DRM - when is enough enough?

[Isengard]

I'd like to direct everyone to this excellent article on piracy, supplied by TPex in the comments section under the article. It's a substantial read, but I challenge every one of you to read it in its entirety before posting here again.

After a fairly lengthy yet very informative read I am awakened to just how bad piracy is on the PC. I'm really going to make a concerted effort to support PC game development by buying as many as is affordable. I for one don't want PC gaming to die out and I wish that others could see the harm they are doing, not just to the industry but themselves. Your gratifying experience of playing games today could be the reason you have none to play in a few years.

As I said before, I do plan on getting a new console when finances permit and it will in all likelyhood become my platform of choice at that point, since I'm all for the convenience of console gaming, but I would at least still want the option to get the games for PC as well, since I prefer mouse+keyboard setups when playing FPS games.

I'm still very much against Ubisoft's new heavy handed DRM and don't plan on buying or playing any of their games until they fix it.

[Stefan9]

I like the article's practical solutions. I will continue to stick to pc gaming unless I get forced to go to consoles, which doesn't seem as its happening any time soon. All the games I play 99% crpg's are still all on the pc.

[tehNihilist]

Sad thing is it seems most people on this forum purchase original games and do not pirate. So all this discussion is not even getting through to the pirates themselves, (not that these arguments ever really get through to them). So it is like preaching to the converted.

Gawd that article is long... Sadly I do not care enough about this topic to trudge through all that info; got better things to do.

[wabbit]

Ultimately DRM is pushing legit users to either get pirated games, or buy the original and get a patch to play it without this new always on internet based DRM.

[Necuno]

any man made thing can be bypassed

[Alan]

We're stuck between a rock and a hard place. Companies who are out simply to squeeze as much profit as they can out of us gamers and pirates who steal their products so they don't have to cough up anything at all.

[Tank]

next up you'll see the need of using usb dongles for each game you want to buy or own...

[shadowfox]

Haha ... no ... next they'll have someone come visit you and stand behind you every time you play

[Blackhand]

So I was playing the PC version of Assassin's Creed II this weekend without any form of crack.

After installing and running the game for the first time, I was prompted for a Username/Password or to create one, then for the game CD key to be associated with my account. The whole process took about... 20-30 seconds so it wasn't particularly painful.

I played most of Saturday during the day without a single issue and got quite far in the game. At this point, I wouldn't have had any major complaints, HOWEVER, Sunday arrived and I wanted to play some more. Wow, hassles the entire day. The login for the Ubisoft launcher was taking forever, 5min+-. Once in game, it was getting stuck for another 5min+- trying to "Connect to network" after selecting Story Mode. To make things a whole lot worse, frequently during gameplay (2-3 times an hour) the game would suddenly pause and say "Lost connection to server. Reconnecting." with an option to Exit to Windows. At about 5pm the pauses in game had reached unbearable, pausing as much as twice every 5 mins.

The problems eased off completely at about 21:00 and Ubisoft confirms that "we have shit for brains and didn't anticipate the amount of traffic we'd be receiving, so the amount and quality of servers we put up were equally shit".

Its really disappointing, because other than the DRM, clearly the developers have put a tremendous amount of effort in doing a proper PC version. It's top notch and I have thoroughly enjoyed it from the start. Not a single crash, bug, graphical or control issue and the game looks excellent on full graphics. Hopefully Ubi step up and issue another crack as a hotfix.

[sycogrim]

Just a heads up... I just checked a source and Silent Hunter 5 was indeed cracked by Skidrow about 4days ago... who knows how long before they crack ACII