UbiSoft require that you must have a net connection to play games...
- Thread starter thatbloke
- Start date
thatbloke
Junior Administrator
Yeah I can see their point. I've also installed cracks on many legitimate games and used cd emulation software just so I dont have to have the disk in every time I want to play it just to make it functional without the hassle factor. Not sure where that fits into the whole picture of usability. I've recently got (it was purchased for me as a birthday pressie) Mass Effect 2 and I've simply not played it yet as it annoys me to have to have the disc in the drive in order to do that ... time to find a nocd hack methinks.
Oh my. Going back to the original article for a moment, surely there's a better implementation of this that doesn't cause a connection failure to lose progress in a game? I bin games that cause me to lose progress (yes, Empire:TW I'm thinking of you). Fine, if it's a game mechanic I can sort of see it, but an arbitrary reset caused by an out-of-game problem? Inexcusable.
That said, looking at the list of games, the only ones I'm interested in I'd get for the X360 anyhow. Nothing else in their catalogue that would have me buying it on the PC. Hell, nothing else I've noticed in their upcoming PC catalogue that would even make me wonder about an illicit copy.
That said, looking at the list of games, the only ones I'm interested in I'd get for the X360 anyhow. Nothing else in their catalogue that would have me buying it on the PC. Hell, nothing else I've noticed in their upcoming PC catalogue that would even make me wonder about an illicit copy.
PsiSoldier
Well-Known Member
Lucky for you Ronin, I'm a Settlers fan 
Ki!ler-Mk1
Active Member
Steam cloud and torchlight
Solution
I dont know if it was a fix or as intended, but when i did play offline it did ask me if i wanted to restore the steam cloud save. Just goes to show, backing up any files you create in a game is never a bad idea, i know several people who have had a WoW crash delete their interface configurations.
I guess you have not played torchlight, i enjoyed this game for the brief 10 hours i have played so far, and while i did not personally encounter this problem(and when i did, because of prior finding about it i overuled it) steamcloud is tied to torchlight in such a way that when you save the game it is exported to an external steam server, and if you play torchlight in offline mode for say 10 hours, and then launch it while its online, if you dont have the relevent 1/0 in the config file it may overwrite your SP save with the steamcloud backup without even asking you.
Solution
I dont know if it was a fix or as intended, but when i did play offline it did ask me if i wanted to restore the steam cloud save. Just goes to show, backing up any files you create in a game is never a bad idea, i know several people who have had a WoW crash delete their interface configurations.
SavyGamer are trying to organise an ill-conceived "get back at Ubisoft" plan. Broadly revolves around getting people to buy the game from the same retailer, hold onto it for a few weeks unopened, then send it back for a full refund while saying the reason it has been returned is because of the DRM.
Sounds doomed to fail to me, for reasons people in the comments there point out (i.e. if people can't show the willpower to boycott they sure as hell aren't going to show the willpower to not open a game they've actually got).
Did give me an alternative thought, though.
The market is fairly rich with games. Instead of buying one with DRM, buy one without. Hell, do it in a concerted fashion, if you care (i.e. all buying the same game). Then revenue directly supports a game that has mechanisms we appreciate and puts it ahead in the charts. That should allow it to attract more attention and thus, hopefully, encourage the correct (i.e. no DRM) behaviour on part of that publisher.
This differs from a boycott in that money is still spent, there's no game-abstinence, but it succeeds at a level of positive reinforcement.
That said, sounds too complicated for the 'net to want to get hold of. :/
I'll just stick with my silent boycott.
Sounds doomed to fail to me, for reasons people in the comments there point out (i.e. if people can't show the willpower to boycott they sure as hell aren't going to show the willpower to not open a game they've actually got).
Did give me an alternative thought, though.
The market is fairly rich with games. Instead of buying one with DRM, buy one without. Hell, do it in a concerted fashion, if you care (i.e. all buying the same game). Then revenue directly supports a game that has mechanisms we appreciate and puts it ahead in the charts. That should allow it to attract more attention and thus, hopefully, encourage the correct (i.e. no DRM) behaviour on part of that publisher.
This differs from a boycott in that money is still spent, there's no game-abstinence, but it succeeds at a level of positive reinforcement.
That said, sounds too complicated for the 'net to want to get hold of. :/
I'll just stick with my silent boycott.
Ki!ler-Mk1
Active Member
That sounds like the christmas number 1 2009 Ronin.
Hmm, good point. Maybe that plan would have legs after all...
thatbloke
Junior Administrator
C&C4 can now be added to the list of PC games that are fubar - no LAN support, no dedi servers (though i dont see that as an issue for an RTS) and must have always on net connection.
I'm half tempted to just get a bloody xbox again...
I'm half tempted to just get a bloody xbox again...
Kasatka
Active Member
Lack of dedicated servers goes hand in hand with no LAN support to mean it won't get much play out of groups of gamers, and ultimately we are where the biggest sales are going to be.
Silly games developers. Nobody gives a damn about unlocking achievements and skins - if i can't play a game with my mates, i won't play it full stop.
Silly games developers. Nobody gives a damn about unlocking achievements and skins - if i can't play a game with my mates, i won't play it full stop.
I think you'll find that for the vast majority of games, the 'hardcore gamer' demographic actually accounts for a very small portion of sales. That may apply less to something like C&C, but it's still something to consider...
thatbloke
Junior Administrator
unfortunately the hardcore gamers are becoming a victim of the success of gaming as a genre in the whole, as more people who would not always play games now do, gameing is more accessible to more people than ever before.
For some reason this means that developers/publishers think that things need to be dumbed down continuously and that everyone is a criminal just waiting to steal their stuff
Kasatka
Active Member
I didn't mean hardcore gamers, i just groups of mates who play games together.
10 years ago, if i liked a game i'd pass it on to a mate to install and play with once i was done with.
Nowadays, due to various cd keys, drm and other bullshit, if i like a game and want to play it with mates, we all have to buy it, which means more sales from myself and friends than the games industry would have gotten from us 10 years ago.
10 years ago, if i liked a game i'd pass it on to a mate to install and play with once i was done with.
Nowadays, due to various cd keys, drm and other bullshit, if i like a game and want to play it with mates, we all have to buy it, which means more sales from myself and friends than the games industry would have gotten from us 10 years ago.
Whilst I understand where you're coming from on this, the problems are affecting games that really have very little to do with games we're actually interested in play, aren't they? I mean, do you really want to play C&C4? Personally, it wouldn't have made it onto my "I have spare cash and I want to buy a game" list.
So, in a big way, I don't care whether games that aren't interesting have all the features I'd want removed. After all, so what? And I'm feeling very much that way out about Ubisoft's upcoming catalogue. In a way, they've done us a favour by saying "hey, we're doing stuff way differently than before", which allows us to decide that they're no longer interesting to us and off we go to look at something else.
Assassin's Creed is a console game through and through. That it can be bought and played on the PC is entirely by the by. One should expect a console port. Splinter Cell the same. I admit that "point and shoot" mechanics grew up on the PC, but the console now has a fairly decent approach to this and the backwards port of this "dumbing down" (as you put it) makes PC gamers feel like they've had their thumbs drugged or something.
Instead, we should be looking for the games that are focused for the PC, not worrying about games that are made for consoles having undue restrictions on the PC. Console games for consoles, please, and vice versa.
E
elDiablo
Guest
The one thing this DRM makes me fear is that less people will buy their PC games, which will make some big-wig at the top of the company give a presentation about how game sales are declining on the PC (or how piracy is killing it, more probably), and that the company should therefore only make consoles games ever again.
thatbloke
Junior Administrator
that is precisely what I am trying to get at... they are shutting out parts of their market here, (people without a constant/stable net connection) and to be quite frank this will just be seen by the top execs as a "decline in sales for PC" - they will then say oh, PC sales declined by this % in the past year, so we arent releasing a PC version of our game because we wont make enough money...
Then other devs start jumping on the bandwagon and then it'll all be about closed platforms and the PC will be relegated to playing flash games on facebook...
Thing is, if they're already serving us console ports as if they were PC games, are we really losing out?
There are developers who write for the PC and ignore consoles. There equally are developers who choose platforms based on the game they're planning to produce.
Sure, I don't see Infinity Ward backing off on their work on consoles; instead, I anticipate they'll focus on that increasingly. But, then again, doesn't MW2 show plenty of signs of being defined by consoles as much as PCs?
Similarly, there are genres that don't work with a console controller. RTS, for example, just doesn't translate to console by replacing a mouse pointer with a controller pointer; the mouse is clearly the superior controller in this case. Now there's nothing in particular to stop a console adopting a mouse as a controller, but in the absence of that I imagine PCs will remain a dominant platform for developers with an interest in RTS, for example Relic.
All I see are development shops showing their colours. Infinity Ward are pretty much declaring that they're moving to consoles; not officially, of course, (or not that I've seen) but through their design choices.
Where one shop moves out, a space is made for another to move in. Will there be a temporary reduction of service for hardcore PC games? Perhaps. But if there's money, there'll be developers who want that money, and hardcore PC gamers aren't about to die out overnight.
If they are that short-sighted with regards to business decisions, their company is likely to fall flat on its face in the near future anyway