Assassin’s Creed ll and the "new" DRM scheme

AstaLaVista said:

As I see it...

1.- It cost these Companies Millions of dollars to come up with DRM to deter piracy, for it to be broken & hacked even prior to the game being out for sale. Perhaps they could see this as a Savings if they were to invest this monies into something more productive? Am I the only one who fails to see the benefit of it? As a profit/lost/deter method is concern?

2.- Given the fact that it DOES NOT help against piracy, the only other fact I logically see is the one where, I, after spending 60 bucks for a game, have to be told by the company who sold it to me, when, how and how much I can play this said game.

3.- Also, the other fact is that, even if I buy it, install it, register it and decide that the game is not for me (it happens to millions of kids outhere who buy on impulse), I can no longer take it to a Gamestop and trade it in for another game..

4.- I only play Single Player Campaigns and are very selective of the games I play. I will not let a Company dictate what I can do with my game, regarding what they think they are doing against piracy, let alone waste time trying to connect, checking my side of the internet problem thinking is me when the problem usually lies with them (given UBI's record of down servers )... this is one of the other reasons why I don't play MP, I just can't deal with network problems, I have no patients for it.

5.- To me this DRM is as intrusive as the Govt. trying to ban the sale of Legal Guns by claiming that it will be the only way to deter crime when 90% (if not 100%) of the crimes committed are done with Black market guns... why aren't they trying harder to work on banning that?

I am not entitled to a free game, no sir, you want to play you got to pay but, it does not mean I will conform to their draconian ways and see it as something that it is so, will soon be the standard way of doing business or the norm.

Now, they are not entitled to force me to have my internet connected at all times to play a Single Player game, less so when the game they want to lock pirates out is already hacked and the pirates don't have to jump to any of the hoops the paying customer must jump.

My reason for hating UBI so much had more to do for what I thought they had done to my favorite Franchises... Far Cry, Ghost Recon & Rainbow six, but now, I have to add these latest intrusiveness to it.

And that right there is what I think about that... :)

Excellent post there my friend and I share your sentiments, although I did buy the game. I can be quite impulsive and this was one of those times.

I must admit that in about 15 hours of game play I have had no issues what so ever with logging in and playing(touches wood).

sygnus21 said:

Anybody see an e-mail on this...

Ubisoft has sent an email to all owners of Assassin's Creed 2 and Silent Hunter 5 providing compensation for earlier outages of their DRM servers caused by DDOS attacks.

Source TweakGuides.com

I think that's a pretty good move on their part.

Good move or not, they just lost a lot of customers.

And this post, this post is brilliant and I agree with it 100%:

AstaLaVista said:

As I see it...

1.- It cost these Companies Millions of dollars to come up with DRM to deter piracy, for it to be broken & hacked even prior to the game being out for sale. Perhaps they could see this as a Savings if they were to invest this monies into something more productive? Am I the only one who fails to see the benefit of it? As a profit/lost/deter method is concern?

2.- Given the fact that it DOES NOT help against piracy, the only other fact I logically see is the one where, I, after spending 60 bucks for a game, have to be told by the company who sold it to me, when, how and how much I can play this said game.

3.- Also, the other fact is that, even if I buy it, install it, register it and decide that the game is not for me (it happens to millions of kids outhere who buy on impulse), I can no longer take it to a Gamestop and trade it in for another game..

4.- I only play Single Player Campaigns and are very selective of the games I play. I will not let a Company dictate what I can do with my game, regarding what they think they are doing against piracy, let alone waste time trying to connect, checking my side of the internet problem thinking is me when the problem usually lies with them (given UBI's record of down servers )... this is one of the other reasons why I don't play MP, I just can't deal with network problems, I have no patients for it.

5.- To me this DRM is as intrusive as the Govt. trying to ban the sale of Legal Guns by claiming that it will be the only way to deter crime when 90% (if not 100%) of the crimes committed are done with Black market guns... why aren't they trying harder to work on banning that?

I am not entitled to a free game, no sir, you want to play you got to pay but, it does not mean I will conform to their draconian ways and see it as something that it is so, will soon be the standard way of doing business or the norm.

Now, they are not entitled to force me to have my internet connected at all times to play a Single Player game, less so when the game they want to lock pirates out is already hacked and the pirates don't have to jump to any of the hoops the paying customer must jump.

My reason for hating UBI so much had more to do for what I thought they had done to my favorite Franchises... Far Cry, Ghost Recon & Rainbow six, but now, I have to add these latest intrusiveness to it.

And that right there is what I think about that... :)

AstaLaVista said:

To all you guys that have purchased the game and are or not having issues connecting with their servers... is it really all that bad as I read on multiple forums? Are their servers constantly down? I have got to believe that most of this people are exagerating, right?

Don't get me wrong, I want to see Ubi fail extremely bad and I have always known that their servers are usually down over the weekend and stuff but I really never expected this much people being this upset.

Apart from the time when the sulkers decided to target the servers with ddos attack, I have never had an issue logging in and playing.

I reckon it is the sulkers again who are complaining in the forums to try and get them to reverse the drm.

I personally applaud UBI for their Anti-Pirate methods and hope other companies follow.

Contradicted yourself in your own post:

No, I don’t agree that innocent customers should get caught up in their net of trying to prevent the real criminals (pirates) from stealing their product.

Obviously, these DRM schemes aren't working. If they'd make the prices more reasonable and quit being so paranoid about pirates, maybe more people would go out and buy their games instead of torrenting them. A part of the cost of the game is for the DRM scheme itself, so customers are essentially buying their own shackles. If they'd resort back to using simple serial keys, it would be more cost-effective and would cost customers less, resulting in higher sales and higher earnings. Don't even try and argue with me that DRM should be kept stronger and stronger. Piracy is inevitable. People always want what they cannot afford. It's human nature and it's easy to see. People think, "Why would I go buy that new game when I can just go to The Pirate Bay and torrent it in a few hours, for free?". You need to make people realize that purchasing the product is not only cheap, but more convenient than pirating it and using various workarounds to get it running.

Enough is enough, and these archaic methods of protecting intellectual properties are turning the PC software market into a dystopia. I do not want to be put on a leash when I buy something. When I buy something, I own a copy of it, not just the right to play it.

Has anyone read Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegunt? It's a story about a dystopia where everyone has handicaps to make them equal. No one is smarter than anyone else. No one is better looking. Everyone's abilities are hindered in some way. The protagonist of the story realizes human potential and removes his handicaps, allowing him to think clearly once again. He gets shot and killed by the Handicapper General. This is what DRM is like. Measures to prevent you from living to your full potential. And piracy seems like the protagonist of the story, removing the restrictions on our software. If these restrictions weren't there or at least weren't so harsh, piracy would drop, and do not argue with me on that, because I was at one point a pirate, but either deleted or went back and bought software that I stole. Yes, stole. Piracy is stealing, but it can be put down easily if these companies would communicate with their customers more.

Imo it matters not what their price is. I'd have have picked up the 59$ day of release version of SHV, bugs and all.
If I can't play the latest version of what ever ubi-title I'm interested in, regardless if I've purchased the last three versions - without being chained to ubi - then I won't be interested in that title anymore.
Got a great internet speed now to, it's not the point either. It's not for every pc like a laptop I might take somewhere for a rainy day, so you guys can BS yourselves about how wonderfull your connections are or how the rest of the world in your so enlightened humble opinion should be connected to or wired 100%. Won't change that fact that some loyal fans, have now been shut out. So lets applaud ubisoft for punishing honest gamers? Nutz. That's like applauding a lawyer for getting his theif-client to sue a homeowner because they fell through the roof breaking into the house. Backwards insanity. Ubi's not getting another dollar from me for a pc game with the current drm-sheme, they can go choke on it.