Many of you know Ubisoft’s new draconian Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme that ships with PC copies of Assassin’s Creed II and Settlers 7. If you don’t, check this link out. And this link.

The executive summary is this: if you play Assassin’s Creed II on a PC, you must be permanently connected to the internet or the game will stop working and you will lose your progress. For Settlers 7, you’ll “only” have to suffer the game stopping. Latest news indicates that this DRM will ship with the new Splinter Cell: Conviction, too.

Words cannot express how pigheaded this move is. It’s a giant fuck you to customers. It’s an expression of utter contempt for the people who line your pockets with their hard earned cash. It’s Ubisoft saying “Yeah, suck it, suck it and swallow because you have no other choice, bitch!”

The Problem is that DRM Does Not Work

My position on DRM is well documented, but indulge me in a rant.

(1) If your game is a single player game, it will not stop pirates. Company executives need to get their heads around this fact. Piracy involves two parties, and for lack of a better term I’ll call them a cracker and a downloader. Crackers will crack your game. They are smarter than your programmers, and there is nothing you can do about it. It’s an intellectual challenge to them, bragging rights to get the first cracked copy out onto the world wide web. They’ll get an advanced copy from a leak you never knew existed and BAM, days before your game is launched it will be available for download for free. Remember Spore?

As for downloaders, they will not stop downloading. If Joe has $70 and has a choice between videogames and food, guess what? He’ll buy the food and download the videogame. If the crack isn’t out yet, he’ll wait until the game makes its way to bargain bins or second hand stores or he’ll borrow a copy from a friend… but no way is he spending that precious $70 on a videogame that he can get for a whole lot cheaper.

Now, if you’re selling a multiplayer game and run the servers on which the game is played on, you can indeed dramatically cut down on piracy. That’s what Blizzard does with World of Warcraft, and that’s what Infinity Ward does with Modern Warfare 2. But for a single player game? Hah.

Ubisoft has done something interesting in that they’ve made the online component integral to the single player experience. We’ll talk about that in a moment – more after the jump.

(2) You’re making a clear statement that you don’t trust your paying customers. You’re saying that since you don’t trust them, you’re going to monitor their every move and make sure your customers do as you tell them. And that will work out great, because everyone likes being treated like an untrustworthy criminal, right? Hey, we’ll even pay for the privilege!

This leads me to my next point, which is…

(3) You only hurt your paying customers. Of all the stupid, pigheaded, idiotic things that draconian DRM results in, this takes the cake. Remember how I said above that crackers will crack your game? And downloaders will download your game? Right.

Now imagine Joe the Pirate and John the Good Customer both get Assassin’s Creed II, except Joe the Pirate got a cracked copy and John the Good Customer gets an original. Both are playing up to the climactic ending of Assassin’s Creed II, and all of a sudden… oh, let’s say a typhoon cuts a major undersea fibre-optic cable, or your home router chokes and stops being able to route packets, or your internet connection is interrupted by any number of legitimate, plausible, and frequently occurring reasons.

John the Good Customer’s copy of Assassin’s Creed II stops working as it tries to reconnect. He loses his progress and has to replay a significant portion of the ending sequence… 3 days later, when the submarine welds the busted undersea cable back together. Meanwhile his friends spoil the ending for him. “CURSES!” he screams. “I hate you, Ubisoft!”

Joe the Pirate’s copy of Assassin’s Creed II doesn’t do anything. Joe continues playing, finishes the game, enjoys the ending, and goes off to spoil the ending for John. ‘That was pretty neat,’ he thinks to himself. ‘And it was all free! Haha!’

See what happened there? You, Ubisoft, shafted your paying customer and earned his well-deserved ill will. The evil pirater, on the other hand, got off scott free – something he did not deserve. Worse, John may just walk out on your games. I know I did. My PC got infected with the terrible, terrible StarForce DRM that came with one of the later Splinter Cell games, and I have not bought another PC game from Ubisoft since.

Now, Ubisoft. Explain to me how this is good business. Wait! I know the answer, and I’ll tell you. But before that, my last point, which is…

(4) DRM is antithetical to the progress of technology in the digital age. Computers are very, very good at copying digital information. That is, in essence, all computer hardware does: manipulate digital information. That’s what’s gotten copyright law all up in a tangle. Copyright law is crafted to give content creators, and only content creators, the right to copy, or reproduce, their own content (I am simplifying tremendously). If anyone else reproduces the content without the creator’s permission, BAM, that’s copyright infringement. That was all fine and dandy when the only content being created was books, and printing presses were large complicated machines that were not cheap to buy or operate. But now, when information is all digital and copying is not only laughably trivial but at the core of the technology that drives the modern age, well, now Copyright law’s got a problem.

Enter DRM. DRM’s purpose is to make copying harder, not easier. Slower, not faster. It locks information up. It doesn’t fit. In the immortal words of Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the other. DRM is like a fish out of water – it’s just not built to survive in this environment.

Ubisoft Responds in the Dumbest Way Imaginable

So hearing the outcry, Ubisoft defended its decision to shaft its customers. The entire transcript is available here, and I have reproduced it below to rebut it.

What’s the problem this DRM is trying to address?
Ubi are increasingly concerned about piracy on the PC. “It’s a huge problem – you know it, I know it, other people know it. It really is a very important issue that all serious companies need to address,” says their spokesperson. But they also believe that their online services will make PC gaming better. “The real idea is that if you offer a game that is better when you buy it, then people will actually buy it. We wouldn’t have built it if we thought that it was really going to piss off our customers.”

Repeat after me: 1 less pirate does not mean 1 more sale. Assuming your DRM works, if Joe the Pirate cannot afford the game, he will do something else with his time. Or he will make a decision about how many games he can afford to play and make cuts.

Also, remember how I said only paying customers get hurt, while pirates get off scott free? Yeah. That.

So what’s in it for gamers?
Ubi say there are three advantages to their online services. The first: you don’t need a disc. The second: that you can install the game on as many PCs as you like, as many times as you like. And the third: the automatic uploading of savegames to Ubisoft’s servers.

Bullshit. First, I only needed a disc because your previous DRM required me to put it in. There is another point here that I will get to in a bit. Second, I can already install a game I bought on as many PCs as I would like, and when I can’t, it’s because your shitty previous DRM didn’t let me do it in the first place. Third, I don’t have 7 different computers that I play 1 game on such that I will need access to a centralised saved game repository.

You’ve “given” me 2 things that you took away from me in the first place, and added a third thing that doesn’t really matter. It’s like taking candy from a kid and making him pay before you’ll give it back, while saying “See? You can enjoy this awesome candy that I took from you in the first place if you pay me for it. Also you can have this empty tin can, you can keep marbles in it, it’s really cool.”

Do Ubisoft understand that we don’t want to be permanently online?
They’ve spotted the outcry, yes. “We know that requiring a permanent online connection is not a happy point for a lot of PC gamers, but it is necessary for the system to work.

Translation: Suck it. I know you don’t like to choke, but you have to learn to suppress that gag reflex if you want to play tonight.

Which PC games will require an always on internet connection?
All announced Ubisoft PC games will include the online services, whether sold online, or from brick and mortar stores. That includes Splinter Cell, Silent Hunter 5, Assassin’s Creed 2, Prince of Persia and the newly announced Ghost Recon. “It’s hard for us to say, yes, from now until the day that we all die all of our games are going to include this,” says their spokesperson, “but most will.”

Translation: We will shaft you with this broom, with this cactus, with this rolling pin, and anything else we find just lying around. You will like it, and you will say “please sir, can I have some more?”. You will get some more only if you pay us for the privilege.

If my internet connection goes down during play, will I lose my progress?
That depends on the way the systems have been implemented. The two examples we have now, Assassin’s Creed 2 and Settlers VII, show differing implementations. In Assassin’s Creed, if your connection cuts out, you’ll be taken back to the last checkpoint. “With Settlers, your game will resume exactly where you left off,” says Ubisoft’s spokesperson.

Oh thank you Gods of Ubisoft, for letting me resume my single player game exactly where I left off when Typhoon FibreCutter destroyed the Asia Pacific Cable Network leaving me disconnected from your servers and unable to play your single player game. Your magnanimity knows no bounds!

Note to American readers: we call ‘em typhoons over here. You know them as hurricanes.

How will I know what I’ll lose?
“You’ll have to wait for the reviews, and to hear what your peers are saying.”

…what?!?!

What happens if Ubisoft take the DRM servers offline for maintenance, or suffer a technical breakdown?
In the case of a server failure their games will be taken offline, and you’ll be unable to play them. “The idea is to avoid that point as much as possible, but we have been clear from the beginning that the game does need an internet connection for you to play. So if it goes down for real for a little while, then yeah, you can’t play.

”

……What?!?!?!

Are Ubisoft trying to kill PC gaming?
One theory states that piracy is such a problem on PC that they’d prefer to move their customers to the Xbox or PS3. Their spokesperson disagrees. “No, we’re not trying to kill the PC market. Are we frustrated by the PC market? I think everyone is. In the end it all comes back to one single truth: piracy is a big, huge, hairy problem. It’s a market that suffered a lot because of piracy, and we’re all just trying to figure out what we think is the best way to deal with it.”

Do Ubi believe this DRM is unhackable?
They accept that it’s all DRM’s fate to be eventually hacked, explaining that internally, they’ve already talked of a timescale for how long their games will be protected by it. But, they believe that it’s secure enough for them. “We wouldn’t do it if we didn’t believe in it. The guys who designed it believe in it. Do we think that it’s the one system that God has sent onto earth that will never be cracked by anybody ever? We can’t guarantee that, but we believe in it.

”

I acknowledge that piracy is a big problem. Thing is, you’re not addressing it. You know it, and I know it. You even admit that this DRM will eventually be cracked. How does this help stop piracy? It doesn’t. It’s not helping. This market that has suffered a lot from piracy will suffer even more because pirates will get off scott free. How many times must this happen before you see it?

And speaking of DRMs you believe in… well, look at Ubisoft’s track record. Remember that Rainbow Six game that came with a shitty disc based DRM? Remember how it was available for purchase online, but customers who bought it online didn’t get a disc and thus could not play the game? Remember Ubisoft’s solution? Yup, Ubisoft told customers to download the crack.

The contempt you must have for your customers.

Does this mean that Ubi are dissatisfied with other online rights management platforms like Steam?
There’s a hint of that, although Ubi are keen to praise Valve’s online platform. “We think what Steam has done is amazingly valid, but aren’t Steam games cracked amazingly fast? It’s not a question of dissatisfaction, it’s a question of ‘we’ve got another idea, another way of implementing it, and we’re going for it’.”

Steam does not treat its customers like criminals. It tries to make the buying and playing experience pleasant, or at the least, doesn’t try so hard to make it unpleasant. You, on the other hand, are treating us like criminals. Oh and Steam has an offline mode.

What happens when it becomes economically inefficient to run the servers for these games? Will Ubisoft take the servers down? And will that mean we can’t play the games we bought?

The first point Ubi makes is that they intend for the servers to stay up. “Say in 5 years someone who bought Assassin’s Creed 2 wants to go back and play it, the hope is, the plan is that we’ll be on Assassin’s Creed, I dunno, 3, 4, 5, and the servers will still be there to serve those new games,” explains their spokesperson. “They’ll also be able to serve the old games.” But Ubisoft have the ability to patch the DRM out of their games. “If for some reason, and this is not in the plan, but if for some reason all of the servers someday go away, then we can release a patch so that the game can be played in single-player without an online connection. But that’s if all of the servers are gone.”

At last! The first thing Ubisoft spokesman said that makes sense. They can patch the DRM out of their games, so that when their servers go offline, people can still play their purchased games. It’s a neat solution to a problem that should never have existed in the first place. Bravo!

…wait, if Ubi can patch it out, can’t crackers patch it out too?

Nevermind. It’s a good starting point! Maybe it won’t be so bad after all, I’m sure the next question will not completely squash the embryo of hope…

Will Ubi make a firm commitment to removing the DRM if the servers are to be taken offline?

We’ll paste the straight transcript here:



PCG: What I think a lot of us would really like is a firm commitment that you understand our worries that the servers are going to go down and suddenly we’ve just got some trash data on our hard drives that we’ve paid for.



Ubisoft: The system is made by guys who love PC games. They play PC games, they are your friends.



PCG: So you can commit to saying that those systems will be patched out?



Ubisoft: That’s the plan.



PCG: It’s the plan, or it’s definitely going to happen?



Ubisoft: That’s written into the goal of the overall plan of the thing. But we don’t plan on shutting down the servers, we really don’t.”

Translation: Uh, we can make the DRM not as shitty, but we’re not saying we will do it, but uh, really, we won’t need to, trust us it’ll be awesome DRM, WeLoveYouGuysHugsAndKisses!

Yup, hope squashed.

So Why The Hell Are They Doing It?

It doesn’t help piracy. It forces people to connect to play, and some people will legitimately not want to connect to play. Like when I’m out with my laptop and want to play but there’s open WIFI nearby. So why in blue blazes is this a smart decision for Ubisoft? Why are they doing things this way?

My unoriginal theory is this: Ubisoft is trying to kill the second hand games market for its games.

It’s been discussed before in the context of digital downloads and Steam. Hell, it’s been discussed before in the context of game creators “expressing their concern” over how more people play their games than buy it. See, for e.g.: this article, and this article.

The second hand market is lucrative stuff, and Ubisoft wants a piece of that pie. I can just imagine some exec’s thought process beginning with “Damn this second hand market, I should be making money every time the games my slaves made exchanges hands! Never mind the doctrine of first sale, what does the Supreme Court know.”

How does Ubisoft plan to do it? Make the games CD-less. Make the games require an online connection, nay, make the online component integral to the gameplay experience, based on whatever thin excuse you can concoct. Require an online account. Essentially, make it such that if anyone wants to play your game, they have to get it from you and you alone, and they have to pay for the privilege. That means I can’t loan my friend my copy; presumably that means I can’t even gift my friend my copy. A one-to-one relationship with Ubisoft is the only way you’re getting to play their games.

This is a one-two for Ubisoft, because they’ll probably save on real life shelf space as well, though I’m not really sure how the numbers would work out.

Of course I can’t verify that this is the reason why Ubisoft decided to implement their arse-backwards DRM scheme. I’m willing to put good money on it being a significant factor, though. And, to be honest, there’s nothing wrong with trying to make some extra money – games cost a bomb to make, and developers go bust all the time even after releasing awesome games (Looking Glass, Double Fine Productions). But come on, Ubisoft. Have the decency to not insult our intelligence, and wipe those crocodile tears about the terrible damage piracy is doing to your bottom line away. Piracy is not your problem, and fighting it like this will just hurt you.

I suspect, as Tycho does, that this DRM will ultimately go away. Maybe it will, like DRM and the music industry. Let’s all hope so, because Ubisoft makes some damn good games, and I really, really want to play them.

That is all.