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Ubisoft Games Will Require Constant Internet Connection

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Derangel

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Jan 31, 2008
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From Kotaku: http://kotaku.com/5457012/ubisofts-pc-games-will-soon-require-an-internet-connection

Fresh off copying from Xbox Live with its "Uplay" service, Ubisoft is now taking a leaf out Valve's book (The Big Book of Steam), introducing a range of new anti-piracy measures for the company's PC games.

Ditching the controversial "StarForce" system of digital rights management, Ubisoft will now be moving its PC game copy protection services to Ubi.com accounts.

This new system will allow unlimited installs (rather than the limits seen on other DRM systems like SecuRom), let you play games without a disc in the drive, and even save your games remotely to Ubi's servers, meaning you can swap between computers and pick up right where you left off (similar to how Valve's Steamworks system operates).

The catch? You have to be online to play your games. It's the only way you'll be able to verify with Ubisoft's servers that you're playing a legitimate copy of a game. So if you get intermittent internet connectivity, or travel a lot, or just like playing games on your laptop, you're in trouble, as no "offline" mode will be offered.

It's a brave decision on the part of Ubisoft, one even Valve may still be a few years away from making. Be interesting to see how severe a backlash there is from users, or whether the company has made the right call in deciding most people are 100% connected to the internet 100% of the time.
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And here we thought SecuROM, TAGES, and Steam were a bit excessive. This takes the cake.
 
It's only going to get worse as time goes on, just watch.
 
Won't affect me, thankfully. I haven't bought an Ubisoft game in years.

What's curious is that "Uplay" is supposed to replicate Steamworks, but Steamworks is free to integrate and offers similar (identical?) functionality to "Uplay". Why not...just...use...Steamworks?
 
These dev's are gonna find out that one or two services selling digital games is the way to go. Screw having a Steam account, gog account an GFWL account and an UBI account. JFC if I buy through steam it should only have to have steam running!
 
So what happens when Ubisoft drops the ball and no longer authenticates its games online? If that sounds like an unlikely scenario, it's already happened - after Bioware sold Neverwinter Nights to Atari, it is now impossible to buy the Infinite Dungeons or Wyvern Crown of Cormyr DLCs for Neverwinter Nights.

Online authenticators assume that the authentication servers will always forevermore be online, and that should the company decide to no longer run the authentication servers, the company would release a patch that would allow the game to be run without being online. This ignores two things: 1) that time may be so far forward that nobody at the company will know how to write the patch anymore; 2) that when IPs get sold (such as Neverwinter Nights being sold to Atari) or companies go bankrupt or get sold, balls get dropped and that always includes game patches.

Edit: something I missed, which is in the original gamespy article: "Your saves will be stored remotely on Ubi servers, allowing access to your game saves on any machine." It doesn't say whether you'll also have the save games on your own computer; if the saves are stored only remotely, I have a few problems with that.
 
Thats a definite no purchase for me. Thankfully the only Ubisoft game I was midly interested in was Splinter Cell conviction.
 
Another DRM fail. This will be cracked no problem. It will in no way prevent piracy and will just further alienate their paying customer base. When will they learn?
 
One less company to buy games from gets added to my list!
Or wait, i will just get the pirated version that will work %100 of the time when i want :D
 
Why doesn't Ubisoft just admit upfront that they don't want to be bothered with PC gaming any longer and be done with it?
 
Hmmm no thanks Ubisoft, I continue to have no problem voting with my wallet on these matters.
 
You cant blame them, once they saw how successful steam was. The problem is, Most people dont want a different steam-like application for every game they buy. Steam did it first, and they did it best.
 
Q-BZ said:
Why doesn't Ubisoft just admit upfront that they don't want to be bothered with PC gaming any longer and be done with it?
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It's happening more and more with many companies. Why care about making PC games when they will be heavily pirated and instead make them on consoles were they will make loads more money.
 
No biggy. I just won't buy the games that come with this kind of protection.
 
ubisoft makes some decent games, but much of its requirements for connecting to the ubisoft network to play online simply sucks total ass. other games show a master server browser most of the time, but some of their games,,, nope. now this..... pita. if they make it seamless that might be easy if u dont have to register each game with some long process.

but im guessing you will not be able to sell it once you buy it. now if they let you sell for say a $5 cd key charge,,,, they would make some extra cash, be nice if valve did something like that to. i dont think they would have a exodus of used games, but i think it would work out in their favors. i could be wrong its just speculation on my part. I dont sell that many of my games, once in a great while so to me its not that big a deal, but i know people that sell any game after they beat as many dont play online, or just play it a couple weeks or days and want something new, so for those people im sure this is a bummer.
 
a.) IMO - "We" (pc gamers) asked for this in some way, shape, or form because of incessant piracy and bitching

b.) they're offering compromises with things like unlimited installs and remotely saved games which is a decent trade off... I M O.

c.) We play games like this already - this isn't something new.
 
phide said:
Won't affect me, thankfully. I haven't bought an Ubisoft game in years.
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Similar for me, although I admit buying a Jewel Case or Two but only when the game title was transferred to another publisher

What's curious is that "Uplay" is supposed to replicate Steamworks, but Steamworks is free to integrate and offers similar (identical?) functionality to "Uplay". Why not...just...use...Steamworks?
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Steam takes a cut. But Steam offers other services than authentication.

I could live with a stripped down online authenticator with an offiline mode. Something that I can launch and stop at will. Much rather have that than SECUROM, etc.

What really needs to happen is that game industry needs to make a standard super low cost online authentication system at least as flexible as Steam. Then after that they can take care of their own installation, distribution, etc.
 
fornarmr said:
I am always connected to the internet anyways so this doesn't bother me.
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HEre's one problem - if you lose your connection to the internet, the game goes into a pause mode. I don't know about you, but even my "always on" internet drops once on a while (and for a while there it was dropping pretty regularly).
 
Won't be buying anything with this feature out of shear principle...
 
Honestly, who here is playing a high end game on a computer NOT connected to the Internet? All I see here is belly aching over nothing.
 
jpm100 said:
Steam takes a cut. But Steam offers other services than authentication.
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For Steamworks integration alone, I'm fairly sure it's free. Their website says:
Steamworks is entirely free. There are no licensing fees and there's no charge for bandwidth, retail copies, or OEM distribution.
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I think Valve just wants to get as many publishers on board with them as possible, which is why they offer all of this functionality at no cost. For distribution, yes, they take a cut, but for just the Steamworks integration alone, that's no cost.

...I guess.

heatlesssun said:
Honestly, who here is playing a high end game on a computer NOT connected to the Internet? All I see here is belly aching over nothing.
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It's a potential security risk. Even if that's the sole reason why we wouldn't want it, that's a legitimate reason and thus a legitimate complaint against the system.
 
phide said:
It's a potential security risk. Even if that's the sole reason why we wouldn't want it, that's a legitimate reason and thus a legitimate complaint against the system.
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Ahh, didn't answer the question! I simply want to know how many people are playing games, ESPECIALLY on a desktop that isn't connected to the NET.

Security risk? That's not a reason, that's an excuse. Sure, being always connected another is something else to deal with but making sound onerous when 99% of computers playing games out there are connected to the net is just not being honest.

People just don't ANY type of copy protection, even if it will never affected them or have requirements that everyone meets any way.
 
I would rather not have 4 different content distro platforms open to play my stuff. Also, dealing with bugs from 3 services...sounds like a blast. Just use steam...
 
heatlesssun said:
Honestly, who here is playing a high end game on a computer NOT connected to the Internet? All I see here is belly aching over nothing.
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As a hardcore Steam whore my only disagreement is that on a number of occasions I've been without internet and I want to play offline. Probably about 30 times a year I fly internationally and typical flights are 9-10 hours for me so every trip I end up beating some game or other on the plane. Got halfway through Silent Hill 3 and Disciples II last trip.

(This isnt a rant at steam which gives you offline mode.)
 
indokyne said:
a.) IMO - "We" (pc gamers) asked for this in some way, shape, or form because of incessant piracy and bitching
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Q: At what point does DRM punish legit buyers so much that it promotes piracy rather than prevents it?

A: DRM always promotes piracy, because DRM never prevents piracy.

What those in these forums who blame DRM on piracy fail to realize is that DRM has nothing to do with preventing piracy - DRM is 100% about preventing used game sales.

Forceman said:
Here's one problem - if you lose your connection to the internet, the game goes into a pause mode.
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/facepalm
 
piscian18 said:
As a hardcore Steam whore my only disagreement is that on a number of occasions I've been without internet and I want to play offline. Probably about 30 times a year I fly internationally and typical flights are 9-10 hours for me so every trip I end up beating some game or other on the plane. Got halfway through Silent Hill 3 and Disciples II last trip.

(This isnt a rant at steam which gives you offline mode.)
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This is legitimate and why there needs to be an offline system. Still the vast majority of gamers simply won't be affected by this.
 
heatlesssun said:
Ahh, didn't answer the question!
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I didn't think it was a serious question. But, to answer it directly, I always play with an active internet connection, unless it's down, which it practically never is. The "you need to be online" portion would not ordinarily affect me.

heatlesssun said:
Security risk? That's not a reason, that's an excuse.
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A potential security risk, yes. And, yes, it's an both excuse and a reason. That's not to suggest that it's an excuse to pirate, because there is no such excuse as far as I'm concerned, but it's at least a fair concern for any user moderately concerned with the overall security of his system.

heatlesssun said:
People just don't [want] ANY type of copy protection, even if it will never affected them or have requirements that everyone meets any way.
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I don't think that's genuinely true, no. People don't express much concern over copy-protected CDs, protected with SecuROM or what have you. I've suffered from issues on SecuROM-protected discs myself, but it's not that big a deal to me (see: Crysis). Nobody seems to have cared about the old "hunt for the phrase in the manual" technique that was in common practice a decade ago either. Granted, that would be a totally ineffective technique now, but I imagine it still qualifies as "copy protection".

You do, however, see a reasonable reaction from these invasive DRM mechanisms. To me, these reactions are legitimate and should be respected.
 
All the people who are complacent about DRM are almost always the ones who it has never effected, and these people almost always cannot see past their own experiences.

Not everyone is you, we all have different lifestyles which lead to different wants/needs from our games, some of us have sporadic internet connectivity, some of us have specific configs on our machines which means we run SCSI drives or other bizarre combinations of hardware that DRM doesn't like. Some of us format frequently and need a large number of reinstalls.

The world doesn't revolve around you, before you blurt out that everyone has an internet connection, or everyone has X or is not effected by Y then just stop to think for a second. Sure, maybe you speak for the majorety but why should anyone suffer the downsides of DRM, even if it's a few people?

If I come along and punch you in the face, is it any consolation for me to tell you that you're the only person I punched in the face? "Not to worry sir, it only effects a very small number of people."

Now if I told you I punched you in the face for a reason, like it was going to save someones life, then you might think OK, something negative with some kind of positive trade off, kind of makes sense...But there is no positive trade off with DRM its just a long hard swing at our balls.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
All the people who are complacent about DRM are almost always the ones who it has never effected, and these people almost always cannot see past their own experiences.

Not everyone is you, we all have different lifestyles which lead to different wants/needs from our games, some of us have sporadic internet connectivity, some of us have specific configs on our machines which means we run SCSI drives or other bizarre combinations of hardware that DRM doesn't like. Some of us format frequently and need a large number of reinstalls.

The world doesn't revolve around you, before you blurt out that everyone has an internet connection, or everyone has X or is not effected by Y then just stop to think for a second. Sure, maybe you speak for the majorety but why should anyone suffer the downsides of DRM, even if it's a few people?

If I come along and punch you in the face, is it any consolation for me to tell you that you're the only person I punched in the face? "Not to worry sir, it only effects a very small number of people."

Now if I told you I punched you in the face for a reason, like it was going to save someones life, then you might think OK, something negative with some kind of positive trade off, kind of makes sense...But there is no positive trade off with DRM its just a long hard swing at our balls.
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I guess it's just a good thing that nobody is forcing us to buy or play games then. I don't know about you but I got more then enough games that don't require an internet connection to play but if enough games jumped on this bandwagon then it could be a real problem down the future.
 
heatlesssun said:
Honestly, who here is playing a high end game on a computer NOT connected to the Internet? All I see here is belly aching over nothing.
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Private LAN parties with mates aren't famous for having any active internet connection at all, let alone an awesome high-speed always-on connection.
 
lol, yea, this will work like the past 25 attempts at copy protection has worked.

all this does is make people want to pirate the game, because it's easier than jumping through hoops to get the game going.
 
This is just another form of DRM that cripples the people who actually pay for the game. Now people who pirate and buy the game will both have to crack it. I know pretty much everyone has internet and everything but if your internet goes out or you have to go without it for a while it's pretty shitty to not be able to play your fucking single player game.
 
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