Ubi DRM: Their Side of the Story

[Malakili]

Actually, the funny thing about steam and their discounts is apparently that while it does sell more copies while the discount is there, the increased sales continues for a while even after the discount has expired.

Not surprising really.  If even one of my friends picks up a game and raves about it (even if he bought it for 5-10 bucks), and I didn't notice or care at the time, I might be willing to shell out the 20 bucks for it a couple weeks later.

[eldaec]

This forum has almost certainly had the same effect for a number of people.

[Lakov_Sanite]

What pisses me off is when I buy a game off steam and it has extra drm installed by the publisher. This is frankly, bullshit and not to mention that but steam does not say when this drm is present. For instance needing a solid internet connection to buy, register and play GTA4 on my pc which I bought through steam.

I'm already using this online service to show I want to give you my money and still you make me jump through hoops? Fuck you, double fuck you. 

[Paelos]

And that pretty much sums up why I didn't buy Settlers on Steam.

[tgr]

I just checked, and it says:

3rd-party DRM: SecuROM™
Unlimited machine activations

Other Requirements: Initial activation requires internet connection; Online play requires log-in to Games For Windows - Live and Rockstar Games Social Club (13+ to register); software installations required including Adobe Flash, DirectX, Microsoft’s .NET Framework 3.0, Games For Windows - LIVE, and Internet Explorer.

How long ago is it since you bought gta4? because I think they had a few months of not mentioning it, but these days I'm pretty sure they're supposed to be pretty good about mentioning 3rd party DRM.

[Musashi]

I'm pretty sure Steam tells you about DRM.

[Paelos]

I'm pretty sure Steam tells you about DRM.

They usually do. Settlers was in bold italic caps of all things. It looked like they put a huge Surgeon General's warning at the bottom of their game text.

[Samwise]

They might have only started doing that after a couple of mishaps, but I haven't heard of any recent issues with stealth DRM on a Steam purchase.  There's always a full disclosure right there on the store page.  (Which I hope will eventually encourage publishers to strip that stuff out for the Steam release so they don't have the equivalent of the "causes cancer in lab rats" sticker on their game's store page.)

[UnSub]

Valve releases like, what, one game every year or two? Much more in their interest as a distributor to make it as easy as possible for the hundreds of other developers out there to release their games through their service.

It's about control and future-proofing.

Steam is great today, then (say) Apple buys Valve and things change. Or Valve starts asking for a higher cut of prices on Steam or something.

If UbiSoft has their own distribution system set-up, it gives them a much greater control over the release of their titles and protects them against these kind of future events.

[Paelos]

Except I don't trust Ubisoft to support digital agreements at all after it stops being convenient. I just reloaded Civ 4 on my computer. Do you think I would be able to do that with anything I bought digitally from Ubisoft's system in 2, 3, or even 5 years?

[Sky]

For instance needing a solid internet connection to buy, register and play GTA4 on my pc which I bought through steam.

Not sure when you got it. Rockstar club stuff has been patched out to be required only for online stuff, totally optional. I still do need to find out how to get rid of the two nag popups every time the game starts up, but I'd rather click those than have to sign in every time I play.