Ubisoft: DRM "Vital" To PC Success

VG247 quotes Splinter Cell: Conviction creative director Max Béland saying Ubisoft's PC DRM, which requires a constant internet connection, is "vital" to their business. He said: "We consider that protecting our PC games is vital to our business, and will allow us to continue investing in the development of creative and innovative games on the PC platform." This is excerpted from a full interview with Béland, which is accompanied by the first 20 minutes of Splinter Cell: Conviction in video.
View : : :
46.
 
Re: Ubisoft: DRM
Apr 16, 2010, 15:07
46.
Re: Ubisoft: DRM Apr 16, 2010, 15:07
Apr 16, 2010, 15:07
 
Average customers don't want to trudge through pirate sites infested with malware, search for a game, find a working torrent, download for a couple days, extract, burn, install, and crack a game. Even if they could figure out how to.

And that's exactly what Ubisoft is fighting. Don't get me wrong, I can't stand this excessively restrictive copy protection either, but the reality is that it's doing its job quite well. It does two things:

1) Make a crack take longer to accomplish. Because the crackers have to play through the game to ensure they get all the code fragments from the server, they can't do a 0-day release anymore. That means when the game is first released, it's no longer a choice of "do I download it for free, or do I buy it".

2) Make it more difficult for the "casual" user to play the cracked version. Having to modify your hostfiles to redirect sites to localhost, for example, increases the technical proficiency that's required to make use of the pirated versions. Sure, there's a large chunk of the population for which that'd be no difficulty - indeed, I'm sure most of us could accomplish that. But there's also a significant chunk for which it would be difficult. Piracy had become a simple matter of "download, burn (or mount), install". By making it that easy, it tilted the scales towards piracy as the simpler option. Anything that Ubisoft can do to make piracy more difficult will decrease the number of people who end up pirating it.

Will it stop piracy altogether? Of course not. But that wasn't their goal in the first place (well, assuming they were being realistic). Their goal was to slow it down, and decrease it's frequency, and their new system does both of those things.

The problem, however, as has been pointed out numerous times already, is that in doing so, they also made things much more annoying for legitimate customers. If it weren't for that fact, this new system could be considered "Mission Accomplished".
Date
Subject
Author
1.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
2.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
3.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
18.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
20.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
62.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
85.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
4.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
5.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
10.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
21.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
39.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
6.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
7.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
8.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
11.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
13.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
14.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
15.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
16.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
17.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
19.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
47.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
58.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
40.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
42.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
49.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
12.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
22.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
23.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
25.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
27.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
28.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
29.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
31.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
30.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
32.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
33.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
35.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
38.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
75.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
 46.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
 Re: Ubisoft: DRM
34.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
37.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
41.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
43.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
44.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
45.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
48.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
76.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
50.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
51.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
52.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
53.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
54.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
55.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
56.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
94.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
96.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
97.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
99.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
      Re: Ubisoft: DRM
57.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
63.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
80.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
60.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
61.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
64.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
65.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
66.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
68.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
86.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
67.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
69.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
72.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
78.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
73.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
74.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
88.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
91.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
92.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
93.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
95.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
98.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
      Re: Ubisoft: DRM
107.
Apr 18, 2010Apr 18 2010
       Re: Ubisoft: DRM
108.
Apr 18, 2010Apr 18 2010
        Re: Ubisoft: DRM
112.
Apr 18, 2010Apr 18 2010
         Re: Ubisoft: DRM
114.
Apr 19, 2010Apr 19 2010
          Re: Ubisoft: DRM
115.
Apr 19, 2010Apr 19 2010
           Re: Ubisoft: DRM
117.
Apr 19, 2010Apr 19 2010
            Re: Ubisoft: DRM
118.
Apr 20, 2010Apr 20 2010
             Re: Ubisoft: DRM
116.
Apr 19, 2010Apr 19 2010
           Re: Ubisoft: DRM
111.
Apr 18, 2010Apr 18 2010
       Re: Ubisoft: DRM
113.
Apr 19, 2010Apr 19 2010
        Re: Ubisoft: DRM
100.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
101.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
      Re: Ubisoft: DRM
105.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
       Re: Ubisoft: DRM
106.
Apr 18, 2010Apr 18 2010
        Re: Ubisoft: DRM
109.
Apr 18, 2010Apr 18 2010
         Re: Ubisoft: DRM
110.
Apr 18, 2010Apr 18 2010
          Re: Ubisoft: DRM
119.
Apr 20, 2010Apr 20 2010
         Re: Ubisoft: DRM
120.
Apr 21, 2010Apr 21 2010
          Re: Ubisoft: DRM
102.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
      Re: Ubisoft: DRM
103.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
       Re: Ubisoft: DRM
104.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
        Re: Ubisoft: DRM
77.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
79.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
83.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
70.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
71.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
81.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
82.
Apr 16, 2010Apr 16 2010
87.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
89.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010
90.
Apr 17, 2010Apr 17 2010