Ubisoft Dropping Always-On DRM

[Shawn Zipay]

Ubisoft confirmed in an upcoming interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun that they will be dropping their horrible always-on DRM. Even more interesting is the fact that they apparently scrapped the always-on DRM months ago.


Ubisoft's Stephanie Perlotti, the Worldwide Director for Online Games explains what's been going on

“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.

“Whenever you want to reach any online service, 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 III 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.”

Terrific news, now about the delay in bringing games to the PC after the console release... Hm? What's that, they mention this very thing in the upcoming interview? Perfect! Be sure to check out RPS in a few hours once their interview goes live.

(via RPS)

[CptainCrunch]

What? This makes no sense. Now 100% of their stuff is going to be pirated! They are going to lose BILLIONS of dollars by doing this!:wee:

[K-16]

My assumption was legit customers remained pissed off, pirates remained stealing after circumventing the DRM (I know Ubisoft claims it can't be circumvented, but I suspect otherwise), and the realization that piracy increased due to upsetting customers who want to pay, while failing to convert customers who would never pay in the first place. Those three factors probably made them realize that they might as well do something similar to Steam's DRM instead. Even if that fails to reduce piracy, at least it wouldn't increase it dramatically due to pissed off customers.

[CptainCrunch]

Re: Ubisoft Dropping Always-On DRM

That happens a lot. A lot of people have "hacked" their purchased game just to play it because of the DRM. People get tired of that.

[K-16]

Case in point, VALVe's Half-Life 2 had SecuROM DRM. When VALVe found out many customers had DVD/CD drives that were incompatible with SecuROM, they eventually released a patch to remove this requirement (I believe about 2 - 3 months post-release), but not before banning the thousands of people who patched their purchased game to remove it (with a third-party patch that was released a week post-release).

Needless to say, the thousands of angry customers with receipts were screaming at VALVe's customer support. Those poor folks had to spend so much time going through everyone's cases and making so many exemptions on how legit customers were breaking the ToS agreement. Needless to say, SecuROM never happened again; I'm not sure if that was VALVe's or Sierra/Vivendi's decision in the first place though, not that it matters now that VALVe is with EA.

Sorry for bumping this old thread, I just wanted to expand on CptainCrunch's point with an example from a company we all actually love.