Assassin's Creed 2

[Rick]

So I just purchased Assassin's Creed 2 for the PC. As I was watching a review I notice that to prevent piracy you have to be connected to the internet to play this game. I don't particularly mind this myself, but I'm sure I will when my net is down and I can't play, but I was curious as to what everyone else thinks about that? I can see it being a trend for the single player PC games in the future.

 

I think the interesting part about this is that eventually console games will be just as easy to pirate. With the way consoles are slowly becoming PC's, it won't be long before the ability to just as easily get downloads of games and use them on the console.

 

There must be a better way to prevent this on the PC than requiring being online.

 

 

[EDII]

Also, think of a game like this. I notice there is already a crack that allows you to play without being logged into their site. So if I pay for this game, but use the crack am I really a pirate? I mean they are blurring the lines for their customers here. They are making their customers have a moral battle here and I think that's way worse than pirating. People who are paying for your goods almost have the right to use such a crack. They aren't stealing your game, but they also think it's not moral to require such measures.

[Joh]

You could use a crack to have a "reserve" copy of a disk so you are not a pirate.

That's how big crack site still exist, just because isn't a breaking of law have a copy of your original copy.

[Canardia]

You're not a pirate if you steal the pirated game from a pirate. Pirates are the ones who steal the original game from the developers.

[Rick]

I just want to make it clear that I'm not going to do this. I already purchased the game and will just deal with the requirement of being online. But it does raise an interesting issue.

[Josh]

I agree this type of "protection" is counterproductive.

 

Steam effectively ended PC game piracy. Maybe there is a way around it, but I can't be bothered to look for it. The same goes for console games. It is possible to pirate XBox games, but most people are too lazy to bother. If someone's time is worth so little they are willing to search for cracks and risk screwing up their computer, they probably weren't a potential customer in the first place.

 

The real reason PC gaming has taken a hit is the **** graphics chips they put in most computers. If I go into Fry's and buy a brand new computer, 90% of them can't play Crysis. The best you might find is a semi-budget ATI card, like a Radeon 4600.

[Rick]

Steam effectively ended PC game piracy

 

Someone forgot to tell Ubisoft then, because they felt the need to require an online connection.

[Joh]

Same happend on Command & Conquer 4, i have a original copy but i have cracked it as in my country i pay to have an internet connection..

So this "protection" is moving people to crack their software..

[Rick]

but i have cracked it as in my country i pay to have an internet connection..

 

Who doesn't pay to have an internet connection? Don't we all?

[VicToMeyeZR]

Well since the online requirement doesn't prevent piracy, all it does is piss off and annoy your valid customers. I am a FIRM believer that ANYONE the pirates software had NO intentions of buying that said software anyways, so is the company out any money? I don't think so. Same goes for music and movie P2P transfers. Those people don't buy the stuff anyways, so its not really a loss tot he company.

 

Since Steam was mentioned, Call of Duty: MW2 required a Steam activation to play. This was supposed to prevent hacked versions right? Wrong. Estimates that $250 million dollars worth of the hacked version are being used right now... Doesn't sound like they prevented anything.

[Canardia]

Yeah, same happens with DRM. The customers who never use pirated games and always buy their games, start now using also pirated games after they have bought the original game. It makes them feel that they have done nothing wrong, as they paid for the game, and I think that's how the game companies see it too. It's a thing you should not ask about, just do it, it's the right thing to do.

 

If you don't do it, you feel cheated for your money. Other people who didn't pay anything, get a working game. Even if the game happens to work sometimes (web server not down, internet connection not down, electricity not down (running on laptop accu)), you still can't play the game from your cottage in the forest which has no internet, and you wanted to have a single player game to play in the dark and rainy nights in the forest, and on the train on the way there. Or on a long 13 hour flight.

 

If you do it, you are a happy customer, and the game company is happy too since they got their money. No harm done.

[Rick]

I am a FIRM believer that ANYONE the pirates software had NO intentions of buying that said software anyways

 

I have to imagine it's not that cut and dry though. I would assume research has been done somewhere that says otherwise, or why would these companies bother to put so much into piracy for games. I have to imagine there is a certain % that would have normally purchased it but because they can get it for free they will. I just wonder what % that normally is and if it's that big of a % to validate jumping through hopes. I mean think of what Ubisoft had to do here. They had to spend money developing this connection site/process, and money maintaining. Is that cost really saving them from the % that would have stolen their game?

[Flexman]

Same goes for "Wings of Prey". I believe EA are considering pursing the same policy as Ubisoft for more titles.

 

It's also why I confined the XBOX 360 to a cupboard and bought a PS3 - to explain, if you upgrade the 360 HD, or as in my case sent the console back for repair, a different console was returned. All purchased games then required a net connection or they would only run in demo mode, or not at all. As this is not physically convenient, away it went. Besides it was too loud and had been returned so many times the kids were calling it the "Fed-XBOX".

 

I won't pirate, I just don't buy these kinds of games anymore and search every box for that "Internet Connection Required" stamp. Plenty of other games to play and I can live without the hassle.

 

Oddly, I don't get on with Steam either but for different reasons. I bought the new Empire Total War/PC on DVD published by SEGA. When Amazon delivered it I proceeded to install it. Much to my annoyance I couldn't play it, it wouldn't let me play for another 24 hours until Steam decided the game was 'live'. Not having much time to play games I'd grab what game time I could, three times I tried to play Empire Total War over the course of the next couple of weeks. Each time I was required to download a patch, the duration of which sucked up a good percentage of that time. A boxed game I've hardly ever played.

 

Asassins Creed II is a great game though.

[Josh]

I don't think the goal is to prevent piracy altogether. That's impossible. The goal is to make piracy so inconvenient most people with money would rather just buy the game.

 

If every computer sold at Fry's could play Crysis and PC game sales were still behind, then I think the piracy explanation would be more plausible.

[Canardia]

Piracy protection has never prevented piracy, not a bit, and never will. Actually DRM was hacked the fastest of all protections ever (within 24 hours), although it was marketed like titatic: unsinkable, unpiratable. Titanic sank the fastest of all ships (also within 24 hours).

 

If you really want to prevent piracy, make the game so good that people really want the original game with all the original fan stuff, posters, pictures books, etc... In short: make the original game better than the pirated version, make it worth the money.

People who always buy games, will keep buying the games, and people who always pirate the games will keep pirating them.

 

Piracy is not a technical issue at all, it's a purely moral and phychological issue.

[Raul]

Piracy will never be stopped thats for sure. I saw a lot of games who where cracked 2 days before official release. Also the "Steam" games are cracked too. The only thing to do remains to create good games to make people buy them

[Pixel Perfect]

I agree that piracy will never be prevented no matter what system they use, so in the end the only people that suffer are the honest paying public. Most games I buy require an internet connection initially to activate the game but I have not yet come across one that requires a live connection whilst playing the game (if it’s a single player that is). The first time I do buy one I will have no reservations what so ever about obtaining a cracked copy to circumvent that. Being penalised for other peoples dishonesty is not something I intend buying into.

[Kazar]

 

Steam games can be cracked too. And steam based multiplayer of those games.. I've seen it happen.

[Jardar]

Well, according to ITAvisen.no a few years back, game piracy skyrocketed just around the time when demos became something of a forgotten art. I for one really like to try out something before I purchase it, luckily I got rich mates that buy any and all games so I always get to try them out at their place, if I didnt, I might consider piracy in order to see if a game is worth more then 20 minutes of my frustration.

 

What my meaning is, more and more games that is made out to look superawesome turns out to be rather bland and worse yet, something you would rather want to forget. Empire: Total War is one game I wish I never purchased! (I loved all Total War titles up to that one)

 

Is piracy justified though? hardly.

[Canardia]

A game company has workers who earn money.

You work somewhere and earn money.

 

You buy a game from the game company according to the description they gave you about the game.

You notice that they committed a crime by not delivering what they promised in their description of the game.

You have no power to sue them.

You take self-initiative to compensate for the crime the game company did to you.

You do this by using a pirate hack for your purchased game.

 

Piracy is just a word, which can mean many things.

It can mean stealing (bad), it can mean blackmailing (bad), it can mean justice (good).

As long you use piracy as a tool for justice, you are good.

[Mumbles]

Anyone would think you were from Sweden... Are you sure you're from Finland?

[Canardia]

No, not completely sure. I am blonde which is a swedish syndrome. The native finnish people are black.

[Rick]

So Assassin's Greed 2 is pretty cool. The controls are kind of hard to get used to. I feel like it could have better control of your character. It's kind of slow though. I'm just some guy running around doing "missions" right now. Not killing anyone. Oh, and I had no idea about the beginning. The whole premise is kind of strange.

[Niosop]

This copy protection is different than the standard, run of the mill stuff because it actually moves some of the game functionality onto their servers. For instance, saving/loading games now saves/loads to/from their servers. Other (undisclosed) things are also handled by them and not the local client. The cracks that were released early on only bypassed the standard checks allowing you to start the game, but didn't replace any of the functionality that was missing, so they didn't give you a fully working game. Of course, even this will be cracked (if it hasn't by now, haven't payed much attention) via a proxy program or someone adding in the missing code.

 

But the copy protection wasn't intended to stop crackers, just to slow them down for a while after launch in the hope it would increase sales the first week/month. Nobody knows if it actually helped any. How many pirates, finding that there wasn't a working pirated available, actually purchased the game? How many legitimate customers were lost due to annoying DRM? How much repeat business was lost when customers couldn't play for a whole weekend because Ubisoft's servers were under a DDOS attack?

 

Anyways, personally I think DRM is a stupid waste of resources. I used to routinely use cracked versions of games that I bought because the cracked version loaded faster and removed a lot of the copy protection related bugs and kept me from having to swap CDs all the time. I haven't encountered nearly as many copy protection related bugs recently, but I don't buy as many games as I used to either due to less free time. Plus, since almost everything I buy nowdays is off of steam I don't have to worry about swapping CDs anymore.

[cassius]

Stealing or receiving from a pirate is still piracy.