Has Ubisoft finally learnt its ways? Saw this on a forum thread in Ubisoft’s Prince Of Persia forums:
You`re right when you say that when people want to pirate the game they will but DRM is there to make it as difficult as possible for pirates to make copies of our games. A lot of people complain that DRM is what forces people to pirate games but as PoP PC has no DRM we`ll see how truthful people actually are. Not very, I imagine.
Console piracy is something else entirely and I`m sure we`ll see more steps in future to try to combat that.
- UbiRazz
However, in the very first sentence, it is very clear that his understanding of the DRM situation is not really good. “DRM is there to make it as difficult as possible for pirates to make copies of our games”? Are you sure about that? Let’s now visit Torrentfreak’s list of the top 10 most pirated PC games of 2008:
- Spore (1,700,000) (Sept. 2008)
- The Sims 2 (1,150,000) (Sept. 2004)
- Assassins Creed (1,070,000) (Nov. 2007)
- Crysis (940,000) (Nov. 2007)
- Command & Conquer 3 (860,000) (Mar. 2007)
- Call of Duty 4 (830,000) (Nov. 2007)
- GTA San Andreas (740,000) (Jun. 2005)
- Fallout 3 (645,000) (Oct. 2008)
- Far Cry 2 (585,000) (Oct. 2008)
- Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 (470,000) (Oct. 2008)
Spore? Far Cry 2? Didn’t those feature extensive DRM, such as online activation and install limits? Also, another thing to note, if you buy a legitimate copy, you will need be online to activate it and be limited to 5 installs. If you pirate it, you don’t need to do activate and can install it anywhere anytime. So which is the more superior version? You tell me.
Don’t worry, Prince Of Persia will be pirated to the death. If this is Ubisoft’s grand experiment, it will be for naught. However, it may sway certain individuals to get the game, even if he may not be a fan of the genre.
Of course, I applaud Ubisoft in taking such a bold move. I hope that this will truly set a precedent for future games without DRM from big name publishers.
Tags: DRM, prince of persia
Actually, I have a big post on DRM that is going to hit my blog around 11 today. Not related to Prince of Persia, but still – great minds think alike, eh?
It is obvious that the person who posted this message doesn’t get it. But, since the game has no DRM, perhaps someone in the Ubisoft management does. I mean, it is common sense.
You spend X amount of money to develop/license the DRM. Then if you go to pirate bay, or mininova on the launch date and a cracked copy without DRM appears there 3-4 hours after the game hit the store shelves then what does it say about your investment?
I mean, they might as well just take that money, and flush it down the drain. Perhaps someone at Ubisoft saw that and decided to invest that cash into advertising or something like that (I keep seeing TV commercials for that game).
But fools seldom differ too!
Yeah, I can’t believe the hackers work that fast. Guess that’s why they call it a 0-day release.
I first noticed the nfo file of the torrent on my fav tracker site and for this game, it states “Protection: None”. Surprised, I did a lil googling and found that thread.
No PoP TV commercials here, I guess Singapore’s not exactly on Ubisoft’s radar. But I’m not really a TV watcher though. I did see some Mirror’s Edge commercials by the way.
[...] character is making. Thus, playing from a first-person perspective kinda kills the fun a bit. The DRM-free Prince Of Persia does look cool with its acrobatic stunts and animation, although it has been said that it’s [...]