Ubisoft PC DRM goes crazy mental

[Acidburns]

I was kind of surprised to not see any posts here about Ubisoft's crazy PC DRM plans. At the end of January last month Ubisoft announced that they were planning a new DRM scheme to be incorporated into all PC games from Settlers 7 onwards. Details were a little unclear at the time but seemingly they were going to require you to be online at all times in order to start, play and save your game. Save games would be uploaded onto your online Ubisoft account and may or may not be saved locally. It seemed that it was going to vary from moderate to completely impractical depending on the details. Either way I thought it was going to be the usual "declare over the top DRM, then back down as if we were actually listening" but maybe not this time.

Well now PC Gamer have received their copies of Assassin Creed 2 and Settlers VII for review and they have found that if your internet connection to their server is interrupted for any reason you'll be punted back to the main menu.

When we heard of Ubisoft's plan to require an internet connection for all their future PC games, we hoped they'd abort it or scale it back in the face of the outrage and astonishment it caused. They haven't, and it's here. Details are below.

We've just received Assassin's Creed 2 and Settlers VII for review, and verified with Ubisoft that the DRM is the same as the boxed product. If you get disconnected while playing, you're booted out of the game. All your progress since the last checkpoint or savegame is lost, and your only options are to quit to Windows or wait until you're reconnected.

The game first starts the Ubisoft Game Launcher, which checks for updates. If you try to launch the game when you're not online, you hit an error message right away. So I tried a different test: start the game while online, play a little, then unplug my net cable. This is the same as what happens if your net connection drops momentarily, your router is rebooted, or the game loses its connection to Ubisoft's 'Master servers'. The game stopped, and I was dumped back to a menu screen - all my progress since it last autosaved was lost.

Ubi have asked that we not show screenshots of Assassin's Creed 2 on PC, so here's my best MS Paint illustration of what you'll see. [Image]

Even if everyone in the world had perfect internet connections that never dropped out, this would still mean that any time Ubisoft's 'Master servers' are down for any reason, everyone playing a current Ubisoft game is kicked out of it and loses their progress. Even massively multiplayer games aren't so draconian about the internet: you can't play when the server's down, but at least you don't lose anything for getting disconnected.

The only benefit we're being offered is the ability to store our savegames online. Personally, I'm in the rare position of getting to play PC games at work, and even for me this is a fringe benefit. How many normal gamers have two separate gaming machines on which they play the same single-player games? And how many of those don't know about DropBox, Live Mesh or any of the dozens of free services that can already sync your savegames perfectly well?

We've all seen again and again that you can't stop the piracy scene from cracking your game and distributing it, free of DRM. But you can stop the people who love your games from downloading it, and you do that by making the retail experience better - not worse.

See also Rock Paper Shotgun's Articles here & here

So after cracking it (and it will be I'm sure) the pirates will be offering a superior version to the purchasable one. What kind of fucking madness is this? There must be some brainless people out there to decide to inconvenience the people who are actually purchasing the game to this level. What about all the people who might want to play a game on a train without 3G access, or folk who are in the military, merchant navy, work on oil rigs or whatever?

This seems like complete suicide for Ubisoft's PC market. Who is going to be desperate enough to buy this bullshit? I was really looking forward to Silent Hunter 5 too.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

They seem to be going the route of Scorched Earth Tactics. To actually -crack- this would likely take a fair amount of modding, and I'd imagine every official patch would basically roll that back...

Not saying the various groups aren't up to it... Hell, they're probably anxious to take a swing at it.


But, this is ridiculous on a whole new level. But, they're just going to keep pushing until they find the point at which people won't just bend over and take it up the ass another inch...

[Stark]

DRM will be patched out in 5.... 4.... 3....

[Starglider]

This is actually the only anti-piracy technique that can't be 'cracked' in the conventional sense. I don't know if Ubisoft are doing it this way, probably not on these first titles, but the novel possibility offered by forcing a continuous connection is to leave critical code out of the client-side game and do some of the state processing on the server (the less realtime critical stuff, such as mission scripting and AI). Rather like a single-player MMORPG in fact. 'Cracking' this technique requires independent replication of the missing code, which takes months at best and is beyond the means of most cracking groups (it would be roughly equivalent to making a MMORPG server emulator, albeit a simple one).

Not a particularly pleasant future, but with everyone having always-on broadband and relying on web services so heavily, I suspect the general public will accept it sooner or later.

[Stark]

I dunno, if they're stupid and don't encrypt you can capture the traffic trivially. As you say, the only real way to make DRM work is to require online verification, but honestly, this will last a week in the market and be patched out. If the game isn't multi it'll be even more useless; you need a game that peopel WANT to be online for (as with MMOs etc).

[Gramzamber]

Compulsory online activation has always rubbed me the wrong way, then there's games like Dragon Age that prevent you from accessing DLC content (and thus saved games with that DLC content) unless it's verified through the internet (through a convoluted plugin that works only when it damn well wants to I might add).
Now this? What next? A monthly fee for single-player games?

[adam_grif]

This is why I love Stardock games. No DRM at all. DRM isn't a pain unless it gets as obtrusive as this, mind you.

[Stark]

Activation and verification are different; online activation is shit and often easy to get around. You need a game that requires (and encourages) players to be online all/most of the time. This is why people like steam and similar.

And Stardock games have DRM; it's just unobtrusive and worthless. They developed their whole 'game object obfuscation' system, after all.

[Dragon Angel]

-sigh-

One would think that, after the entire fiasco with EA a year ago (most notably with Spore), gaming companies would have learned NOT to do this. I wonder if enough momentum could be generated for another mass Internet boycott? Not as if that will do much good, but it would be another something to laugh at.

I doubt it will be complete suicide for Ubisoft, but hard lessons must be learned... Wasn't Ubisoft supposed to be one of the least batshit crazy of the game publishers?

[Starglider]

I dunno, if they're stupid and don't encrypt you can capture the traffic trivially.

Encryption is always breakable unless exotic hardware is involved, because the data must be unencrypted to actually run, and memory protection can always be breached (the decryption keys are also necessarily in memory, waiting to be found). However in the case where game logic is exported to the server, breaking the encryption won't do you any good, because the traffic is unique to each playthrough of the game. You'd have to rewrite all of the server-side components from scratch, which takes a lot of time and effort. Frankly I can't see crackers doing it for single player content at all, who wants to spend months painstakingly replicating and debugging hundreds of AI and mission scripts.

As you say, the only real way to make DRM work is to require online verification, but honestly, this will last a week in the market and be patched out.

From what I've read the first batch of releases do not put game logic on the server, so yes they will be cracked. However the 'uncrackable' technique mentioned above is the next logical step if consumers show willingness to accept the 'must be connected to Internet' requirement.

[Alyeska]

Compulsory online activation has always rubbed me the wrong way, then there's games like Dragon Age that prevent you from accessing DLC content (and thus saved games with that DLC content) unless it's verified through the internet (through a convoluted plugin that works only when it damn well wants to I might add).
Now this? What next? A monthly fee for single-player games?

Not exactly. The DLC has to be verified only once. After that it works without an internet connection.

[Alyeska]

Anyway, this is also being employed on the new Silent Hunter 5. However, this is where things get interesting. SH5 is one of those games that has a more insulated community. They have uniformly responded to the new DRM news with outright contempt. The sub-sim community was already rather small. Its a niche market. They can make money, sure. But the profit margins have got to be rather small. This new DRM is going to sink Silent Hunter 5.

[MKSheppard]

I know that I'm definitely not picking up Silent Hunter 5 now. There had been some early warning signs like -- The game only goes up to 1943, and the end can't be modded to extend it to 1945, and you only get one submarine, the Type VII; that relegated SH5 into a "pick up six months after release" rather than launch day for me. But now with this super intrusive DRM? Screw it.

My internet connection has been quite spotty the last two weeks, I assume with all the snow causing line outages, not all of comcasts network is IIRC underground. So I would keep getting that "MAIN MENU" screen A LOT.

[Alyeska]

Hitler reacts to the new UbiSoft DRM in Silent Hunter 5

[Netko]

So the worries that the non-DRMed Prince of Persia game was a trojan horse to justify extreme DRM by it being pirated to hell and back (OMG 90%+ piracy rate! All those lost customers!) are true. Great.

I'm not buying anything with this extreme level of DRM. CD check was annoying enough back in the day, but this?

Not to mention that do to running my DSL line at the top speed the line will allow physically, I get drop outs every few hours. The line comes back up in literally seconds, but that would be enough under this scheme to lose progress. No thanks.

[Edi]

Well, no more Ubisoft games for me then. I would have bought Heroes 6, but with this shit, forget it.

[Skgoa]

I have one of the best internet connections in the country: 100Mbit/s LAN to the university data center and from there on ATM to the national backbone in Frankfurt. And yet still I sometimes simply can not connect/have a bad connection to a given server. That might be due to maintenance, a power outage etc. ... in our network or ANYWHERE else along the way, including the very server I am trying to connect to. I very much want to be able to play the game I BOUGHT anywhere and anytime I choose to. What is it about software developers that makes them think they stand to gain from making it HARDER for potentional customers to buy their product and thus give them money? ("professional" software is the worst offender, you often have to jump through all kinds of hoops to even get a free trial.) Do they not realize that the very business model of rapidshare, private torrent trackers etc. is to earn money by providing people with a vastly easier (and less insanely overpriced) way to get their product?

[Starglider]

Do they not realize that the very business model of rapidshare, private torrent trackers etc. is to earn money by providing people with a vastly easier (and less insanely overpriced) way to get their product?

If consumer software was 'insanely overpriced', software companies would be making massive profits on it. As a rule, they are not; in games in particular, most developers barely break even and have a very short half-life because they never manage to bank enough money to cover the unsuccessful releases. If prices were lower people might buy more software, but to help the industry as a whole a price reduction would have to cause people to spend a higher fraction of their income on software. The lions share of profits in IT come from selling to companies, not consumers, because they are much less likely to pirate and more tolerant of higher prices.

[Thanas]

I only play games when I do not have anything else to do or free time - and usually this is during train rides, waiting hours or somewhere else. Point is, I usually play when I do not have an internet connection. With that in mind, Ubisoft can forget about seeing any part of my money.

EDIT: Das DRM.

EDIT2: Also, this is ubisoft. These are the same guys whose servers it takes over 10 minutes to connect to with SHIII/IV multiplayer. So what makes them think they will get servers running constantly given their far less than stellar track record so far with it?

[Andrew_Fireborn]

If I were giving them credit: I'd say it's a set-up for a self fulfilling prophesy to finally stop releasing PC games.

Though, in reality, it's probably just some empty suit at the top heard it, liked it, and decided to enforce it without actually understanding the drawbacks and likelihood of it to bite them in the ass. [See: Sony Rootkits.]


Also, I'm going to find is hilarious when these servers get DDOS'd to hell and back.

[Oskuro]

And not to mention the issue of what will happen once Ubisoft decides to shut down servers for older games.

But why say again what has already been eloquently explained?

From Shamus Young's Experienced Points articles on The Escapist:

• On DRM:
  • Activation Bomb
    The Day-One DLC Trap
    I have seen The Future, and it is annoying.
    Building a better kind of DRM
    Online activation is a ripp-off
    The Impossible DRM
• On the socioeconomics of gaming:
  • Now that you're done firing everyone...
    10 ways to fight piracy
    The Price of Fun

[Executor32]

Any word on whether this will affect the Steam version? My connection to my wireless network tends to randomly drop out for a few seconds at a time, so if it has the same DRM as the box version I'll pass on buying it until either someone cracks it or they patch it out.

[Acidburns]

Any word on whether this will affect the Steam version? My connection to my wireless network tends to randomly drop out for a few seconds at a time, so if it has the same DRM as the box version I'll pass on buying it until either someone cracks it or they patch it out.

My impression is that Ubisoft will not allow Steam users to slip past their DRM. From what I hear this DRM is part of their own Steam-like platform. Other games have shipped with their own DRM on top of Steam, so there is precedent for it.

[Teleros]

Hmm, happily it doesn't seem like any of their upcoming games interest me much. Guess I'll be sticking to Relic, Blizzard & EA.

[Acidburns]

Confimation for Executor32:

PC Gamer: Which PC games will require an always on internet connection?

Ubisoft spokesperson: All announced Ubisoft PC games will include the online services, whether sold online, or from brick and mortar stores. That includes Splinter Cell, Silent Hunter 5, Assassin's Creed 2, Prince of Persia and the newly announced Ghost Recon. "It's hard for us to say, yes, from now until the day that we all die all of our games are going to include this," says their spokesperson, "but most will."

You can get the rest of their interview here. In short, they confirm that it is as bad as everyone believes it to be, and they Ubisoft do not care. Some of the answers are pretty hilarious.