Ubisoft's New PC DRM Really Requires Net Access, Ends Game If Disconnected

[Vampirrella]

Guess i wont be getting Ubi games then

 

[CountZero]

1. By allowing a game to be available in pirated form from day one, no DRM causes piracy. By giving people "on the fence" an option to get the game for free. Die-hard pirates won't buy it anyway but at least they will need to get a crack - hence a good DRM won't give them day one gaming. And people wanting to game and seeing no other option apart from legal (due to impatience, convenience or a sudden change of heart ) will cought the bucks for a legit copy. Add a huge buzz about the game and people will want to play this day 1 No crack available? Ohh well, might as well buy it.

2. If their internet goes out I'm sure they have other things they can do. Not to mention this should be very very rare. Unless you're a spoiled 5 year old that jumps and cries each time he doesn't get his toy or candy, this will be a non issue and the chance of it happening is slim at best for an even lower chance of reoccurring. If your local tower (for cell phones) has problems or you get a "No Service" message for a few minutes, do you scream bloody murder at your provider and swear to never use their services again?

3. Again, this seems to be a non-issue for people who have broadband. When was the last time you had an outage? And even then, how long was it? Surely those happen very very rarely. And Ubisoft will make sure their servers are up 100%e. If you have no power? You can't play anything else anyway. This doesn't install anything extra on your PC (like TAGES, SecuROM etc do). You just need to be online, that's it.

Simple CD checks or phone home each start won't stop anything and are borderline useless. A specially changed .exe is all that's required usually. So this doesn't delay pirated copies at all. You get that day 1 or even pre-release. Now those are useless.

So my take - hard to crack DRM + a lot of buzz = gained sales. People will want to play a game ASAP and no available pirated copy will force them into buying the game. Or not buy it at all - but those are die-hard pirates and nothing will change them (so they're not considered anyway).

EDIT (for AndroidVageta and mindcycle): My take is pirates are "gray" people for the most part. As in not totally rotten cheaters. If you inconvenience them enough (here: with a long wait for a working crack) and they want to play a particular game, they will buy it. This market isn't black (pirates forever) or white (legit users) imo. It's gray (pirates out of convenience - just download and play).

Your edit point is really while we'll just have to agree to disagree. I don't view pirates as folks that are just doing it because its convenient. I think most do it because they can. They are the ones with cracked copies of Adobe creative studio, 3D studio max etc. They don't look for any particular item they take whatever particular items are available. The only grey area pirates are the ones defeated by fairly straightforward disc check style DRM. The grey area pirates are the folks that give the game to a a friend to copy. The pirates that download from torrents and IRC or whatever are almost all 'pirates forever' as you put it. IMO.

 

[Qbah]

All very valid points. And yes, I see the flaw of my example. This DRM will require a mental switch from dividing offline and online games into SP or MP only. And both require an online connection all the time. Obviously this might be seen as a steep requirement ("why do I need to be online if I play alone?") however given a choice, what would you have? Go back to the old DRM? SecuROM, Scandisk, TAGES, activation limits? Obviously those failed but for different reasons. But they need to put something in. This is a new approach.

Companies cannot police pirates themselves. They do not have the authority to do it. At best they can contact online law enforcement and ask for help. But there's really nothing like that for gaming and the witch hunts for music sharing isn't really effective...

In the end it's gamers doing it to gamers... As gamers pirating games force companies to try and stop them, somehow.

What I would do? Make the games huge - for example switch to BR. 40-50GBs will discourage some people for sure. Also actively fight the torrents somehow - close everything down for all I care However, a PC is a very open platform, so offline DRM will fail, always. Forcing the gamer to be online the whole time to game is a new approach that might be a bigger hindrance to pirates and only a slight annoyance (if any) to us, gamers. We will need to wait and see how Ubisoft handles it before we judge it.

 

[mooncancook]

An excellent point. Basically, launching a game with no DRM these days means day one pirating will be huge. And some of that is lost sales. People have a nasty habit of doing things if they're easy and don't have any real punishment connected to them.

So the longer it will take for the DRM to be cracked, the longer the game will have time to be bought by people who may consider buying it (but would still pirate it if it's possible). And as I said, the newest Ubisoft DRM scheme doesn't really bother that many people I talked to (compared to activation limits for example).

Obviously people who consider only pirating games, won't buy it anyway. But at least they won't be playing the game until a working crack is available. And since that may take months, they can very well forget about it in the end.

Actually I agree with you somewhat. I'm not against the idea of DRM if it helps prevent some piracy. I think it sucks for the company and all the developers spending so much time and money creating the game and see the game available for piracy on day one.

I don't refuse to buy a game because it has DRM, but I will definitely refuse to buy a game with a horrible DRM that'll kick you out of the game without giving you a chance to save your progress if you lost your broadband for a moment.

 

[smackababy]

All very valid points. And yes, I see the flaw of my example. This DRM will require a mental switch from dividing offline and online games into SP or MP only. And both require an online connection all the time. Obviously this might be seen as a steep requirement ("why do I need to be online if I play alone?") however given a choice, what would you have? Go back to the old DRM? SecuROM, Scandisk, TAGES, activation limits? Obviously those failed but for different reasons. But they need to put something in. This is a new approach.

Companies cannot police pirates themselves. They do not have the authority to do it. At best they can contact online law enforcement and ask for help. But there's really nothing like that for gaming and the witch hunts for music sharing isn't really effective...

In the end it's gamers doing it to gamers... As gamers pirating games force companies to try and stop them, somehow.

What I would do? Make the games huge - for example switch to BR. 40-50GBs will discourage some people for sure. Also actively fight the torrents somehow - close everything down for all I care However, a PC is a very open platform, so offline DRM will fail, always. Forcing the gamer to be online the whole time to game is a new approach that might be a bigger hindrance to pirates and only a slight annoyance (if any) to us, gamers. We will need to wait and see how Ubisoft handles it before we judge it.

The problem is, DRM shouldn't be an annoyance to the paying customers at all. I am not against the concept of DRM (being a developer myself), but I am against anti-customer DRM for the sake of "fooling" pirates.

What would I do? I would employ some sort of a Batman: AA scheme where the software, upon connecting to the internet, was digitally certified and it injected false code if the game was not legit. Obviously, this wouldn't work for strictly single player games, but I, myself, would make multiplayer games. I wouldn't use a disk check system, nor would the user have to sign up for any type of account. Developers have got to come up with more clever ways to foil pirates that don't affect the paying customer at all. But then again, I am such an idealist, I think a game should sell based on quality and support. I think if you make the game well enough, people will buy it because they feel it is worth the asking price. I also think I would be happy people play my game whether they obtain it legally or not.

 

[TheVrolok]

Wow, that's pretty fail.

 

[wanderer27]

Originally Posted by Qbah View Post
If your local tower (for cell phones) has problems or you get a "No Service" message for a few minutes, do you scream bloody murder at your provider and swear to never use their services again?

A "Cell Phone's" purpose is to work with a "Cell Tower" - and a "Cell Tower's" only purpose is to support "Cell Phones".

There is no reason a Single Player game needs the Internet - and the Internet's purpose is not to support a game.

All very valid points. And yes, I see the flaw of my example. This DRM will require a mental switch from dividing offline and online games into SP or MP only. And both require an online connection all the time. Obviously this might be seen as a steep requirement ("why do I need to be online if I play alone?") however given a choice, what would you have? Go back to the old DRM? SecuROM, Scandisk, TAGES, activation limits? Obviously those failed but for different reasons. But they need to put something in. This is a new approach.

So what's wrong with a CD-Key ?
How about looking up word X on page Y ?
Why not both ?

Perfectly acceptable forms of DRM.


There's more going on here though. This crap has been going on almost since the PC began.
How many folks here remember putting your Floppy Disk in the Drive and having it sound like a Chainsaw or Machine Gun from whatever form of Disk Protection they had on it.
Yeah, there was no Internet then - I'm sure Piracy was even worse than it is today, so let's trash everyone's Drives

 

[mindcycle]

however given a choice, what would you have? Go back to the old DRM? SecuROM, Scandisk, TAGES, activation limits? Obviously those failed but for different reasons. But they need to put something in. This is a new approach.

There shouldn't have to be a choice as to what DRM system paying customers should have to "put up with". Publishers have the ability to not put any DRM at all into their games, which companies like Stardock have done and still been very successful in selling their product. Hell, Ubisoft took the no DRM route with Prince of Persia and Hawx on the PC just last year. I don't know the piracy data on those games, but i'd imagine it was similar to any other PC game.

The biggest problem, IMO, is that publishers refuse to accept the reality of the situation. Big budget PC games don't, and will not, sell as well as their console counterparts if they lack certain elements that PC gamers expect. Like non-delayed release dates, decent optimization for PC's, controls catered toward a keyboard and mouse setup, menu's built for PC screens, etc.. Until they accept that "poor" console ports are the actual problem and quit blaming poor sales on "the piracy problem", they will continue down absurd paths like this current DRM system.

It's funny, because EA (of all companies) finally realized this reality and has spent extra development efforts to make many of their current releases work well on the PC from the get go. Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2, and Battlefield Bad Company 2 are some good examples. However, just like EA, it may take the absolute failure of this current DRM system before Ubisoft changes their approach. Some people just have to learn the hard way..

 

[TheJTrain]

Forcing the gamer to be online the whole time to game is a new approach that might be a bigger hindrance to pirates and only a slight annoyance (if any) to us, gamers.

To be honest, in my reckoning (and I realize I'm probably in the minority on this) I'm not as bothered in the practical sense by the "online all the time" (though the loss of progress thing is potentially frustrating), but in principle I disagree with the "ask permission to use this legally-purchased and totally self-contained piece of software" idea - it's anti-consumer at the very least.

What makes it much greater than a "slight annoyance" is the utter flouting of the First-Sale Doctrine that unique account registration does (Steamworks, Ubi.com, etc.) and the complete and total nontransferability it creates for a physical product. In that sense, Ubisoft isn't doing anything worse in that regard than any other publisher - once a piece of plastic is irrevocably locked to you, it's irrevocably locked to you, whether you have to go online only once or constantly. It's just really sad that EA & 2K Games (Bioshock 2, even with GFWL, remains transferable, as it's non-SSA) have learned either 1) that they won't be able to get away with it when the courts catch up or 2) that it's not worth the cost (and ME2 & DA:O seem to be proof of that), and Ubisoft & Activision & Atari haven't figured that out yet.

 

[TheJTrain]

A great little paraphrase from a commenter on Kotaku:

First they raised the console game prices, but I did not speak, because I was a PC gamer.

Then they started using StarForce, TAGES, and SecuROM, but I did not speak, because I was not a software pirate.

Then, they made used game buyers pay for the free DLC, but I did not speak, because I buy my games new.

Then, they forced PC gamers to be constantly connected to the internet to play games, and there was nobody left to speak for me, because everybody was on hold with EA trying to get their Cerberus Network code to work.

 

[shortylickens]

Brilliant!
:awe:

 

[Qbah]

It's useless to use the old DRM (CD checks etc) as they do absolutely nothing to prevent piracy. So yeah, everybody can like them, but there's no sense using them. You still have day 1 piracy. Manual lookup? Please, you can find a scanned copy of a manual for each game in under a minute. A unique manual with each game? Just include a scan of it in the pirated download. Those forms of DRM are failures as they don't do anything to help.

You can see the online requirement as another part of system requirements. You need a DX9 card to run most modern games and a semi-decent CPU. So now the gaming computer will need to be online the whole time too. There doesn't seem to be any requirement on minimum latency or bandwidth, so as long as you are online during playing, you're good to go. Obviously you have less control over this component (as you can only buy a connection and the rest is up to the ISP). But still, an internet connection is reliable enough these days that this shouldn't pose any problems. Again, my 2 year WoW "adventure" is a great example.

Also, as idealistic and great as it sounds, even the best game ever will be pirated to hell and back if there's no functional protection on it. Because it's so easy and has no drawbacks or punishment. It would be great if we lived in a world that worked on those ideals, but we don't. We need to protect our IP. Again, making a game use the full potential of a PC and not be a simple console port won't do anything either. People don't usually pirate out of spite (usually ), but because it's so easy.

As for Stardock, yes, they don't have any DRM, see how big they are? How many games they sell? Not that many. A failed EA game probably sales more. PoP on PC was a total flop, even with no DRM (and I liked the game - Xbox 360).

EA's "DRM" now is the new-game-only DLC thing. And honestly, I don't mind it at all, I buy all my games new (as the saying says ) anyway.

There's really no way to protect anything with it being offline only. It's people who write the protection, other people will crack it. This Ubisoft approach may be the hardest one to crack to date - because your game is still kinda "controlled" by the creators. I bet they could use an even harsher approach and have the game download parts of it as you play - even very small chunks. Encrypted as to not know what is really missing. But let's wait and see first what the current DRM brings. If it's smooth and doesn't frustrate and will slow down a pirated copy - I'm all for it. If it will be a giant headache, constant disconnects, gameplay interruptions - I will be there in first row with my torch, screaming for justice

 

[mindcycle]

It's useless to use the old DRM (CD checks etc) as they do absolutely nothing to prevent piracy.

I would go as far as to argue that DRM in general does nothing to prevent piracy.

You can see the online requirement as another part of system requirements. You need a DX9 card to run most modern games and a semi-decent CPU.

But once again your comparison here is flawed. Needing DX9 to run a game is a technical requirement. Requiring the internet to run a single player game is not a technical requirement. The two can't be compared in any meaningful way.

Also, as idealistic and great as it sounds, even the best game ever will be pirated to hell and back if there's no functional protection on it.

Correction: "Even the best game ever will be pirated to hell and back regardless of the DRM used."

As for Stardock, yes, they don't have any DRM, see how big they are? How many games they sell? Not that many.

Sales data doesn't reflect whether an idea is good or not. The reason Stardock see's lower sales than a company like EA is due to the type of game they release, development funding, and marketing budget. However, if you look at piracy percentages for a Stardock game vs an EA game they are going to be about the same.

There's really no way to protect anything with it being offline only. It's people who write the protection, other people will crack it.

We'll see. I have a feeling this new DRM tactic will fail just like very other draconian DRM tactic has.

This Ubisoft approach may be the hardest one to crack to date - because your game is still kinda "controlled" by the creators. I bet they could use an even harsher approach and have the game download parts of it as you play - even very small chunks. Encrypted as to not know what is really missing. But let's wait and see first what the current DRM brings. If it's smooth and doesn't frustrate and will slow down a pirated copy - I'm all for it. If it will be a giant headache, constant disconnects, gameplay interruptions - I will be there in first row with my torch, screaming for justice

I agree with you, we'll just have to wait and see. I have a feeling the outcome is going to be similar to what happened with Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. Atari used a 3-install non-revocable DRM system via TAGES protection which actually took several weeks to crack. The end result was that no one bought the game then it was eventually cracked anyway..

 

[Qbah]

I hate there's no multi-quoting... Anyway:

1. DRM doesn't prevent it in general, it delays it. We already established that. By preventing I mean delay. It's not possible to create an unbreakable protection.

2. Why are you so eager to split a requirement into categories. It's a requirement, who cares if it's a technical one or not? Game requires this and that.

3. Again true. But not day 1 and this is what is very important. If the game has enough time to sell, it will sell.

4. The piracy figures will be the same because the DRM used up until now is useless - every major game had day 1 pirated versions available. That might even suggest that a game's quality doesn't influence the level of piracy... Hence a game, no matter how good it is, won't defend itself with quality alone. Now here's something to think about...

5. I'm not saying it will succeed for sure, but the potential is there to at least severely delay pirated versions. This will give the game time to sell better as some of the pirates will buy it - for the reasons I mentioned in other posts.

6. The DRM on Riddick was so harsh, no sane person would buy it. It was basically a 3 installs license and then you can only buy a new game... no wonder it tanked.

 

[mindcycle]

I hate there's no multi-quoting... Anyway:

Use quote tags to separate things. That's how I do it.

2. Why are you so eager to split a requirement into categories. It's a requirement, who cares if it's a technical one or not? Game requires this and that.

I'm simply pointing out that you can't compare technical requirements to DRM requirements since they aren't the same thing. I do get your point, but IMO the argument falls flat because system specs are technical requirements which need to be met in order to run software at all, while DRM requirements are entirely arbitrary.

4. The piracy figures will be the same because the DRM used up until now is useless - every major game had day 1 pirated versions available. That might even suggest that a game's quality doesn't influence the level of piracy... Hence a game, no matter how good it is, won't defend itself with quality alone. Now here's something to think about...

That argument doesn't hold water because there have actually been many major games that have avoided day one piracy. Recent ones I can think of off the top of my head would be Mass Effect and Riddick DA. Mass Effect sold very well and Riddick didn't.

5. I'm not saying it will succeed for sure, but the potential is there to at least severely delay pirated versions. This will give the game time to sell better as some of the pirates will buy it - for the reasons I mentioned in other posts.

Which again, even with a delayed pirated release (which has happened many times like I mention above), there has never been any solid evidence that suggests preventing piracy increases sales. Until that data exists, developers would be better off dropping the money spend on DRM into the gutter. Becasue at least then they wouldn't have people "not" buying the game due to the DRM used.

 

[JujuFish]

This will give the game time to sell better as some of the pirates will buy it - for the reasons I mentioned in other posts.

That's so patently false it isn't even funny.

6. The DRM on Riddick was so harsh, no sane person would buy it. It was basically a 3 installs license and then you can only buy a new game... no wonder it tanked.

I'd take that over this DRM by Ubisoft.

 

[Qbah]

I'm simply pointing out that you can't compare technical requirements to DRM requirements since they aren't the same thing. I do get your point, but IMO the argument falls flat because system specs are technical requirements which need to be met in order to run software at all, while DRM requirements are entirely arbitrary.

Why not? You have a DX8 card - the game won't run. Your CPU doesn't support SSE3? The game won't run. Your card has only 256MB of memory? The game won't run. You don't have an active connection to the internet all the time? The game won't run. Honestly, I don't really see much difference. Only the one I mentioned - you can buy better hardware (you're fully in control). However, the quality of the connection depends only on your provider (and Ubisoft servers being up).

That argument doesn't hold water because there have actually been many major games that have avoided day one piracy. Recent ones I can think of off the top of my head would be Mass Effect and Riddick DA. Mass Effect sold very well and Riddick didn't.

You mentioned Riddick yourself - the DRM used in this game was extremely harsh - 3 non-revocable installs? This one was asking for no sale. Mass Effect 2 sold extremely well on PC it seems - and Steam doesn't list any 3rd party DRM, so I assume there's none in the digital version (except for Steam, obviously). So yeah, it's not always true - a game can sell well even with no/light (aka useless) DRM (and high piracy - and this one was pirated heavily). Ohh well, unless someone makes a study on this, it will remain speculation

Which again, even with a delayed pirated release (which has happened many times like I mention above), there has never been any solid evidence that suggests preventing piracy increases sales. Until that data exists, developers would be better off dropping the money spend on DRM into the gutter. Becasue at least then they wouldn't have people "not" buying the game due to the DRM used.

We'll just have to wait and see how it works out now There won't be direct data available now either, but if the game will sell fine after its premiere, we can include part of its success to a working DRM. If the game fails to deliver in post-release sales, we can include a bad DRM as the reason too Though there's really no way to tell now.

 

[Qbah]

That's so patently false it isn't even funny.

So you want to tell me there's no way in hell a person will buy a game if there's no other means to play it apart from buying it in the foreseeable future? How can you even think that?

I'd take that over this DRM by Ubisoft.

So you'd take a 3 lifetime install limit over an online requirement with nothing else needed? Now you're just trolling.

 

[JujuFish]

So you want to tell me there's no way in hell a person will buy a game if there's no other means apart from buying it in the foreseeable future? How can you even think that?

I didn't say there wouldn't possibly be pirates who will buy it instead. Sure, it's possible. But you're saying it'll sell better because of the DRM. I know several people, myself included, who now refuse to purchase this game because of the DRM. I know a few people who plan on pirating it, and this DRM is making them all the more assured in their decision to pirate the game. It's no big sweat to them if it takes a few months.

So you'd take a 3 lifetime install limit over an online requirement with nothing else needed? Now you're just trolling.

Damn straight I would. There are no single player games I've ever installed three times. I play through them and then they get shelved. The really good ones don't even get uninstalled, since HD space is so cheap.

The fact that you're calling me a troll right now tends to make me think you've been trolling the thread this entire time.

 

[Qbah]

I didn't say there wouldn't possibly be pirates who will buy it instead. Sure, it's possible. But you're saying it'll sell better because of the DRM. I know several people, myself included, who now refuse to purchase this game because of the DRM. I know a few people who plan on pirating it, and this DRM is making them all the more assured in their decision to pirate the game. It's no big sweat to them if it takes a few months.

All the previous DRMs sucked. Hence they really didn't help with the sales at all. A too strict DRM really killed sales in all honesty. My friends don't mind this DRM (then again most of them buy games and have a 6mbps+ broadband). I bet one or two who downloads, would get it if it's the only option (if just to see what others are talking about).

Damn straight I would. There are no single player games I've ever installed three times. I play through them and then they get shelved. The really good ones don't even get uninstalled, since HD space is so cheap.

The fact that you're calling me a troll right now tends to make me think you've been trolling the thread this entire time.

There are many games I have installed at least 3 times (to name XP -> Vista -> Win7 as a possible scenario). I reinstalled XP many many times, and Vista once so I would be out of luck if a game I liked had this limit. And I would never buy a game with it, because I know I wouldn't be able to play it after a scenario I have been through quite a few times.

Now, if you would be an honest person, you'd just tell them not to play the game. If they're against the DRM scheme, just ignore the game. Pirating it and then trying to rationalize it is sad and pathetic, really.

 

[wanderer27]

So you want to tell me there's no way in hell a person will buy a game if there's no other means to play it apart from buying it in the foreseeable future? How can you even think that?

I absolutely will not by a game with this DRM.
In fact, I have a fair sized list of fairly recent games that I will not buy because of their DRM - and it's less obnoxious than this DRM.

Now if they remove the DRM, there's a good chance I'll pick them up (if I'm still interested by then). At that point they get their sale and I get the game on acceptable terms.

So you'd take a 3 lifetime install limit over an online requirement with nothing else needed? Now you're just trolling.

This is not even acceptable to me. I had to do a full OS reinstall in the last month because some virus totally trashed the OS.

New hardware?
Fresh install.
A few years down the road and I feel like playing the game again?
Odds are I've reformatted and used up the activations (for one reason or another).

Don't even ask me to de-authorize a game install - I do good sometimes to even keep track of files I don't want to lose on a reformat. I seriously doubt I'll remember to keep track of de-authorizing all the games on the drive, and I shouldn't have to worry about crap like that in the first place.

 

[Spikesoldier]

well i can be all for this extreme drm shit only if you are able to 'refund' the POS software within a reasonable time frame.

with new games DRM'ed out the ass and locked down so hard, the software companies, who will be in 'complete' control of piracy, should be taking back and refunding software that i dont like because of this 'feature', or for any other reason, again, in a reasonable time frame.

if hard lockdowns like this become industry standard, gone should be the days of all sales final on software, because in the past, you can make a copy of it and keep on truckin after the return.

i hope that one day i can buy a piece of software B&M, online, or through a front like steam and be able to return without question if it sucks ass or if the DRM ruins it. If they have a flakey DRM that drops connections and says game over with no fault to the EU, i should have every right to tell them to shove this POS software down their own throats and to give me my fucking money back.

i.e.: you dont find out how bad mw2 (online) sucks until you open the box, install, play, and get nuked over and over by random teenage kids with some downloaded skills that daddy paid for; well after the threshold of return that occured at step one. Gotcha! +$59.99 for infinity ward

 

[Golgatha]

Or maybe, just maybe, people don't mind this DRM? You got like 5 million people playing WoW (I don't count the other 6 million Chinesee) that don't mind the constant online requirement. Looks like quite a few of them play other games too. Or people in general don't find it too restricting. And they just want to enjoy the game.

Btw I really don't like this DRM but it looks like I'm in the minority. Talked to a few friends and they don't mind it at all since they're online 100% of time anyway.

WoW is a MMO (massively MULTIPLAYER ONLINE) game. This type of game MUST be ONLINE by its nature. Assassin's Creed 2, not so much.

 

[coloumb]

There's more going on here though. This crap has been going on almost since the PC began.
How many folks here remember putting your Floppy Disk in the Drive and having it sound like a Chainsaw or Machine Gun from whatever form of Disk Protection they had on it.
Yeah, there was no Internet then - I'm sure Piracy was even worse than it is today, so let's trash everyone's Drives

naw - it's about the same. It just took longer and more effort to acquire a cracked game. It required you to get out and talk to other gamers in high school computer class or at software stores, try to convince the bbs sysop to give you access to the private section, or attend "game trade" parties [basically brink a batch of blank diskettes and any games you might have]

The "find x and y" coordinates on a page included with the game was pretty cool - however you were screwed if your copy wasn't printed correctly. At least back then - you could return a game if you didn't like it or you could buy/sell pc games at a software store.

 

[Golgatha]

I agree with you, we'll just have to wait and see. I have a feeling the outcome is going to be similar to what happened with Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. Atari used a 3-install non-revocable DRM system via TAGES protection which actually took several weeks to crack. The end result was that no one bought the game then it was eventually cracked anyway..

I'll go one further. Riddick AoDA sold many copies for $5 on Steam and D2D, when it could have sold many copies for $50 at retail and Online if the DRM wasn't present. At $5 a pop, the desire to resell the game goes out of the equation. I personally opted to buy one of the few used copies available on eBay early in the game's life. This allowed me to circumvent giving them any additional profit on the game. I love the game but hate the DRM they employed. And if you say I should support developers who make good games, I would say I couldn't care less if they ever make a good game again if they don't know how to treat their customers. I have more money than time to play games, and my dollars will be spent very strategically from now on. I can't be alone in this surely.