Assassin’s Creed II DRM Requires Full-Time Internet Connection

I agree that always on gaming is going too far

but your gameplay experience in WoW is hindered when you lose a connection in the middle of anything ingame
 
So when they disconnect the "service" for this game, no one will ever be able to save? Grrreeat.
 
Going to the movies is a terrible example as you are essentially "renting" their movie for the two hours. If Ubi wanted to rent the game to us on the cheap, that's a totally different story. I have the same problem with DRM for music and for movies: people should be allowed to use products that they originally purchased for entertainment in whatever form they chose and should not be governed by these strict policies which really only punish the legal consumer.

A perfect example of DRM that I do find acceptable. Microsoft's Zune will let you "rent" as many songs as you want for $14.99 a month for up to three devices and three computers. They even let you keep 10 of those songs for FREE each month DRM free. This form of DRM is alright with me for two reasons: 1) I'm renting the songs, therefore they do not belong to me and thus Microsoft or whoever has the right to govern the terms of use. 2) Once you have purchased songs from them, they are yours to do with as you want.

There's value in their system to me and lots of others who chose you use the Zune. Ubisoft is trying to dictate the terms of where, when, and how you use their software which would be fine if they owned the copy you were using, but since you are purchasing it, you should be able to use it for personal use how you chose, where you chose, and when you chose.
 
Bgrngod said:
So when they disconnect the "service" for this game, no one will ever be able to save? Grrreeat.
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They said that in that event they would release a "patch" so that they game can be played offline. Still though...very anti-consumer.
 
The way I see it, you weren't going to get the sales from the people who were going to pirate it anyway. Why the hell would you make it so fucking difficult for the people who are willing to drop the cash on your poorly ported, poorly supported PC Counterparts?
 
All this in an attempt to limit/stop pirating............not realizing that they're losing more revenue with this practice than they are gaining. Brilliant...........:rolleyes:
 
Azhar said:
Meh, the largest selling game in the world, World of Warcraft, requires you to be online to play it at all times. Games requiring you to be online isn't going to reduce sales, but rather the quality of the game.

Perhaps it's a little extreme to *always* be required to be online to play a single player game. They should just require you to authenticate your game online the first time you install it, and perhaps recheck authentication on patch days. This would allow travelers to play too with crappy hotel connections.

But overall, this is nothing new, really. Online authentication has been around for several years now. Nothing to get your panties in a bunch over.

Those of you who openly say they'll continue to pirate games because of DRM, thanks for contributing to the DRM scheme :rolleyes:
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WoW is an online Game, Assassin's creed II is not. Comparing the two is rather stupid don't you think?

That said, Don't support this. Don't buy the PC version, but at the same time don't screw yourself out of a good game. Play it on a console and don't deal with the DRM. If UBI wants to continue making PC games, they will figure out when their PC titles aren't selling with DRM.
 
Finkus said:
When I got to the cinema I have to maintain a connection between my ass and their cinema seat, in order to see their film. Same with watching live TV or sports events.
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Ok, sporting events. Let's say you PVR some event you got with your ultra sports package from whoever you get your cable/satellite service from. Now, let's say you go to watch said game later on, and your satellite signal goes down(or the cable goes out), and now you can't watch the game even though you've got it recorded on your PVR. Would you be fine with that?
 
Fafeifa said:
Yes but games like L4D2 goes singleplayer only when steam is doing their weekly maintenance. I can't find any games when their servers are off or even contact my friends. :(
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I dont know what time of day you play but that is rarely an issue for me. I've been using steam for almost 6 years now and since they actually updated the friends system to work correctly I haven't had any issues with that.
 
TheBlueChanell said:
I dont know what time of day you play but that is rarely an issue for me. I've been using steam for almost 6 years now and since they actually updated the friends system to work correctly I haven't had any issues with that.
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it is not very often but it is a issue when it happens.
 
Dekoth said:
WoW is an online Game, Assassin's creed II is not. Comparing the two is rather stupid don't you think?

That said, Don't support this. Don't buy the PC version, but at the same time don't screw yourself out of a good game. Play it on a console and don't deal with the DRM. If UBI wants to continue making PC games, they will figure out when their PC titles aren't selling with DRM.
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Do I need to do a forth post to clarify again?
 
Arcygenical said:
I give it 3 days until it's cracked.
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When that inevitable event indeed happens, should we expect Ubisoft to get the clue and patch it out not too long afterwards or what?


http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/214178/analysis-digital-rights-management-in-pc-gaming/

^^ Even Stardock finally got the message. And EA (!). Now c'mon Ubisoft, wake up.

I just can't get over what a blatant self sabotage this kind of move is on Ubisoft's part. If they really don't want to be bothered supporting the PC, which is what moves like these tell me...why bother with the pretense? Get out and be done with it. Skip the last couple of steps.
 
auspexd said:
Exactly. I for one support ubisoft in this endeavor. The more people realize that anything (games, movies or music) with DRM on it is basically a license to play the better. Ubisoft is essentially saying buy our game and we will give you the privilege of playing it for as long as we deem it profitable and necessary with the ability to revoke that privilege at any time for any reason.

On a related note, I wonder how the big box retailers are going to handle all the returns...
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So wait, you're saying all these games we "buy" we're actually renting? In that case they need to change their policy to look more like Gamefly.

If that is how you want them to look at it, or if that is how they are going to look at it, then all I can say is fuck Ubisoft and I hope they tank and burn in the fires of bankruptcy.
 
Terry,
You got some of the details a little wrong (not that its a big deal). The game doesn't terminate without saving technically, but it only saves at last checkpoint, so you WILL lose progress.

My thoughts:
Ubisoft says this takes 50kbaud bandwidth (more than many 56k modems connect at), and if you do the math thats about 15 gigs a month. They also call this a "platform" so if they make it so it runs whenever windows is running (and not just with the game), then this is gonna really HURT those with metered internet access. Not to mention this basically takes anyone with dialup out (although there's only about 7% or so dialup internet users anymore).

There's 2 main groups of problems.
1) is the client end. How many people have perfect internet without any burps 24/7? Not even T1 lines are sold with 100% uptime guarantees. People could easily lose hours of game play just because they have a brief internet hiccup. And how many people have perfect cable/dsl modems and routers that never ever need rebooting?
2) the server end. ubisoft already admitted in an interview that "if" (more like when) they have to do maintence, EVERYONE who owns the game cannot play it.
Also, because of the number of people and bandwidth requirements, this is basically going to require an MMORPG infrastructure/servers/bandwidth. They have not beta/stress tested this at all. Ubisoft has zero MMORPG experiance. How much you want to bet that they are going to have tons of problems at launch just like every single MMO launch? And none of this takes into account DDOS attacks. It would not surprise me at all if hackers DDOSed ubisoft frequently to take 100% of a gameplaying population offline (ubisoft is hyping this as nearly unhackable, thats sure to attract the wrong kind of attention too)

This is just a bad idea all around.
 
Wouldn't have bought it anyways since I already played it and beat it like 4 months ago on the xbox.........I think they screwed themselves by releasing it so long after the console.........bad move, even worse was the DRM..........




epic fail
 
this type of DRM is the reason for the death of pc gaming.. not really death but you know what i mean, things are not the way they used to be... and thus people choose to not buy the pc games, and the developer spend even less on future pc games and it's a vicious cycle that will not end well until they wake up and keep the copy protection simple.. lets all just go back to the days of cd keys and thats it..
 
why don't they just charge a flat-rate monthly fee for access to their entire game library and get it over with? that way, i have to be connected to the internet at all times, and i get access to all of their games. makes much more sense than this bullshit.
 
And the death of PC Gaming begins... Silent Hunter 5 also includes this form of DRM and even though I own Silent Hunters 1-4, I will NOT be buying SH5 or ANYTHING from Ubisoft as long as they continue this policy.
 
what about the gaming laptop users like myself. i refuse to waste money on verizon.

please, everybody boycott this shit.

i am against piracy and buy games. but now you have to download the crack to play it. and it is/will be cracked.

ubisoft is banned from my wallet, thanks a bunch morons!!!!!
 
also want to add that steam rocks. i never used to like it. but over the holidays i purchased a bunch of COMPLETE packs. now i have over 100 games and only spent like 70 dollars. the THQ, the ID, and a few more.

AT LEAST steam will let you play offline, so when you travel you can play your purchased games. thankfully we have gamecopywor**

:)
 
Leon2ky said:
The way I see it, you weren't going to get the sales from the people who were going to pirate it anyway. Why the hell would you make it so fucking difficult for the people who are willing to drop the cash on your poorly ported, poorly supported PC Counterparts?
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And we have a winner! The big point that Ubi and others who use restrictive DRM schemes forget is that pirates will not buy your game anyway! Let me say that again, PIRATES WILL NOT BUY YOUR GAME ANYWAY! Pirates are NOT your customers. DRM or no DRM, pirates will still pirate your game and you will still NOT be seeing any of their money.

IMHO, Stardock has the right idea. Don't waste your time or resources to stop pirates. It just doesn't work. Instead, focus those resources you would have spent on DRM on value-add ideas and extras that only paying customers can take advantage of. All DRM does is torture and inconvenience your paying customers. The pirates keep on playing for free.
 
Terry Olaes said:
This blogger vents about the harsh DRM that Ubisoft is requiring for the upcoming PC release of Assassin’s Creed II. The game will require a constant connection to an Ubisoft server and if it loses the connection for any reason, it will pause the game until it can reconnect. If it cannot reconnect after a certain amount of time, the game is terminated without saving. Whoa.
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....and they wonder why people pirate?

There's probably already a hacked .exe that will allow localdisk savegames.
 
wow, so ass2 won't be selling any copies for pc but someone will rip the shit out of it anyways?? Good job UBI Soft!!

*** facepalm ***
 
wdtiger said:
And we have a winner! The big point that Ubi and others who use restrictive DRM schemes forget is that pirates will not buy your game anyway! Let me say that again, PIRATES WILL NOT BUY YOUR GAME ANYWAY! Pirates are NOT your customers. DRM or no DRM, pirates will still pirate your game and you will still NOT be seeing any of their money.

IMHO, Stardock has the right idea. Don't waste your time or resources to stop pirates. It just doesn't work. Instead, focus those resources you would have spent on DRM on value-add ideas and extras that only paying customers can take advantage of. All DRM does is torture and inconvenience your paying customers. The pirates keep on playing for free.
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To add to this...

None of this will make any difference to the pirates anyways. Maybe the very few people actually cracking the game will care, but they'll only see it as a challenge, not a deterrent. The people downloading the pirated copy won't be influenced by this whatsoever. The only people influenced are paying customers.
 
Techx said:
this type of DRM is the reason for the death of pc gaming.. not really death but you know what i mean, things are not the way they used to be... and thus people choose to not buy the pc games, and the developer spend even less on future pc games and it's a vicious cycle that will not end well until they wake up and keep the copy protection simple.. lets all just go back to the days of cd keys and thats it..
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They wont wake up... its their plan to kill pc gaming...to kill anything that allows one to really modify their code for other reasons. They dont like it, and they use piracy as an excuse. They dont even want you to resell a game, they give you incentives which were free when PC gaming was thriving.
 
michael.pa2 said:
This is exactly what would happen to me with this game,probably a lot of others who have less than ideal providers. Wouldn't be surprised to see a class action suit by irate gamers who basically paid for an unplayable game.
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Yeah, I can't even count the number of times I had been playing a game like Supreme Commander, Command & Conquer, The Saboteur, Modern Warfare 2 (offline), Crysis, or any other offline game only to walk downstairs and have my parents ask why the internet hasn't been working for the past hour. Add to that the number of times I play offline games because there is no internet to play Counter Strike, World of Warcraft, or Final Fantasy XI and the number of instances gets even higher.

I consider myself to be a relatively early adopter of online gaming (SOCOM: US Navy Seals was a good time) and often times choose an online game because I know the replay value will be excellent. That being said, I keep a nice stash of offline games around because of the stories, not having to talk to other people, and because I recognize my internet isn't up all the time. Maybe it's just me that Comcast hates, but when you mix that with a shitty router that likes to be reset twice daily (sometimes more :mad:) any offline game that cuts my playing because of dropped internet isn't for me. And if I really wanted to play it. I'd find a workaround (or have someone else do it for me).
 
Pre-Orders canceled and I hope Ubisoft reads [H].

I will enjoy playing the games I purchase whenever I damn well please, offline or online. I travel for a living and a lot of my 'gaming' these days is done on a plane or in a hotel with either crap-tastic or no internet at all. The only thing Ubisoft has guaranteed with this kind of DRM is that A) A lot fewer people will purchase it legitimately and B) sufficient challenge and justification has been given to cracking groups all around the world who will have this DRM scheme broken faster than they can count canceled pre-orders.
 
funny thing is, when their PC sales start to drop, they are gonna say that the PC market is no longer profitable and they are gonna stop releasing games for the PC
 
First of all, let me say that so far I really like Napoleon Total War. IT is adictive and it seems to be a welcome next step in the excellent T W series.
I was disapointed when I had to use Steam to load the game. It was quite slow. Also the load times are slow compared to what I am used to with my rig.
My big gripe is that I have to log into Steam each time I want to play. That I do NOT like. I also noted that STeam had placed itself to run on start up. I keep my rig running clean and fast and NOTHING runs on start up that I do not need. The good news is that when I disabled Steam in MSCONFIG Nap T W still works. I do still have to log into Steam to play however.
What is my server is down and I have no net connection, can I not play?
Am I missing something or am I being overly upset about nothing?
 
As far as Assassin's Creed 2, with this kind of DRM I would not even consider it.
If they want to play to wimpy consoles let them. We all grow up and want more powerful graphics and newer technology. My consoles are sitting gathering dust for the most part. Perhaps when the next gen consoles with up to date technology I will try one again but for now, they really feel like toys.
 
I will not be purchasing any more Ubisoft products after this... I am quite frankly getting fed up with the entire PC gaming platform....

I am living in a student residence with shared internet... People resetting the net, time outs and drop outs are extremely common... Furthermore because of Telstra fitting so many new estates with pair gain wiring... I have several friends that have no option but to get 3G/Wireless. Depending on the Area, these connections drop frequently.
 
I definitely won't be buying ANY game that uses this type of DRM.

And I do buy computer games... have about 40 or 50 on my shelf right now.
 
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