I'm sure many of you have heard about the new Ubisoft DRM that forces you to stay online otherwise your game will attempt to save (on their servers) and exit. There is no offline mode in these games. However since the reception has been so poor there have been rumors that Silent Hunter 5 will be patched so it can save games locally.
There are several games I want to buy that Ubisoft is publishing but I do not want this extremely invasive DRM on my machine. I would just buy the game and then download the various hacks that remove the DRM but then again I'm not one to go around downloading those types of things. I hate hacks and I dislike having to do something illegal to play my legally purchased game in offline mode and for that I will most likely just forego my purchases. I really hate this type of DRM for AS 2 and SH5 but for the next iteration of IL2 I don't mind as much b/c I rarely play IL2 in offline mode since the AI is never as good as a human opponent. I may just purchase an XBox 360 for games that are extremely intrusive when ported to the PC but are games that I absolutely must have.
Is Ubisoft's DRM going to keep any of you from purchasing some of the great games they have and are going to publish in the near future? I'll most likely buy the new IL2 but I seriously doubt I will get AS 2 or SH5 until the DRM is removed or altered to be less instrusive by Ubisoft. This sucks too since I have almost every version of Silent Hunter and I'm dying to see the rest of the story in AS 2 since I thouroughly enjoyed AS 1.
Real bummer if you ask me. Some companies are removing DRM and some are adding more intrusive DRM. What moron or PM at Ubi thought this was a good idea? Did they not realize this would put them first and foremost on every pirate's radar and royally upset all of those who actually pay for their games?
I feel for the developer's on this one b/c the DRM isn't preventing anyone from stealing (since it's already been hacked) and it's causing others to boycott the release of otherwise excellent games with excellent production values. I think the publisher is shooting themselves and their devs in the foot on this one. If I could forward my money to the studio that developed these games and forego sending it to Ubi I would...but unfortunately that isn't going to happen. I feel really bad for not supporting AS 2 and SH 5 but I just can't agree with the DRM that has been put in them. But I strongly feel that the developer's deserve my money even if the publisher doesn't.
Quite a conundrum for me right now. I have friends at Red Storm which is owned by Ubi and would be more than happy to support their efforts...if it weren't for this horrid DRM.
I think the biggest thing companies can do right now to fight piracy is to allow more content in the purchased versions of the games. I always wondered why online games did not send all the illegit players to some server with half of the game disabled. From what I know the recent Batman game did this to good effect. This kind of DRM actually benefits the paying customer and makes the retail purchased version more attractive than the pirated featureless version. I'm sure it's possible to do this on many many games and it's a form of anti-piracy that I believe will actually work and possibly save and or improve all video game sales if the industry adopts the practice.