Friday, March 5, 2010

Ubisoft's DRM Cracked

Much to the glee of game pirates everywhere, Ubisoft's DRM has already been cracked for Silent Hunter 5 and Assassin's Creed 2, rendering the illegally downloaded versions of these games playable. When the new DRM was announced, the general response was righteous indignation, as new Ubisoft games would require gamers to maintain a contant connection to the internet lest their account be inauthenticated. This ridiculous (and French) idea did not take into account those of us on wireless connections that occasionally are reset, on wired connections with spotty providers, or even those of us with clumsy roommates or selves or cats. With the successful crack (despite Ubisoft's official statement claiming the downloadable versions are incomplete), the only gamers being punished by the DRM are those of us who legitimately bought the games. There has to be a better way to protect games that won't have the unintended consequence of encouraging pirates and punishing honest gamers. I've always been a big proponent of password + fingerprint authorization (like Bloomberg terminals use, for you I-bankers reading this). Enable each member of a household to use the game and maybe have temporary authorizations permitted for visiting friends. Something, anything, that is not so easy to crack so that pirates will actually be deterred and maybe prices could come down a bit (see, I'm an optimist).

2 comments:

  1. I will personally never buy games with single-player aspects that require me to be online completely uninterrupted... you know, unless completely uninterrupted connections become 100% guaranteed at some point in the future.

    And although their actions have caused the publishers to respond with increasingly crazy and invasive DRM procedures, you gotta admire the zeal of those pirates! Arrr!

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  2. The only feelings I have about pirates are that their actions are ARRRgravating to honest consumers (no shortage of hilarious jokes here). I do however realize that unless (until?) software becomes somehow uncrackable, there will be individuals illegally downloading games and making everything less pleasant and more expensive for honest gamers. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone could just agree to pay for their games and (in theory) prices could come down for everyone? It's kind of like communism: you'd like to think that everyone could just be honest and work hard, but there will always be dishonest, lazy people who ruin it for everyone, and then eventually everyone becomes dishonest and lazy and starts thinking Yakov Smirnoff jokes are funny (in Soviet Russia, game plays you!).

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