Ubisoft Loosens Anno DRM Restrictions To Allow GPU Upgrades
Ubisoft Loosens Anno DRM Restrictions To Allow GPU Upgrades
Posted 01/22/2012 at 5:40pm
| by Justin Kerr
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We’ve almost completely given up discussing Ubisoft DRM here at Maximum PC, and with good reason. Just about every PC release seems to ship with some draconian and insanely punishing copy protection mechanism designed to drive paying customers insane. Anno 2070 was no different, releasing with an activation system that limited you to a total of 3 lifetime activations, ohh and upgrading your video card, as discovered by Guru3D, counts against this total.
After briefly toying with the idea of completely excluding all future Ubisoft titles from graphics card benchmarks, Guru3D did the right thing, and decided only by reporting on the issues would any action ever be taken to improve the situation. Thanks in no small part of their efforts, Ubisoft has lightened up a bit on its restrictions, now allowing users to upgrade graphics cards without triggering an additional activation.
Swapping out your motherboard, CPU, or of course formatting Windows still counts, and no, you still can’t manually deactivate to reset your total. The only option is to call customer service and beg forgiveness, ohh or buy another copy that works too.
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kzaske
January 24, 2012 at 5:15am
I will quite happly say that I have not purchassed a Ubisoft product in over 15 years and I have no plans to buy a Ubisoft product as long as they keep this kind of cr@p in thier games. - nuff said.
b00tleg
January 24, 2012 at 4:14am
This is one of the most asinine things I have ever heard. Fuck ubisoft and fuck their DRM. But most people are docile, kind of like cows. They'll just stand there while game companies start selling game console's and PC hardware with vending machine bill feeders installed in them. Then you sign up to the monthly proprietary subscription service to download their games. So you can pay for the subscription, then you can pay to download the game, then maybe you can pay a premium to download your game faster and be able to play it a whole 24 hours before someone else. But it doesn't end there, b/c all of this has just been the beginning. You see, you paid for all of that, so that now you can pay to install the game, and maybe you can rent a few extra hundred gigs of hard drive space if you need it. Now that the game is installed, before you can press start to begin the game, before you even see anything on the screen, you now have the grand privilege of feeding more money into that fancy handy dandy vending machine feeder on the side of your console, just so you can start up the game and start playing. But then of course you aren't really buying the game, your instead paying for optimum calculated play time, divided up into convenient chunks. And if your a premium user, you can pay even more money to make sure your game gets saved into their handy dandy cloud service, so you don't have to start completely over when your play time runs out and the console automatically powers down till you feed more money into it.
And then of course, there will be the game company revenue extractor, who will be stopping by your house once a week to unlock the money compartment in your game console, take the money out and then lock it back up, waiting for you to fill it back up again.
I can see this becoming a reality, and instead of it being funny and evoking a sarcastic "LOL OMG this will never happen!!!!" Instead, it evokes a little bit of fear, just a little but enough to make me wonder, is such a thing possible. I won't be to fucking suprised if it did happen, and all the people out there, who could effect change by voting with their wallets and their feet, will instead be standing off to the side, kind of docile like a cow.
methuselah
January 23, 2012 at 1:13pm
Thought about buying this on a Steam sale one day until I saw this article.
Now, it's not worth the hassle.
Hey Ubi - Wake up! - You're driving away PAYING customers, not stopping pirates.
mellamojay
January 23, 2012 at 12:11pm
LOL so let me get this straight. Its stealing to pirate a game but its NOT STEALING to refuse to let a customer authenticate their purchase more than 3 times? Last I checked I bought the product and should be able to activate it. Many people get new machines or upgrade their OS to improve performance but its legal for them to DENY me access to a product I PAID for? UMM no... That IS theft because they are denying me access to what I paid for. This is EXACTLY why people pirate games. As Gabe has said, Piracy is a service issue... fix your service and its not an issue.
Nimrod
January 23, 2012 at 7:33pm
"LOL so let me get this straight. Its stealing to pirate a game but its NOT STEALING to refuse to let a customer authenticate their purchase more than 3 times?"
holy fuck, i never even CONSIDERED this! I hope you dont mind if i incorporate this argument into some essays im working on right now. Its so brilliant it escaped me! This is how the screw the consumer.
Biceps
January 23, 2012 at 11:50am
Message to Ubisoft(headed):
I am your customer. I purchase well over $1000 of games every year. I buy them mostly on Steam (so DRM already included). I have not purchased a Ubisoft game since Far Cry 2, and probably never will again, because of your DRM. I am sorry people steal your games, but I refuse to be punished for others' failings - especially yours.
JohnP
January 23, 2012 at 9:20pm
Wait. If I buy this on Steam, the 3 strikes rule still applies? Cripes, that means reformatting the hard drive counts as an activation which I do yearly plus upgrading hardware? Well, I am not planning to purchase the game but I hope that they are pretty lenient in reactivating licenses (like MS and Roboform).
Oops, someone below answered this question by stating that any other DRM is pulled off in order to be sold on Steam.
dedgar
January 23, 2012 at 7:45am
I stopped buying Ubisoft anything two years ago because of computer upgrading issues (read that as DRM) with their software.
I made an account with them just for the purpose of letting them know I would no longer be buying their software as long as they kept up this style of DRM.
MrPC2010
January 23, 2012 at 6:48am
Disgusting but I rarely ever buy Ubisoft products. It's more of a console company in my eyes.
livebriand
January 22, 2012 at 9:21pm
I can't reinstall Windows without counting against the limit? Dang... I've done that several times in the past year or two. Well, in this case, it DEFINITELY sounds like pirating the game is easier. Wait, isn't DRM supposed to STOP you from pirating, NOT encourage you to?
Ridnarhtim
January 23, 2012 at 4:28am
This irony is apparent to gamers everywhere, but clearly not to the knuckleheads at Ubisoft. It's punishing paying customers, it's LOSING them paying customers, and it's not stopping piracy, but encouraging it.
I just wonder how they can possibly not realise this.
Jason Hopkins
January 22, 2012 at 8:57pm
Hmm easy way to not deal with DRM is to not buy their games. Another thing is the only people that have to deal with the DRM are paying legit customers. People that pirate the games download a DRM free copy usually less than a day after the game is released. So the question here is what is the point of DRM?
LatiosXT
January 23, 2012 at 9:04am
Buy the game, then use the pirate's tools to remove the DRM. Most of the time a pirate's copy is an ISO image plus the tools. Then again, this is illegal thanks to the DMCA.
Ridnarhtim
January 23, 2012 at 4:26am
I have completely stopped buying Ubisoft games, they are just not worth the hassle.
livebriand
January 22, 2012 at 9:22pm
I always wonder that... oh yeah... big companies tend to be idiots, even if it will piss off customers and cause them to have lower profits, in the extremely shortsighted thought of making more money.
LordZarlon
January 22, 2012 at 8:08pm
Why doesn't anyone talk about how successful Blizzard and Steam's DRM solutions are? WE DON'T NEED THESE FREEKIN PUNISHING DRM TECHNIQUES! There are plenty of ways of doing DRM that doesn't completely torture the paying consumers. Ubisoft just doesn't get it. I'm sick of their head in the sand attitude to how broken their DRM is!
carage
January 22, 2012 at 8:23pm
I don't see how forcing users to be constantly online even for the single player campaign is that much better either...
Supall
January 23, 2012 at 7:13am
You only need to be online to activate a game on steam. If you don't have an internet connection after the activation, you can start Steam in offline mode. This is also true of Starcraft II. Yes, you will lose some features like achievements and multiplayer, but that's a small loss of functionality that doesn't take away from the single-player or custom games.
NicRB
January 22, 2012 at 9:56pm
Steam does not require you to be online constantly to play a game, all you need to do is to have played the game once while online.
Aside from Steam running in the background, there is no impact on my system, and even that impact is not noticeable.
Scatter
January 22, 2012 at 10:50pm
If a developer designed a game with DRM then you're still getting that DRM even if you download the game from Steam.
streetking
January 23, 2012 at 2:17pm
valve doesnt allow games with active drm on their servers. if a game is on steam that normally has drm, it has either been removed, disabled, or partially removed with the remnants being inert.
blkpanthr
January 23, 2012 at 9:36am
i have the 2nd one (Anno 1404: Dawn of Discovery) and the expansion (Venice).
If you like old style RTS (think age of empires), its fantastic...
Its very rich in material, and obviously updated with the times..
Svetty Parabols
January 22, 2012 at 7:31pm
"The only option is to call customer service and beg forgiveness, ohh or buy another copy that works too."
That is exactly what they want people to do..buy another copy.
livebriand
January 22, 2012 at 9:23pm
Screw that. If there was a Ubisoft game I liked, I would just pirate it from the start to tell them 'F**k you for the DRM'. And they earn absolutely no money there (and otherwise they might have had a sale).
JohnP
January 23, 2012 at 9:23pm
Unfortunately, pirating this game is turning into a nightmare as it uses stuff only available online in order to finish most of the campaigns... Err, so I heard from my "despicable relative".
Mastro Antonio
January 22, 2012 at 7:10pm
DRM really does have it's pros and cons but on a completely unrelated matter I have a Battlefield 3 server called :
Multiplay :: Gameserver : [MERC] Chicago 64 Player Insanity!
No need to pay to play, no rules except no hate speech
The Corrupted One
January 22, 2012 at 7:09pm
People are going to use this to justify piracy.
And
here
we
go...If you want DRM-less games, buy discs and rip them, if you want them for free, that's called shoplifting.
Svetty Parabols
January 22, 2012 at 7:22pm
Well lets see..
To steal there has to be a product to steal. If there is a product to steal, then there has to be an inventory of that product. If there is an inventory, then the owner MUST pay taxes on that inventory.
SO..
If a game publisher has virtually an unlimited inventory of a game (since it can be copied virtually millions of times), then they should have to pay taxes on each and every copy just like every other business has to.
Sound ridiculous? So does calling copyright infringement theft.
Scatter
January 22, 2012 at 10:53pm
I'm not a lawyer but I'd recommend that you NOT use that defense in court because its complete and utter bullshit.
Theft is when you take something that doesn't belong to you. The law doesn't make exceptions when there's an theoreticaly unlimited supply of the item.
Svetty Parabols
January 23, 2012 at 9:00am
"I'm not a lawyer but.."
Exactly. You are not.
"Theft is when you take something that doesn't belong to you."
No. Theft - the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. Copyright infringement does not deprive the rightful owner of the property because they still have it.
My original post was not a defense. It was to simply to point out that if companies want to make up rules and laws as they go along, then they are setting themselves up to get screwed by their own actions. So if a company wants to claim that they lost X amount of sales because of piracy then there had to be an inventory of that product and all business owners have to pay taxes on said inventory. I bet you a dime to a dollar that no software company has ever paid taxes on an endless inventory such as a piece of software. If they want to claim "theft" and expect justice, then they need to follow the other laws as well such as paying taxes.
Scatter
January 23, 2012 at 1:27pm
"I'm not a lawyer but.."
"Exactly. You are not."
Are YOU a lawyer?
What you're trying to claim is that theft isn't theft unless it was the theft of a physical product that you can hold in your hand and that's just silly. What if I were to install some kind of keylogger onto your PC, log in to your online banking and transfer all of the funds from your checking and savings accounts to one of my own accounts? Is that considered theft if your eyes? You can't hold all of those 1s and 0s in your hands so it must not be then, right?
Svetty Parabols
January 23, 2012 at 4:20pm
"What if I were to install some kind of keylogger onto your PC, log in to your online banking and transfer all of the funds from your checking and savings accounts to one of my own accounts? Is that considered theft if your eyes?"
Yes that would be theft because you are denying me my money and is still different than copyright infringement. Thank you for proving my point.
The Corrupted One
January 22, 2012 at 7:37pm
You still aren't paying for it, and developers are feeling losses.
It's effectively stealing (don't give me any crap about needing another copy or something like that, no excuses for theft short of feeding a starving family)
Ashton2091
January 22, 2012 at 9:08pm
exactly. like i said below...drm was never this serious UNTIL pirating came came about
Ashton2091
January 23, 2012 at 10:01pm
You are correct. So I need to clarify what i meant. I was referring to a time when it wasn't nearly this big of a prob. Early DRM would just check for virtual drives and make you uninstall it in order to play a game. So, yes you are correct, but around this time pirating was in it's infant stage. It wasn't nearly the problem it is today. Still you are correct. :-)
Scatter
January 24, 2012 at 12:09am
Actually I beg to differ. I seem to remember piracy being HUGE back in the Apple II/C64 days.
Speaking of those days, Anyone else remember when earlier DRM used to consist of code wheels and entering the fifth word from paragraph 3 on page 22 of the user manual?
Ashton2091
January 24, 2012 at 2:03am
WOW! I don't go back that far. My first PC game (Packard Bell 133Mhz, 16MB RAM, lol) was Shadow Warrior. Which is a good min ago...but still. Please school me. The more I know, the more I know :-)
I'm not a arrogant, I know it all jerk. I promise lol
Ashton2091
January 22, 2012 at 7:22pm
DRM is around because of piracy. But, I do think the DRM line should be drawn. Limiting system upgrades is way over the top. Heck, having limited activation is over the top. I just did a quick torrent search just to see if the Anno DRM works....and it doesn't people who pirate it get to play it with no restrictions. Which blows. So, considering that this didnt work, it only makes sense to ease up on the DRM and stop screwing paying customers.
Its true that pirating brought DRM upon us (and Im sure plenty of people would argue that)...but again, where do you draw the line? It's obviously not working. So why keep screwing people who actually pay for it? Like Me :-)
On a side note, DRM has always been around but it was never this bad. It got this bad because of piracy. If DRM is why some people pirate...then why did they pirate before DRM got this serious? Doesn't make sense.
warptek2010
January 23, 2012 at 12:26am
"DRM is around because of piracy."
Has the DRM discouraged pirates from being well... pirates? No, it's only hurt the PAYING customer... and the only reason UBISOFT and others are putting this DRM on there discs is so paying customers do not copy the disc and give it out to friends and relatives.
Have draconian gun laws discouraged criminals and criminal organizations from getting illegal guns? Absolutely not, they still get illegal guns don't they? Otherwise there would be no gun related crimes. Who do the gun laws affect? Mostly the law abiding citizen.
Ashton2091
January 23, 2012 at 9:58pm
You must have missed the whole point. Cause I said exactly what you said. YES DRM is around because of piracy. Why else would it be? It wouldn't make any sense. What would DRM be protecting the content from?
Anywho...my point was that DRM is supposed to stop piracy, but it doesn't. It only screws the paying customer. That was the entire point. Read it again.
I'm not commenting to argue the, "is pirating wrong" crap. Piracy will be alive and kicking no matter what. Im just stating the facts. It is around because of piracy. That's just the way it is.
I Jedi
January 22, 2012 at 5:50pm
When I first read the title, the first thought that came to my mind was, "Thanks, Ubisoft, for allowing us to use the game."
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