Opinion: Ubisoft's content protection system defeats the point of single player gaming

Posted on 7 Apr 2010 at 07:01

Games publishers have every right to do whatever is necessary to prevent their product from being pirated (although I'm personally less keen on copy protection methods designed primarily to limit the second hand games market). Online authentication isn't an inherently bad idea - I've grown fond of Valve's (relatively) trouble-free Steam system. However, Steam has an offline mode, so you don't have to be permanently online to play your single-player titles. Ubisoft offers no such option.

Settlers 7 has the sort of connection requirements I'd expect from a browser game, rather than a stand-alone title. Although the minimum system specification lists an internet connection, the game should carry a much larger warning that you'll have to be online at all times while playing. Other recent Ubisoft titles use the same kind of DRM, including the excellent Assassin's Creed 2 and Silent Hunter 5 – so far the only game using this content protection system to be successfully cracked.

We can only hope that in the future, when Ubisoft finally discontinues support for these games, a patch will be sent out allowing them to run without a connection to their server, otherwise they'll cease to be playable.

Ubisoft isn't alone in its perverse insistence on its games having a permanent link to a server. EA's Command and Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight suffers the same problem. We'd have thought that EA would have known better after 2008's furore over family title Spore, which, as it was shipped, only allowed one user account and three installations per licensed copy of the game.

I'm a keen PC gamer. Although I also play games on a PS3 and Xbox 360, I prefer using a mouse and keyboard for some genres, so tend to opt for PC releases when possible. I also like to pay for games, knowing that my money is going to companies that will spend it developing more of the titles that I love. To my eyes, obtrusive DRM systems of this sort are actively penalizing me for being a loyal customer.

With DRM that only serves to prevent me from playing the games I love when and where I want to, Ubisoft, EA and companies like them are poisoning their own market. I'll actively avoid buying games from companies that use content protection of this sort and if this is the future of all PC gaming, I expect to be spending a lot more time with my consoles in years to come.

Author: Kat Orphanides

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User comments

Let me go out on a limb here...

These idiots don't get it. THEY are ruining sales not pirates. Overpriced and over-DRMed. Let's see how long it takes for an internet-free version to appear.

By DrTeeth on 17 May 2010

Dear God. I don't have an internet connect AT ALL at home. So how do they expect to sell to an old time Daggeffall/Morrowind/Oblivion and original C&C for DOS gamer like me?!? I have bags of cash to spend, nothing to spend it on!

By MikeE on 9 Jun 2010

"will they ever learn?"

Anyone remember that only a week or so past, half the UK found itself without an internet connection for hours?

OK, so not being able to play your current favourite game for half a day is hardly a call for COBRA to meet, but it might deter you from picking up the game again - or from buying the sequel.

Perhaps someone should remind them of how Sony shot itself in the foot. Some years ago they created a new recording format called the Mini-Disk. Musicians across the world were wowed - it was a digital format that gave brilliant sound (much better than mp3) and you could record on to a mini-disk with great fidelity, and it had (at first) the promise of really good archiving virtues.

Then the fly in the ointment became apparent - Sony's obsession with DRM. They were really worried that people would copy things on to a mini-disk and then use that fantastic quality to make further copies.

So they crippled it. You could record on to a mini-disk via a mike, but not any other way. You could transfer what you had recorded on to a hard drive via optical link, but not the other way round.

There were devices which allowed both-ways copying, but they were expensive and strictly not portable.

Reluctantly musicians realised that this was not a serious tool for writing and editing music. Most of them stopped using it for that reason. (The remainder discovered that the units which looked so lovely didn't last, and couldn't be repaired - which SO Sony.)

Sony recently said that they were giving up on the mini-disk.

Maybe the quality issues would have sunk it anyway, but the obsession with DRM led to the manufacturers crippling the product.

Kat, thanks for the warning about Settlers 7 - I'll not buy it, and I'll double check the T&C on other games as well.

Good job I've still got some old fashioned ones waiting to be played.