Ubisoft's new DRM cracked in under 25 hours

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Derfman said:
Itchyeyes I understand where your coming from but your giving these companies too much sympathy.
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You've missed my entire point then. I don't have any sympathy at all for Ubisoft. My sympathy is for us, the consumers who love the PC platform and want to see it continue to thrive. It's not an "us" vs. the producers situation, or an "us" vs. the pirates either. It's the producers vs. the pirates, and we, the innocent bystanders who just want to play and enjoy our games, are caught in the middle.

Ubisoft's DRM is absurd, and it was colassally stupid on their part to implement it. It was a failed concept from the very beginning. I'm not going to buy the product because of it, and I don't think others should buy it either. But that's not the same thing as stealing it. And it doesn't mean that I have to rejoice, as so many others in this very forum are doing, in others stealing it either. This quarrel, between pirates and publishers, only harms those of us who actually care about PC gaming, those of us who enjoy and support continued development on this platform. It's the MAD of the entertainment industry. Every time one side makes a new weapon, the other uses it as justification to make two more.

It was a shame when Ubisoft made their DRM, but it's every bit as much as shame that the pirates have broken it and will play the game with impunity. Because, all it means is that we're still trapped in this same cycle of self destruction. And every step of the way one side looks to the other and says "here's your chance to make things right, and finally abandon this foolish course", all the while ignoring their own contributions to furthering the problem.
 
Itchyeyes said:
While I understand your point, I disagree in two regards. First, I don't think you have to get rid of the big players to make room for the little guys. The Indie scene is thriving on the PC these days, and will continue to thrive with or without the large publishers.

Second, the capital costs required to bring something like Assassin's Creed 2 to market, literally, dictate an entirely different set of rules than for an Indie game like Trine or SOASE (or for that matter one of the early Blizzard or Westwood games). Indie games can take bigger risks because they require less investment. But in order to bankroll a $50 million investment, you more or less have to be a public company (except in extra-ordinary cases like Valve). That basically means you're playing with money that isn't yours, and are therefore subject to certain laws regarding what kinds of risks you can and can't legitimately take with that money, risks like "what happens if half the people who play my game didn't pay for it"?

So while I think that in the absence of the big publishers, the little developers will continue to thrive. I think that they'll thrive making more or less the same kinds of games they make today. There are a lot of people who are fine with that. But there are still a lot of us who want to see big AAA titles that take advantage of the hardware we lavish so much or our attention and money on. And the longer this piracy issue drags on unresolved, the fewer and fewer of those games there are going to be.
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You are missing project like "The Witcher" and "Natural Selection 2" which are actually pretty large in scale and came from small developers. Also, Metro 2033, and Stalker come to mind. All of these titles, especially the last 2 push technology while coming from small studios. You don't always need a big publisher to push the fancy stuff. Nvidia has been known, and with Metro 2033 continues to supply small devs with tons of assistance to make their games visually appealing.

Once you remove publisher overheard, rediculous marketing, "entertaining" the industry and review outlets, you'd find the actual budjet of a big name game isn't as huge as you might think. The developers often get the short end of the stick from a big publisher. They complete the title, and in recent times are laid off for their work. There is no room for creativity or innovation with Activision, EA, Ubi.
 
demingo said:
You are missing project like "The Witcher" and "Natural Selection 2" which are actually pretty large in scale and came from small developers. Also, Metro 2033, and Stalker come to mind. All of these titles, especially the last 2 push technology while coming from small studios. You don't always need a big publisher to push the fancy stuff. Nvidia has been known, and with Metro 2033 continues to supply small devs with tons of assistance to make their games visually appealing.

Once you remove publisher overheard, rediculous marketing, "entertaining" the industry and review outlets, you'd find the actual budjet of a big name game isn't as huge as you might think. The developers often get the short end of the stick from a big publisher. They complete the title, and in recent times are laid off for their work. There is no room for creativity or innovation with Activision, EA, Ubi.
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Yeah, too much money is spent on other things like DRM and marketing. Was I wrong in hearing that 80% of EA's budget was on marketing? Imagine if that money went into enhancing Dragon Age or Mass Effect.
 
To all the people saying that this is only going to push games towards consoles, HEAR THE WORDS OF FAIL.

This is what I say unto you,"Some other developers will come along and make games that are meant to be played on our PC's!!!! Those are the developers I will be shelling out 2 Jackson's and a Hamilton to."


































Provided the game is worth playing of course.
 
Itchyeyes said:
You've missed my entire point then. I don't have any sympathy at all for Ubisoft. My sympathy is for us, the consumers who love the PC platform and want to see it continue to thrive. It's not an "us" vs. the producers situation, or an "us" vs. the pirates either. It's the producers vs. the pirates, and we, the innocent bystanders who just want to play and enjoy our games, are caught in the middle.

Ubisoft's DRM is absurd, and it was colassally stupid on their part to implement it. It was a failed concept from the very beginning. I'm not going to buy the product because of it, and I don't think others should buy it either. But that's not the same thing as stealing it. And it doesn't mean that I have to rejoice, as so many others in this very forum are doing, in others stealing it either. This quarrel, between pirates and publishers, only harms those of us who actually care about PC gaming, those of us who enjoy and support continued development on this platform. It's the MAD of the entertainment industry. Every time one side makes a new weapon, the other uses it as justification to make two more.

It was a shame when Ubisoft made their DRM, but it's every bit as much as shame that the pirates have broken it and will play the game with impunity. Because, all it means is that we're still trapped in this same cycle of self destruction. And every step of the way one side looks to the other and says "here's your chance to make things right, and finally abandon this foolish course", all the while ignoring their own contributions to furthering the problem.
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QFT. Very well said.
 
Parmenides said:
Yeah, too much money is spent on other things like DRM and marketing. Was I wrong in hearing that 80% of EA's budget was on marketing? Imagine if that money went into enhancing Dragon Age or Mass Effect.
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Marketing is important. Without it, you may have a great game but you also don't have anyone who knows about it. There's obviously a point where you reach diminishing gains in terms of how much money you throw at a marketing campaign and how much you get out of it, but I couldn't say if that point is four or five times as the game's development budget.

Obviously there's 'good marketing' and there's 'bad marketing'. Good marketing? Portal 2. Bad marketing? Probably most of EA's campaigns, yeah. But not necessarily wasted money.
 
I'm all in favor of Ubisoft going console-only. If you want to make money on the PC, you need to have a good, multiplayer game that requires a CD-key in order to play. Pretty simple concept. It sucks, but it's true. It's a real shame about AC2. I bought AC, and was looking to buy AC2, but by doing so, I lose.

Long gone are the days of a simple CD check. In fact, media itself is becoming obsolete. I don't even have a DVD drive any more. There's just no point. I buy all of my games digitally.
 
games like Fallout 3 and Oblivion didn't need much in the way of marketing to sell, their brand names and the knowledge of the reputations of a company like Bethseda was enough to push truckloads of copies off the shelves

I'd much rather have a stellar reputation as a company for making good games that the mass market likes and purchases than rely on a multimillion dollar marketing campaign that wouldn't make any difference if my game is a dime piece.
 
phide said:
Marketing is important. Without it, you may have a great game but you also don't have anyone who knows about it. There's obviously a point where you reach diminishing gains in terms of how much money you throw at a marketing campaign and how much you get out of it, but I couldn't say if that point is four or five times as the game's development budget.

Obviously there's 'good marketing' and there's 'bad marketing'. Good marketing? Portal 2. Bad marketing? Probably most of EA's campaigns, yeah. But not necessarily wasted money.
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Most big names had no marketing.

Warcraft, Starcraft, Doom, Quake, Counterstrike, Halflife, GTA are just to name a few. When each of these games were made, they had little or no marketing, but they spread like wildfire due to word of mouth. Hell, the Matrix had little marketing and wasn't really supported until word of mouth helped it take off.

In todays world of twitter, facebook, and on demand information a good product will very often sell itself. If you create an amazing game, your customers will advertise for you by spreading the word.
 
All the games I buy come from word of mouth. I could be wrong, but marketing seems more like something that's good for consoles. But with the PC, it's not very necessary.

Of course everything is on consoles anyways.
 
Fail said:
games like Fallout 3 and Oblivion didn't need much in the way of marketing to sell, their brand names and the knowledge of the reputations of a company like Bethseda was enough to push truckloads of copies off the shelves
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Both of those games were heavily marketed, however, and there's no question that Bethesda benefited from those marketing campaigns. Whether they were cost effective is an entirely different debate, but I think that, in both cases, they would not have sold to the extent that they did without a decent marketing campaign behind them.

demingo said:
Most big names had no marketing. Warcraft, Starcraft, Doom, Quake, Counterstrike, Halflife, GTA are just to name a few.
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I can specifically recall Quake and Half-Life being marketed via mag ads, Half-Life moreso. Sierra bought fold-out ads in a number of PC Gamer issues for Half-Life, even.

I can also recall several great games which failed in the marketplace due to what was most likely a lack of or poor marketing, so the argument goes both ways. There are the so-called "cult classics", which sell fantastically despite very little marketing, but they're relatively far and few between (especially today). A good marketing effort can elevate the word-of-mouth effect.

demingo said:
In todays world of twitter, facebook, and on demand information a good product will very often sell itself. If you create an amazing game, your customers will advertise for you by spreading the word.
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On-demand information is typically marketing. A game's website, which are often pretty complex Flash deals, is one aspect of marketing and costs money to produce.
 
demingo said:
Most big names had no marketing.

Warcraft, Starcraft, Doom, Quake, Counterstrike, Halflife, GTA are just to name a few. When each of these games were made, they had little or no marketing, but they spread like wildfire due to word of mouth. Hell, the Matrix had little marketing and wasn't really supported until word of mouth helped it take off.

In todays world of twitter, facebook, and on demand information a good product will very often sell itself. If you create an amazing game, your customers will advertise for you by spreading the word.
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A lot of amazing indie games still don't sell nearly as much as bad 'big name' games despite all of the 'on demand information'.

All of the examples you listed are very OLD games. The amount of marketting nowadays of gaming is higher than ever.
 
H-street said:
if you really believe developers don't look at "pirated" data numbers then you are a fool.

**a lot of stupid words that don't mean shit**
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If you don't think any major publisher, developer, clearinghouse, <insert title here> is going to blame a failed major release on piracy regardless of the actual responsibility of piracy, YOU sir, are a goddamn fool.

Like I said, get off the bong and join the real world.
 
I don't think most of the people cheering here, are cheering because the game is available to pirates. They're cheering because the Ubi-DRM was cracked. This is good news no matter how you look at it. Imagine what would have happened if it worked, and people bought it. They'd be playing by Ubi's new set of rules, which would be widely adopted based on the success.

I'm not cheering for people playing the game without paying, but someone HAD to crack that protection to bring a little perspective to Ubi. Hopefully it did, but large companies like that have thick skulls, so who knows.

The distinction needs to be made between applauding the destruction of that DRM, and applauding piracy of the product, which I don't think anyone here is doing.
 
Parmenides said:
Even if you cracked a bought game, you would still be reinforcing Ubisoft's idea that their DRM doesn't deter purchases.
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This. I just skip buying the game, and that means not playing it either. There are plenty of games that deserve my $$ and time, too many actually.
 
eurin said:
This. I just skip buying the game, and that means not playing it either. There are plenty of games that deserve my $$ and time, too many actually.
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You have a point ill skip AC2 and SH5 plenty of other games to play right now
 
But but this was suppose to be uncrackable, omg a game publisher is WRONG?? the world I know is coming to an end. :D
 
hey ubisoft, next time try using incentives instead of drm to get people to buy your pc games, k?
 
Khanmots said:
And thinks to the DMCA cracking a bought game is as illegal as pirating it.
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and pirates should care why? Do you really think the DMCA has actually STOPPED people from pirating? C'mon, I seriously laughed out loud in real life when I typed this

Do you really believe that on the download screen for the crack, pirates actually go, OH NO, NOT THE DMCA??? and then don't click it?
 
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Khanmots said:
And thinks to the DMCA cracking a bought game is as illegal as pirating it.
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In my humble, uneducated opinion, I just payed $60 for the game, I will do whatever the hell I please with it. Whether or not the game publisher doesnt like that, well, Ive got something for them ;)
 
Fail said:
Do you really believe that on the download screen for the crack, pirates actually go, OH NO, NOT THE DMCA??? and then don't click it?
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I think his point was to bring up how retarded the DMCA is, not suggest pirates care.
 
ebd2c5.jpg
 
lol. Nice pic.

Anyways, yeah. I think we all saw this failure coming, and at the end of the day, Ubisoft's out of control DRM is probably just going to cost them legitimate sales as people turn away from their products. Taken together with the fact that these elaborate DRM solutions cost money, I wonder how much further ahead Ubisoft really is?
 
defiant007 said:
ebd2c5.jpg
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Propanda Minister is right this time.

SILENT HUNTER 5 AND ASSASINS CREED 2 NOT COMPLETE, NOT CRACKED

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/03/05/unsilent-hunter-ubidrm-not-cracked-after-all/

Another case of scenesters jumping the gun for cred and making nuked releases? Reports are that the missions (or at least some kind of critical content) actually downloads from the Ubisoft servers as you play the game.

That's the other drawback of increasingly faster connections and increasingly faster computers. I have a feeling that the ultimate and unbreakable DRM that these companies are going to resort to is fully streamed games. It's going to be like cloud computing except you don't get to own or manipulate any of the files of your game. It'll just stream to you straight from the publishers with realtime 128-bit encyrption or something ridiculous to prevent interference (faster computers enable faster decyrption).
 
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Spare-Flair said:
Propanda Minister is right this time.

SILENT HUNTER 5 AND ASSASINS CREED 2 NOT COMPLETE, NOT CRACKED

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/03/05/unsilent-hunter-ubidrm-not-cracked-after-all/

Another case of scenesters jumping the gun for cred and making nuked releases? Reports are that the missions (or at least some kind of critical content) actually downloads from the Ubisoft servers as you play the game.

That's the other drawback of increasingly faster connections and increasingly faster computers. I have a feeling that the ultimate and unbreakable DRM that these companies are going to resort to is fully streamed games. It's going to be like cloud computing except you don't get to own or manipulate any of the files of your game. It'll just stream to you straight from the publishers with realtime 128-bit encyrption or something ridiculous to prevent interference (faster computers enable faster decyrption).
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Thanks for the info. Interesting read.

Downloading missions on the fly makes me want to avoid the games even further

Screw Ubisoft, I won't be buying one of their game whilst their DRM is in place. There is one lost sale right there. Not that Ubisoft care I would imagine

Edit

It would seem that some have finished the game with a cracked version, so Ubisoft may be doing some damage limitation exercises on this
 
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So apparently as part of their scheme the software not only has to "authenticate" with their servers, it has to retrieve missions as well? To hell with that.
 
spicey said:
That's for the info. Interesting read.

Downloading missions on the fly makes me want to avoid the games even further

Screw Ubisoft, I won't be buying one of their game whilst their DRM is in place. There is one lost sale right there. Not that Ubisoft care I would imagine
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It's like they're deliberately trying to make things suck as much as they can.

Just get out of PC gaming and be done with it, Ubisoft. We get the message. You don't want to be bothered. The blatant self sabotage speaks for itself. Skip the last few steps of pretense and just finish it.
 
This is the reason I don't want to buy Silent Hunter 5 even though I like sub sims and was looking forward to exploring the interior of the sub in first person as promised. The way it is, I don't actually own anything. If I can't play the game offline or feel that the game is part of my computer and I am at the whim of a faraway server which may go down at any time or I may have connection problems to, that's simply awful.

If you are going to make games like that - then it's basically like a rental movie streaed to you computer. Charge me a rental fee then, and not a full game fee.
 
Spare-Flair said:
This is the reason I don't want to buy Silent Hunter 5 even though I like sub sims and was looking forward to exploring the interior of the sub in first person as promised. The way it is, I don't actually own anything. If I can't play the game offline or feel that the game is part of my computer and I am at the whim of a faraway server which may go down at any time or I may have connection problems to, that's simply awful.
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Exactly. It's like, why even bother?

If you are going to make games like that - then it's basically like a rental movie streaed to you computer. Charge me a rental fee then, and not a full game fee.
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I'll never go for it in any event.
 
Spare-Flair said:
Another case of scenesters jumping the gun for cred and making nuked releases? Reports are that the missions (or at least some kind of critical content) actually downloads from the Ubisoft servers as you play the game.
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Sounds like some people are having that issue, where others are able to play through the missions just fine. Could just be that people just don't follow instructions. I'm not about to go download it and find out, but the release hasn't gained nuked status yet so...we'll see.
 
Spewn said:
Sounds like some people are having that issue, where others are able to play through the missions just fine. Could just be that people just don't follow instructions. I'm not about to go download it and find out, but the release hasn't gained nuked status yet so...we'll see.
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What instructions? You play the game and if your Internet farts you have a problem that there's nothing you can do about on your end.
 
Q-BZ said:
What instructions? You play the game and if your Internet farts you have a problem that there's nothing you can do about on your end.
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Instructions for applying the cracks and running a non-legitimate copy. The retail copy isn't about to show up as nuked on a scene release list ;)

Edit: Sorry, my original post there was talking about people saying the cracked version of SH5 doesn't work.
 
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