My “hardcore” gaming friends already know who Ubisoft is; for those of you who don’t, here’s a brief synopsis: Ubisoft was founded in 1986 by five French-Canadian brothers. They started off as a game publisher in the mid-to-late 80s, and moved to game development in the early 90s. By 2000, Ubisoft began swallowing up other gaming companies. In 2000 they bought Red Storm Entertainment, and in 2001 they bought the rights to games published by Broderbund, Mattel, Mindscape, and SSI. Among other releases, Ubisoft has been responsible for most of the Tom Clancy game series (Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell, and Ghost Recon). According to Wikipedia, in 2008 Ubisoft was “the third-largest independent video game publisher in Europe, and the fourth largest in the United States.”
Another thing Ubisoft is known for is their aggressive forms of copy protection.
First was Ubisoft’s “CD Check”, which I experienced first hand via the Ubisoft title Ghost Recon. The CD Check on Ghost Recon forced players to insert the game’s CD into their PC every time they wanted to play, and leave it inserted the entire time they were playing. Of course a lot of pirates thought this was a pretty dumb idea, so they released a “No CD” crack that removed that feature from Ghost Recon. So basically, if you bought the game you got punished by having to put the CD in the drive and leave it in there, but if you stole the game you didn’t have to put up with that nonsense. Eventually, so many people complained (and the CD Check was causing so many installation problems) that Ubisoft released their own “No CD” crack for Rainbow Six Vegas 2 … except they didn’t write their own; they stole and repackaged one written by a piracy group. Oh yeah, people noticed.
And then a few years later there was Ubisoft’s “StarForce” copy protection, a system that installed hidden drivers and crashed a lot of people’s computers. As you can imagine, a lot of people didn’t particularly care to have their machines destroyed, so they stole and installed cracked copies of Ubisoft games, copies that had the StarForce copy protection removed. If you’re keeping score so far, “people who pay for Ubisoft titles” are 0, and “people to steal them” are 2.
Ubisoft also used SecuRom, specifically in Far Cry 2. SecuRom is a form of DRM that limits the number of times a particular game can be installed and re-installed. It also doesn’t remove itself from your computer, even after you uninstall the game. In 2008 there was a class action lawsuit against Electronic Arts for using it. Did cracked copies of Far Cry 2 contain SecuRom? No it did not. 0 to 3.
In January of 2010, Ubisoft went back to the drawing board and came up with an all new form of copy protection — since, you know, things have gone so well for them in the past. Ubisoft’s all new “Online Services Platform” is a new form of copy protection that requires legitimate game owners to connect to Ubisoft’s servers via the Internet, and remained connected while playing. If your network connection is interrupted, your game either pauses or terminates. Ubisoft has included Online Services Platform protection on Assassin’s Creed 2 and Silent Hunter 5, which was released this week.
In interviews and articles spread across the web, this latest form of copy protection has been touted as being “unbreakable”. And just for the record, calling any form of copy protection “unbreakable” is pretty stupid.
Care to guess what happened?
Cracking group “Skid-Row” cracked Silent Hunter 5 the day it was released.
But wait, it gets better.
Hackers and pirates across the globe have started attacking Ubisoft’s DRM servers this week. Not only has this created a huge PR nightmare and headache for Ubisoft, but it also means that when the servers are down, the people who paid for the game can’t play it. That’s right; if you can’t connect to the server, the game doesn’t work. Once again, the people who are stealing the game(s) for free can play them, while those who paid for them, cannot. When are these morons going to learn?
My favorite PC-based gaming franchise of all time is Ghost Recon, and a new game in the series is slated to be released this Fall. Ubisoft, if you’re listening, hear this: if Ghost Recon: Future Soldier contains one of your stupid new DRM schemes, I will not pay for it. Period.
The founders of Ubisoft were French, not French-Canadian. Ubi Montreal became their flagship studio, but it’s still a French company. :)
Yet another reason I stay exclusively in the realm of console gaming.
(Coincidentally, I’m currently playing Assassin’s Creed for the 360)
I’d switch 100% to console I’d they would allow people to use mouse and keyboard, but that will never happen. And yes I know they have gimmicky mice setup for ps3 but that is not what I am looking for. I should be able to plug in a mouse of my choice and a keyboard of my choice and bind whatever keys I want to actions in the game.
Your other option is to purchase the game, and apply the crack. Of course, your goal may be to boycott supporting their flawed system which punishes paying customers and rewards pirates.
Even Apple (iTunes) has realized copy protection needs to go, its time everyone else follows along. Here’s a novel idea… try making a product people WANT TO BUY. I end up paying for quite a few apps for my Android phone afte trying their free ad-supported or limited functionality versions. Maybe its time for games to follow the same free and ad-supported or paid and ad-free model?
Aren’t we at the point where there are enough adult gamers who have the money to pay for games that this model makes sense? When we were younger, games were more likely to be pirated because we didn’t have much money. As we’ve gotten older and continue to play games many of us have gone legit and pay for what we play.
Games come with copyright protection??? ;)
Good for you!