Random Opinions
Ubisoft got what it deserved – the day after Assassin’s Creed 2 went live their DRM servers went down and no paying customer was able to actually play the game. I’m really hoping the fallout from this is so huge that they realize the whole idea was so incredibly stupid to begin with that it never should have seen the light of day.
Hoping…
(No, I haven’t bought it myself)
I’ve been rather upset by the DRM in Assassin’s Creed 2. Essentially it’s a single player game but Ubisoft in their effort to become even more draconian with DRM has decided that the game will constantly check with their online servers so if your internet drops out while playing then the game stops.
That’s right - a single player game that requires a full-time internet connection ONLY for making sure you’re not a criminal. That’s what Ubi thinks of its customers and frankly this really has the capability of hurting them. The pirates (and make no mistake, the game will be “cracked” and available for download within a day of release) have a significantly better product that can be enjoyed by anyone at anytime, so the only real result I see for Ubi is much more piracy.
I have no intention of purchasing the game with that sort of restriction. My internet is not too bad, but I don’t want to be held to something out of my control while enjoying a single player experience. I can imagine how this would work for someone on satellite internet, dial-up or worse (like in the armed forces). It’s fundamentally a really dumb decision.
In any case, I find the whole thing extremely deceptive and have lodged an inquiry to their behaviour with the ACCC:
I am concerned by the evolution of the Digital Rights Management (DRM) used in the games shortly to be released by Ubisoft, in particular “Assassin’s Creed 2″ and “Splinter Cell Conviction” but reportedly included in all future titles. Details can be found at Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/02/ubisoft-details-drm.ars) but to summarize: Despite being a single player experience the game will not permit the user to play without being continuously connected to Ubisoft’s license verification servers. Disconnection or interruption of that connection results in the game terminating and Ubisoft maintains the ability to remotely terminate the end user’s ability to use their licensed product without significant recourse from the consumer.
Games are marketed as boxed products, which give the impression and feel of a standalone product and while it may be recognized that many current games require some form of “activation”, these do not mandate a continuous connection and there is no consumer expectation that this should exist. Without significant warning labels it is likely that a large section of the consumer market (which either do not have internet, do not have continuous connections or have interrupted connections) will be impacted by this decision and potentially find themselves with a product that may not work at all in the way expected. Similarly, with internet bandwidth being metered in Australia users may find themselves liable for additional costs.
This is a damned shame because I’ve been waiting a while for AC2, but now Ubisoft has gone way over the top on their DRM schemes. Their new idea of an “acceptable” solution is to require you to be online the entire game and if you go offline then it boots you from the game (losing your play from the last checkpoint). Frankly that’s just stupid and broken compared to the console versions.
Ubi’s response to the concerns raised by gamers is typically dismissive and frankly reeks of an expectation that people should throw money at them regardless of the crap they shovel out. I’m not playing that way - it’s my money and I can choose to not spend it.
Yes, piracy is a significant concern and this dumb move just made the pirate’s product a lot more attractive. Good job at alienating your customers, Ubi.
All Australians with an interest in game classification should take the 15 minutes to fill out a submission to the government on the addition of an R18+ category for games.
http://www.ag.gov.au/gamesclassification
Personally, I think it’s crazy we continually have issues with the top games coming out because they are unsuitable for minors. The game industry has changed in the last 30 years and now adults are being prevented access to some of the best (and worst) games simply because they are unsuitable for a child. This is ridiculous. I’m not in favor of removing classification but surely adults are able to make their own decisions instead of being treated as children.
Whatever side you are on, make a submission.
I was pretty excited to try out the DLNA on my new Samsung TV, but ended up disappointed to find that it only seemed to work with the Samsung applet on my PC, which severely lacked some fairly critical features (like transcoding). Today, I was happy to find the magic hacks for TVersity which let it work like a charm with the somewhat esoteric nature of the DLNA support built in:
According to this thread, edit the profiles.xml in the TVersity folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\TVersity\Media Server on my machine) and add the following before the last </profileList> entry:
Worked like a charm for me – now I can get rid of all the other DLNA apps on my PC and just use this single server.