The random thoughts of a random techie.
“A PERMANENT HIGH SPEED INTERNET CONNECTION AND CREATION OF A UBISOFT ACCOUNT ARE REQUIRED TO PLAY THIS GAME.”
Won’t be buying that one, then.
Dear Ubisoft,
I didn’t buy Assassin’s Creed 2 because of the insane DRM. I didn’t buy Splinter Cell: Conviction because of the insane DRM, and now I’m not going to buy the new Prince of Persia because of the insane DRM.
I speak as someone who has bought a fair chunk of your software. Did you wonder why you’re losing sales yet?
I signed up to the Ubisoft forums in order to publicise my open letter to Ubisoft criticising their current approach to combating piracy. i.e. making single player games require an Internet connection in order to work. I went to see if I had any replies to my post and:
-- Account Suspended: Your account has been suspended for the following reason:
Posting indirect linking to piratebay is against the terms of use and the violation is a banable offence.
Their site, their rules of course. However I find it comical that they’ve further alienated a paying customer. I think I’ll assist Ubisoft in supressing such unwanted comment by simply never purchasing any of their future titles.
Dear Ubisoft,
I was just in my local branch of Tesco and was delighted to see that Splinter Cell: Conviction had been released. I can tell you, I have been a long-time fan of the Splinter Cell series and was looking forward to adding this title to my collection of Ubisoft games.
Alas my fears that you would have not learned from your previous failings with regards to what is reasonable copy protection for your software were entirely well founded.
Look at the stack of games in the picture above. As I tend to buy games I want as soon as they come out, I usually pay a premium price. That stack of games represents something like £200 of hard-earned money that I was delighted to part with. I buy software, I don’t pirate it, I am not the person who you should be alienating with copy protection crap.
Some forms of copy protection are merely inconvenient, like requiring the CD or DVD to be physically in the drive. I don’t want to load content off a slow CD or DVD. I want to read it off the 10,000 rpm Raptor disk I have for exactly the purpose of making games load quickly. I don’t want to have to keep a stack of game boxes lying around in case I need the activation key you so very expensively printed on each one.
For Assassin’s Creed 2 you decided that a standalone game would require an Internet connection to work. I wrote at the time that I couldn’t countenance such stupidity and that I would, for the first time ever, not buy a Splinter Cell game if it was similarly protected. It is, so I didn’t.
Let’s spell this out Ubisoft, I didn’t buy Assassin’s Creed 2. I didn’t buy Splinter Cell: Conviction. You have stopped someone giving you money because you have this insane idea that one day you’re going to create some kind of copy protection that actually works (despite decades of evidence entirely to the contrary) and paying customers won’t mind the inconvenience of the ever-more-desperate ideas you come up with. Your system here has already failed, look here.
People who want to buy your games will do so anyway. People who want to pirate your games will do so anyway, and are waaaay smarter than you. I am reminded of this comparison from the world of movies.
So, tell me, Ubisoft, which game of yours would you like me not to buy next?