos or the ability to return a game of poor quality.

PC games are impossible to return at all, and console games aren't returned, but bought back for about 50% of the price so they can be sold for $5 less than a new copy. So the company doesn't really care if you like the game or not, because they already have your money. And even if you tell friends that the game sucked, they're banking on the fact that you're friends already bought into the hype and got the game.

Even poor reviews only hurt so much, because they'll have halfway decent scores if only because the reviewer is forced to conceed something like "The gameplay sucks, but the visuals are simply amazing, and the sound blows you away." and since that is what more and more games are like, the definition of 'good gameplay' slowly changes.

It would be truly interesting to take a game like.... say Halo, and tear its graphics down to say... half-life (1)'s level, and then have people who have never played either play the two games, and see which they prefer. Same goes for many of the ultra popular games of the day (The Halo series is the one that comes most to mind). How would they really compare to a game a decade older if graphics wasn't an issue?

My vote is that the older games would likely win for the most part. Some generes suffer less from this than others I suppose. I'd think RTSs in particular would see a general improvement over time if only due to improved AI and an increased understanding of making things like hotkeys and groups and such easier.

Okay, phew [/rant]

I have to say DRM in the form of driect to dirve downloads is a good solution. Steam and Impulse both don't eat up that much PC power and add more to the game plus remove the lugging of discs. Their only fault is that modding is some times happened however they are wising up to this and tryign to make it still possable.

So, looking at the poll, it looks like the DRM is (unsurprisingly) not considered an advantage from player perspective by anyone, and results are generally won't get it/will get then crack it/will just get a crack version.

Most people seem to think it won't hurt sales much because Joe Average won't care enough and/or people won't be able to hold to their boycott when those tempting new games are held in front of them.

And finally the general consensus is towards a 1 week or sooner crack time of the new DRM.

I'm curious to see how the sales figures are and how long it takes to crack the game.

As for Impulse and Steam, I agree completely. I use both and love them very much. It is so handy being able to install my games on multiple computers without any hassle for carrying around my disks or anything. It even means if I'm stuck at a friends or the library or something unexpectedly, and expect to be there a while, I can install and mess around with some of the smaller games. I suppose there is some fear that the service could go down, but I don't really see that happening, and not without warning.

In fact, I used to use Stardock Central before Impulse came out, and they used tokens to have you buy your games with instead of direct money. Well, I still had 5 tokens on my account, which are now basically worthless because you can't buy anything with tokens any more. Just recently I got an e-mail from stardock, saying that they'd converted my 5 tokens into a $35 gift card that I could use at the new Impulse shop. I think that's cool, and goes to show that they're going to look out for me and appreciate my business, and if for some reason Impulse did ever go down, they'd give out fair warning and give people a chance to download all the games they own and likely make it so they could back the games installs up on a storage drive or something.

Man, there are some old games I wish so damn hard someone would re-make, not necessarily with better graphics or anything, but with more complex and realistic gameplay. Sid Meier's Covert Action is one game where there would be so much room for more awesomeness, and it's fun enough that it can be totally addictive even today.

Yeah,but it'd also be a pretty niche game, WR.

It kicked ass, but it'd be a pretty niche game. And my fear is that in adding new features, they'd lose a lot of the approachability of the original game (which was definitely easy to learn, but devilishly hard to master). That dooms a lot of games.

That's the problem these days. I'm not sure niche games (like those dealing with espionage, in either their movie-based or realistic versions, would inevitably be) can really be made like they were even 10 years ago, to say nothing of 20-25.

Look at flight sims for example. Or, more to the point, space sims.

The games (like MS Flight Simulator) may cost a standard retail price, but the hardware required to run them effectively (or at all, again see MS Flight Sim) is a major expense, now almost as much (or as much) as a good computer itself these days.

(And really, who has the physical desk space for a joystick, floor-space for rudder pedals, etc? I don't.)

Ah, the advantages of your dining room table and computer desk being one and the same...

Well, I'm pretty sure you could turn a remake of Covert Action into a popular game, the way Mount&Blade took Sid Meier's Pirates! and turned it into a quite successful modern game.

Anyway, as much as I love and still play old games, I'm not fond of the whole "games used to be better". Sure, there are some great old games and a lot of bad/bland/unoriginal new games. There are also some great new games and they were a lot of bad/bland/unoriginal old games (just remember all the Wolfenstein/Doom clones, all the platformers with no originality, all the games you didn't even understand how to play...).
Sure, the fact that you now need more resources to make a game that you used to makes it a little difficult to be able to create a game without someone to fund it, and those people will prefer funding 'tried-and-true' games, no matter how unoriginal they are, to funding a strange new concept that could fail.
But still, we still get some great games and even some original ideas.

I believe the term for that is "tail economy" - i.e., it is now becoming profitable to make products for the tail-ends of the demand curve, as long as the costs of creation and distribution are kept low.

In the case of WR's game, it would probably take a small team of programmers less than six months to update and expand on the game. They can then sell it for very low cost through sites like Direct2Drive or Steam, so it doesn't require any 'shelf space'. Even though they might only sell say 200,000 copies at $30/pop, that's $6M - more than enough to cover costs.