Speaking to PC Gamer in response to the recent news that the Windows PC version of Driver: San Francisco would feature an "always on" DRM scheme, Ubisoft said that its solution have proven to be very successful for the company.
An unnamed Ubisoft representative admitted to PC Gamer that it has seen "a clear reduction in piracy of our titles which required a persistent online connection, and from that point of view the requirement is a success."
Driver: San Francisco is out on August 30 in the US, and September 2 in Europe.
As we mentioned earlier today Driver San Francisco is just one of many PC games released by Ubisoft with "always on" DRM, and while the company is deciding on a "case-by-case" basis which titles will carry this type of DRM scheme, it is still disconcerting to gamers who have had to suffer under the yoke of that system.
Comments
Re: Ubisoft Says its DRM Strategy is a 'Success'
I actually emailed Ubi in 2010 and just now in 2011 to address the DRM issue. I got the same response both time practically word for word. It states how it doesn't hurt legit gamers etc. I replied back basically saying either you guys are truly naive on how ineffective your DRM is or you really don't value your customers. I stated that they obviously don't give a damn about their customers so why should we give a damn about helping support your company in making a profit.
Re: Ubisoft Says its DRM Strategy is a 'Success'
wonder if they used numbers or percentage since percentage would probably show no change
Re: Ubisoft Says its DRM Strategy is a 'Success'
You know what else reduces piracy? Bad games. I bet you could reduce your piracy to almost 0 people if you make a bad enough game!
Fact is I think they may be reducing piracy, but I'm fairly sure it is also causing a loss in sales in the long run, if only because people will remember a bad time dealing with it, and not want to have to go through with that again.
Re: Ubisoft Says its DRM Strategy is a 'Success'
If that was true, then "Big Rigs - Over the Road Racing" would have never been downloaded by anyone.
Re: Ubisoft Says its DRM Strategy is a 'Success'
I think everyone's being a bit unfair, sure those questions posed in the comments are unanswered, but the statement they made was completely honest.
"a clear reduction in piracy of our titles which required a persistent online connection, and from that point of view the requirement is a success."
They're not saying it resulted in more sales, or that any of their customers liked it, or if it interfered with gameplay. They're being very specific with a proper if-and-then conclusion.
IF this system is intended to reduce the amount of pirated games AND the implementation of this system shows evidence of reducing piracy THEN the system is successfully preventing piracy.
The only weakness in this statement is that unless I see the data they collected, the reduction of piracy may only be correlated, and could be a result of several other factors (those games being less popular, etc.).
-Austin from Oregon
Feel free to check out my blog.
Re: Ubisoft Says its DRM Strategy is a 'Success'
They see a reduction in piracy for a good reason. Pirates don't connect to their authentication servers. It's delusional thinking. End of story.
-Greevar
"Paste superficially profound, but utterly meaningless quotation here."
Re: Ubisoft Says its DRM Strategy is a 'Success'
For what it's worth, according to the Escapist, The Pirate Bay lists Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, minus DRM, as one of its most popular PC game downloads.
Andrew Eisen
Re: Ubisoft Says its DRM Strategy is a 'Success'
I see a mountain and I tell others I climbed it, so I must have climbed it!
Copyright infringement is nothing more than civil disobedience to a bad set of laws. Let's renegotiate them.
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http://zippydsm.deviantart.com/
Re: Ubisoft Says its DRM Strategy is a 'Success'
Well, it's such a success that I've entirely avoided their PC releases lately. Go Ubisoft!
Re: Ubisoft Says its DRM Strategy is a 'Success'
My question is how exactly they monitor piracy. And why it hasn't occurred to them that the hostility they're engendering in the community has greater potential to harm them than any amount of criminals.
Re: Ubisoft Says its DRM Strategy is a 'Success'
New DRM - always online. If they are online they can't be pirates. Clearly this means that our games have no pirates now because all the games we track have to be legit. I call bullshit on their "clear reduction".
Re: Ubisoft Says its DRM Strategy is a 'Success'
So, here's the question that they aren't going to answer: did their DRM result in a clear increase in sales?