If it quacks like a duck…

It’s not always a duck.

And at least a few of the big dogs on the porch agree – starting with the 1 ton gorilla on the block, Blizzard.  Frank Pearce, the executive producer for World of Warcraft and co-founder of Blizzard, confirmed that Starcraft 2, which is due to ship this July, will not require the same “always on” digital rights management (DRM) system that Ubisoft uses. The game will require a single online activation using the Battlenet servers and that, apparently, will be it. Hopefully, the industry will take not just a note, but the whole symphony from Mr. Pearce’s handbook:

“We need our development teams focused on content and cool features, not anti-piracy technology.” – Frank Pearce, executive producer, World of Warcraft

The Blizzard exec said, “If we’ve done our job right and implemented Battle.net in a great way people will want to be connected while they’re playing the single player campaign…”

Even better news is that there are indeed some development studios that feel the same way – Avalanche Studios (Just Cause, Just Cause 2, The Hunter) being one of them. Cristofer Sundberg, Avalanche Studios co-founder said, “Games have become a luxurious form of entertainment and piracy has scared the market to start implementing ridiculous DRM solutions that only limits the consumers that actually PAY for their games, not stopping the pirates.”

While we here at No Prisoners, No Mercy hope that the rest of the industry follows lead of Messers Pearce and Sundberg, we aren’t going to bet the proverbial farm on it.  Money talks, or so they say, and until the bean counters, be they executives, investors, or both, SEE that DRM bites that hand feeds it, the path blazed by backward thinking companies like Ubisoft is likely to look more appealing.

In the end, however, the song made famous by The Mills Brothers is likely to ring true: You always hurt the one you love.  While the “one” game publishers should love in this case are the consumers, what will change their mind is what they do love most of the time and that is the bottom line.

Expecting “always on” DRM to thwart game piracy is like handing a chef a sledgehammer, daring him to break some eggs with it, and hope that hammer gives out first.  Avalanche exec Sundberg called DRM the “ultimate Rubik cube” for game pirates.  Blizzard Boss Pearce called it a “losing battle”.  Yet still publishers insist on DRM schemes that hurt the consumer more than the target at which they are aimed.  The two likely situations seem to be that game publishers think gamers are apathetic enough to continue to put up with the treatment, or investors are stupid enough to believe that such extreme measures work.  While the former of the two is more likely, we really hope we are wrong, and you will see the pig for what it is – vote with your wallet.

The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team

Just as you were getting over the hurt – just when you said to yourself, “O.K. Ubisoft used and abused me, but hey, she’s French so you have got to expect that right?”… 

It happens all again.

Here is an excerpt from an article over at Kokatu.com.

In a post over on Command & Conquer 4′s forums, EA community manager Apoc writes “First thing to be clear about, Command & Conquer 4 has NO DRM. Zip, zero, zilch, none.”

Sounds great! Until, a few lines later, he says this. “To play Command & Conquer 4, the computer needs to be connected to the internet.”

Uh. Apoc. If the publisher is imposing limitations on when and how a game can be played, it’s DRM. While it’s unclear how often you’d need to be connected – whether it’s just at startup, or whether it requires a constant connection – what is clear is you’d still need a connection at some stage. So laptop gaming is out. As is playing when your internet connection is down. – Plunkett, Kokatu.com

Maybe all this only means you need to be connected at startup, but it appears not. Most of the sources we see are saying otherwise.

In fact we discussed this very issue on show 56 (nearly through the lengthy editing process).   Maybe we should have expected the gaming equivalent of Robin Williams early years out of Ubisoft (always need to be on).  Maybe we should have said to ourselves what does a French company care about American soldiers in isolated areas of the world who can’t play some silly game, let alone American gamers. After all, those soldiers aren’t protecting French freedom right? Yes friends just as I was getting used to the pain, it seems that I am going to have to go out and buy what grandma used to call “an inflatable donut”.  You must have seen them – those inflatable round rings that you can sit in because yet another gaming company decided to shove one up our collective posteriors? Perhaps that’s not what they are used for but personally we expect a run on them down at the local Wallmart now that Command and Conquer 4 is on the shelves.  Originally my thought was that EA was going to ship a free inflatable donut with each copy of the game.

Now that we think about it however…

They did so well with Spore that the best course of action would be to simply ship the game with the code to crack the “always connected” DRM, after all, it’s probably already out there.

The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team

Brand recognition of a different sort...

Many of our regular readers and listeners may have noticed that we tend to have  very pro-developer viewpoints lately…especially where there is some doubt in any given issue.  After all, as grandmother used to say, you get more industry professionals with honey than you do with vinegar (or was that flies…in any case the expression works either way). But this is one time where there is no doubt that the developer and publisher are solidly in the wrong.

*rummages around in her old duffle bag, gets out her bdu’s, and puts on her uniform.*

My strongest feelings on the matter, as you know from prior posts, come from reading articles over at Ars Technica that served as a slap in the face and a strong reminder not to forget my roots, nor the people serving over seas in places like Afghanistan.   Ars Technica has another article out today that caught my eye when the news feeds crossed my desk concerning the recent “outage” of Ubisoft servers – here is an excerpt (you can read the entire article here):

Ars Technica contacted Ubisoft to ask about the issue, and we were told that the issue wasn’t simply a server malfunction. “This ‘failure’ was due to a massive DDoS attack on our servers,” an Ubisoft spokesperson told Ars. “Our servers didn’t go down but 5 percent of the overall people attempting to connect received denial of service errors. This is, of course, unacceptable and our teams are working around the clock to ensure it doesn’t happen again.” – Ben Kuchera, Arstechnica.com

Ubisoft, per the same article, goes on to say the following:

“We worry about our customers and apologize to anyone who couldn’t play ACII or SH5yesterday. All in all, we hope people understand all this is done to preserve the future of PC gaming.” – Ubisoft

Now it may have rained here yesterday, but no one on staff on the No Prisoners, No Mercy team came down with it.  This isn’t about perserving anything but a draconian attempt at preserving the line on the quarterly profit and loss statement that reads “Net profit before depreciation.”  If anything it is a surefire way to drive off customers and drive a nail into what some in the main stream media already see as a nail in the P.C. Gaming coffin.   If Ubisoft were worried about their customers they wouldn’t be using the bizarre form of “Brand Recognition” that refers to an attempt to shove a hot brand up the nether regions of the gaming public.

It is, of course, their game, their product, and they have a right to do whatever they want with it.  They have the right to tell us that we can’t play their games unless we first put it all in a large paper bag, bring it out on the front lawn, twirl it above our heads and scream like a chicken (one no-prize to the first person that can tell us what 1960′s television show that line is from).  Even if the execs at Ubisoft making the decision to have an “always need to be connected” DRM failed to learn the lesson that Spore taught Electronic Arts – perhaps then names like Asherons Call 2, Earth and Beyond, Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa, and lately There.com will ring a bell.   Now many of you will point out that those names are all mmos and this is supposed to be a single player game. 

What is important about all those names is this…

There are some companies in game development industry, with names like Cryptic and Icarus, that listen to thier customers, and do so intently.  But sadly there are still some companies that develop what I have come to think of as the “Activision 800 pound gorilla” attitude.  They feel they can do whatever they want, treat (or more appropriately mis-treat) their customers in whatever manner they chose and we will all just bend over and take it up the bum.  Hopefully the market will teach Ubisoft a lesson that you don’t treat customers like something that crawled out from under a rock and then say “But we care…no really.”

*update*  Those reading the article may ask themselves, “What would it take to make you happy?” Or perhaps “How about a solution other than removing the DRM altogether?”  Want to keep us happy?  The Ubisoft CEO should apologize to veterans and active duty military everywhere and offer a free copy of Silent Hunter 5 to any active duty service member in a hardship tour for a limited time – and furnish a special (but complete) “military copy” that does not require an active connection.  As a further suggestion, Ubisoft could perhaps make the military copy require a disk check with a limited number of installs, upgradeable by request of the active duty service member.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

Side Note:

Side Notes

We here at No Prisoners, No Mercy would like to thank Rubi Bayer, and Massively.com for the kindness of featuring show number 55 on thier web site.   We had a fantastic time recording the show and I must say that Glen Swan had us salivating at the thought of playing there upcoming mmo “The Secret World” by the end of the show.

Thanks again.

What about Ubisoft?

Ubisoft is busy telling their customer’s “Let’s all play death of Edward the II” (O.K. a bit of an obscure reference – just google “death of Edward the II king of England to find out how he died).  When news that Ubisofts draconic DRM had been cracked within 24 hours they were so swift with a denial that it set land speed records – the original Edge Online article is here:

Reports suggesting that Ubisoft’s controversial new DRM platform have already been cracked are wide of the mark, according to the publisher.

As part of Ubisoft’s new anti-piracy measures, consumers of its PC titles are required to connect to Ubi.com accounts to authenticate games online each time they play them, meaning they always need to be connected to the internet.

The new scheme didn’t go down too well with some sections of the PC community, and reports over the past 24 hours have suggested that pirated copies of Ubisoft games circumventing the new protection are doing the rounds on file sharing sites.

“You have probably seen rumors on the web that Assassin’s Creed II and Silent Hunter 5 have been cracked,” Ubisoft told us in a statement this morning.

“Please know that this rumor is false and while a pirated version may seem to be complete at start up, any gamer who downloads and plays a cracked version will find that their version is not complete.”

Submarine Warfare games go back before there was an internet to play an MMO on period.  I remember playing naval warfare games when “going online” meant dial up a bulletin board.  But whether or not the digital rights management for Silent Hunter 5 has already been cracked, or even will be is far from the point.  The point is that not only is Ubisoft not interested in listening to their consumers, they are so filled with hubris that they are telling you that your opinion doesn’t matter.   They believe they know the market place, and sadly they just may be correct.  As agent K says in Men in Black “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”

As much as I am enjoying reruns of the Seaquest television series on Netflix, as much as I might want to play Silent Hunter 5, I have no intention of letting Ubisoft play Edward the II with me – I am wearing my solid steel panties.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

(posted by the Webmaster for Julie Whitefeather)