Ubisoft is Watching!
George Orwell’s Classic novel 1984 may be a few decades out of date – but that is in name only. When news of the draconic digital rights management (DRM) scheme crossed our news feed this morning, the first thing that popped into our minds is “resistance is futile.” Now it may be that we have been playing way too much Star Trek Online lately (can there be too much of such a good thing really?) but I certainly feel as if Ubisoft is asking to assimilate our computers. Here is an excerpt from an Arstechnica article on the issue:
“Ubisoft has long had some controversial ideas about how DRM should be used, but when PC Gamer was given a review copy of Assassin’s Creed 2 on the PC it seemed as if the reality was going to be much worse than what opponents to DRM had feared: the game requires an always-on ‘Net connection and constant communication with the home server. If your connection is dropped, the game kicks you out, and you lose any progress you had made since your last save.”
You can read the entire article here.
It was not that long ago that Electronic Arts (EA) insisted on shipping some of its games along with the Securom DRM meant to etch itself indelibly onto our hard drives like some digital version of the 10 commandments screaming “You shall not pirate video games.” But at least then the game was still portable.
Now Ubisoft is shipping a game with digital rights management that should come with its own prison guard and a coupon for a mandatory prison tattoo that says “I am a thief” Does something of this nature prevent piracy of video games? Will it boost profits? Take a look at what Electronic Arts did with Spore…in the end it turned it into one of the most pirated video games of all time. It was only then that EA said, “Well maybe we will be magnanimous and rescind our edict.”
Color us foolish, but one of the major points of a single player game, at least for us, is to be able to play the game where there is no internet connection. But not anymore – if Ubisoft has their way we will be able to kiss that crap goodbye.
Message to Ubisoft – usually we get kissed first
See you online, just never with another Ubisoft game.
The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team
[...] will, of course, know that we first wrote about Ubisoft’s DRM in an article entitled “Kiss us first”. What really lit a fire under our collective butts, however, was the affect this had on active [...]