Look, the only reason this worked as well as it did, (and let's be honest, it didn't work out that well at all) is because Ubisoft made a reasonable assumption that almost every single PC that would be playing this game would be hooked up to the internet all the time, or could be connected for the duration of the play time. And they still were roundly derided by the entire consumer-end of the industry for it.
This doom scenario of a subscription just to play single-player games is fucking idiotic.
1- You can not make the same assumption about online with consoles that you can with computers. To the average household, a PC is nothing more than an internet/email machine, so it's a safe assumption. Game consoles may never be within 50 feet of a router.
2- Kids won't look at the back of the box for requirements before getting mom to buy it, but that only makes the situation worse. What do you think Wal-Mart is going to do when they start getting irate customers coming demanding returns on opened games because it wouldn't work/requires a subscription? Wal-Mart made the fucking pharmaceutical industry blink. You think the game industry is going to stand up to them?
1- You can not make the same assumption about online with consoles that you can with computers. To the average household, a PC is nothing more than an internet/email machine, so it's a safe assumption. Game consoles may never be within 50 feet of a router.
2- Kids won't look at the back of the box for requirements before getting mom to buy it, but that only makes the situation worse. What do you think Wal-Mart is going to do when they start getting irate customers coming demanding returns on opened games because it wouldn't work/requires a subscription? Wal-Mart made the fucking pharmaceutical industry blink. You think the game industry is going to stand up to them?
I don't buy the assumption that there will be that many irate customers demanding returns to warrant Wallmart doing that in the first place.
2- Kids won't look at the back of the box for requirements before getting mom to buy it, but that only makes the situation worse. What do you think Wal-Mart is going to do when they start getting irate customers coming demanding returns on opened games because it wouldn't work/requires a subscription? Wal-Mart made the fucking pharmaceutical industry blink. You think the game industry is going to stand up to them?
I don't buy the assumption that there will be that many irate customers demanding returns to warrant Wallmart doing that in the first place.
Really? So you think a mom that just dropped $60 on a game for her little Timmy, gets home to find out it doesn't work and requires her to 1) figure out how to connect her PS480 to the internet (which requires a broadband connection, BTW, which still isn't that prevalent) and 2) pony up even more money for a subscription is just going to shrug, and go "meh"?
Yes, it's an assumption, but using logic and reason. What are the most common reasons people own computers?
*internet
*e-mail
*gaming
*word processing
Now, two of those require an internet connection by definition, and the third, gaming, doesn't strike me as a particularly big leap in logic to assume someone interested in gaming will also be interested in internet. So if those four reasons cover an estimated 99% of all consumer-level computers on the market, for Ubisoft's purposes it's a safe assumption that anyone buying Assassin's Creed II will already have an internet connection. Especially when the one reason that doesn't require an internet connection won't be buying their game anyway.
Yes, it's an assumption, but using logic and reason. What are the most common reasons people own computers?
*internet
*e-mail
*gaming
*word processing
Now, two of those require an internet connection by definition, and the third, gaming, doesn't strike me as a particularly big leap in logic to assume someone interested in gaming will also be interested in internet. So if those four reasons cover an estimated 99% of all consumer-level computers on the market, for Ubisoft's purposes it's a safe assumption that anyone buying Assassin's Creed II will already have an internet connection. Especially when the one reason that doesn't require an internet connection won't be buying their game anyway.
Except those two items you say require an internet connection don't require an internet connection. Welcome to the world of smart phones, where someone who doesn't want to pay for an home internet connection can freely add a data plan to their cell phone provider and pick up an iPhone/Blackberry/etc...
Furthermore, every study I've ever seen (I don't place much stock in your general study, but when they all come to the same consistent conclusion without a single dissenter...) shows that, at least in the US, internet connections aren't as common as everyone seems to believe. Largely because most people with an internet connection forget there are huge swaths of the country that can barely get a dial-up or sattelite connection, let alone something more reliable that they can use with the Ubisoft DRM scheme.
Case in point, right now I'm in a room with 10 other people. Of those 10, 9 have a PC and at least one family member that plays games. One has no internet connection and gets by stealing his neighbors wifi when needed, one has a satellite connection with bandwidth limits so he uses it sparingly, two have high-speed internet they regularly keep disconnected most of the time to control their kids, five of us have high-speed internet connections we keep connected all the time, and the last one (#10, the odd one out) is a strange situation I won't go into (has a high-speed internet connection, but doesn't have a family member interested in games that this discussion topic covers).
Oblivion on Xbox 360 did this as well. You had to be signed into your profile online to access all the smaller add-ons.
I'm not sure if it counts for Knights of the Nine or Shivering Isles, though. I installed using a disc and don't have to be online, but I'm not sure if that's the case for the downloaded version.
2- Kids won't look at the back of the box for requirements before getting mom to buy it, but that only makes the situation worse. What do you think Wal-Mart is going to do when they start getting irate customers coming demanding returns on opened games because it wouldn't work/requires a subscription? Wal-Mart made the fucking pharmaceutical industry blink. You think the game industry is going to stand up to them?
I don't buy the assumption that there will be that many irate customers demanding returns to warrant Wallmart doing that in the first place.
Really? So you think a mom that just dropped $60 on a game for her little Timmy, gets home to find out it doesn't work and requires her to 1) figure out how to connect her PS480 to the internet (which requires a broadband connection, BTW, which still isn't that prevalent) and 2) pony up even more money for a subscription is just going to shrug, and go "meh"?
No, she goes ask someone to get it working for her. And the only one talking about payable subscriptions to play SP games is you, everyone else is just talking about the "requires internet connection to work" clause.
And the only one talking about payable subscriptions to play SP games is you, everyone else is just talking about the "requires internet connection to work" clause.
I imagined he was talking about LIVE but that still doesn't really go into the equation here.
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FiggyFighter of the night manChampion of the sunRegistered Userregular
edited April 2010
Not everyone who has a 360 has it hooked up to the Internet.
Further, not everyone who has a 360 has the ability to hook it up to the Internet.
Case in point, right now I'm in a room with 10 other people. Of those 10, 9 have a PC and at least one family member that plays games. One has no internet connection and gets by stealing his neighbors wifi when needed, one has a satellite connection with bandwidth limits so he uses it sparingly, two have high-speed internet they regularly keep disconnected most of the time to control their kids, five of us have high-speed internet connections we keep connected all the time, and the last one (#10, the odd one out) is a strange situation I won't go into (has a high-speed internet connection, but doesn't have a family member interested in games that this discussion topic covers).
So, did you just run around and conduct a survey for your post, or is that entire paragraph a product of your creativity?
73 percent of 360 users have the console connected to the internet.
73 percent of all XBOX 360 units sold are eventually connected to the internet? Does that specify for how long? Is that units currently connected daily? That seems like a pretty crazy stat.
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FiggyFighter of the night manChampion of the sunRegistered Userregular
73 percent of 360 users have the console connected to the internet.
73 percent of all XBOX 360 units sold are eventually connected to the internet? Does that specify for how long? Is that units currently connected daily? That seems like a pretty crazy stat.
There is no real explanation of how that number came to be that I saw. It was more to illustrate that more PS3s are online than 360s, which makes perfect sense considering the PS3 online is free.
Still, the PS3 is only a few percent higher.
How many tens of millions of 360s have been sold in the US? Creating a situation where 27% of them can't play games is a pretty bold move.
Besides, why are we discussing this? No one is saying Ubisoft's move was brilliant or that it was a rousing success, so where are we getting that other devs are going to follow suit on the PC, and eventually the consoles?
What will this accomplish anyway? People are still going to pirate console games, and console pirates don't usually take their consoles online anyway. Again, this would harm legitimate users only.
If I had a 360 and didn't have the net with it, what would I do if they pulled this move? I'd start pirating my games.
2- Kids won't look at the back of the box for requirements before getting mom to buy it, but that only makes the situation worse. What do you think Wal-Mart is going to do when they start getting irate customers coming demanding returns on opened games because it wouldn't work/requires a subscription? Wal-Mart made the fucking pharmaceutical industry blink. You think the game industry is going to stand up to them?
I don't buy the assumption that there will be that many irate customers demanding returns to warrant Wallmart doing that in the first place.
Really? So you think a mom that just dropped $60 on a game for her little Timmy, gets home to find out it doesn't work and requires her to 1) figure out how to connect her PS480 to the internet (which requires a broadband connection, BTW, which still isn't that prevalent) and 2) pony up even more money for a subscription is just going to shrug, and go "meh"?
No, she goes ask someone to get it working for her. And the only one talking about payable subscriptions to play SP games is you, everyone else is just talking about the "requires internet connection to work" clause.
I'm with Subedii on this one. And I'll go one further. One day, the majority of console games (if not all of them) will require you to be connected to a paid subscription online service to play any of your games. Oh, you don't think you need Xbox Live? Think you can live with out it? Mwahaha
Will they one day always require us to be online? Maybe. I doubt it, but that's not outside of the realm of possibility. Requiring a paid subscription is just pure lunacy though.
You guys are missing the point that even when the user has a high speed always on stable connection, the servers might go kaboom. Like they did with Ubi.
So you had 100% of users unable to play the game, regardless of their connections' quality.
Will they one day always require us to be online? Maybe. I doubt it, but that's not outside of the realm of possibility. Requiring a paid subscription is just pure lunacy though.
At one time people would have said the same thing about television, but now the vast majority of programing is unavailable unless you subscribe to a service. I'm not saying that everything will require it, but I can see a day when most games will. A bright future would be Steam-like (edit: a better example would be XBox Live, I guess) with added value for your subscription. A doomy-gloomy future would be paying extra for something like the Ubisoft DRM that has been the focus of this thread.
Will they one day always require us to be online? Maybe. I doubt it, but that's not outside of the realm of possibility. Requiring a paid subscription is just pure lunacy though.
At one time people would have said the same thing about television, but now the vast majority of programing is unavailable unless you subscribe to a service. I'm not saying that everything will require it, but I can see a day when most games will. A bright future would be Steam-like (edit: a better example would be XBox Live, I guess) with added value for your subscription. A doomy-gloomy future would be paying extra for something like the Ubisoft DRM that has been the focus of this thread.
Yeah, but all the TV shows that were free 50 years ago are still free today. What you're paying for is new channels, and new content. The equivalent would be Xbox LIVE. You buy a game, you take it home, and you can play through the campaign with zero extra cost. But, if you want to go online, then it will cost you more.
Edit: Whether companies start making games worthless without Xbox LIVE is another matter. We're already seeing campaigns treated as the afterthought, with multiplayer being the main draw of the game.
Nobody's arguing the fact that requiring a net connection is a bad idea, but the people going 'no, it'll never happen for consoles because they're not pcs' are a bit naive imo.
It's actually highly likely that under the next line of consoles, the primary save system will be server based. They'll promote it as some "never lose your saves" deal, but we'll all know what it is.
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FiggyFighter of the night manChampion of the sunRegistered Userregular
Will they one day always require us to be online? Maybe. I doubt it, but that's not outside of the realm of possibility. Requiring a paid subscription is just pure lunacy though.
At one time people would have said the same thing about television, but now the vast majority of programing is unavailable unless you subscribe to a service. I'm not saying that everything will require it, but I can see a day when most games will. A bright future would be Steam-like (edit: a better example would be XBox Live, I guess) with added value for your subscription. A doomy-gloomy future would be paying extra for something like the Ubisoft DRM that has been the focus of this thread.
Yeah, but all the TV shows that were free 50 years ago are still free today. What you're paying for is new channels, and new content. The equivalent would be Xbox LIVE. You buy a game, you take it home, and you can play through the campaign with zero extra cost. But, if you want to go online, then it will cost you more.
Edit: Whether companies start making games worthless without Xbox LIVE is another matter. We're already seeing campaigns treated as the afterthought, with multiplayer being the main draw of the game.
That is also a terrible analogy because you aren't paying $60 for a disc to take home on top of a television subscription fee to view the program.
Nobody's arguing the fact that requiring a net connection is a bad idea, but the people going 'no, it'll never happen for consoles because they're not pcs' are a bit naive imo.
Except that it's not happening on PC. It has happened to a handful of games by one misguided publisher. It failed, in my opinion, yet people are running around like Chicken Little shouting, "All games will have this now!!!"
What, three games have this? Three games by the same publisher? Three games with huge public outcry against them? Three games that have been cracked, where people are pirating them out of spite?
I think that what they are doing is fair enough, PC piracy is ridiculous. I for one have way too many pirated games so i think i understand their reasoning.
Its not that bad anyways on the PC. 11million people play world of warcraft online, that requires internets connection. Why not this?
Once you see cloud computing become the norm, many years from now I wouldn't be surprised if you needed to access a company's server in order to play games or even work on your computer.
It's the direction Google is taking operating systems in; all of your data, files, and games are stored in a cloud and the convenient thing about it is that you can feasibly access it from anywhere. The drawback is that it gives the company more leverage.
I think that what they are doing is fair enough, PC piracy is ridiculous. I for one have way too many pirated games so i think i understand their reasoning.
Its not that bad anyways on the PC. 11million people play world of warcraft online, that requires internets connection. Why not this?
Because it's not a multiplayer game? It has no reason to connect to any external servers, and even assuming a perfect world where everybody who ever wanted to play it had a stable internet connection (haha), and all the computers they wanted to play the game on were connected to the net in the first place, there's still the possibility of Ubi's servers being down (which, you know, happened).
Oblivion on Xbox 360 did this as well. You had to be signed into your profile online to access all the smaller add-ons.
I'm not sure if it counts for Knights of the Nine or Shivering Isles, though. I installed using a disc and don't have to be online, but I'm not sure if that's the case for the downloaded version.
This seems wildly unlikely to be caused by Oblivion instead of how the LIVE DRM works.
Its not that bad anyways on the PC. 11million people play world of warcraft online, that requires internets connection. Why not this?
Why is this ever considered a valid argument? WoW is a game that, by definition, requires an internet connection to play. Not as an anti-piracy measure, but as a condition of being an MMO. That is why it is okay for WoW to require an internet connection and not a single player game.
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FiggyFighter of the night manChampion of the sunRegistered Userregular
Its not that bad anyways on the PC. 11million people play world of warcraft online, that requires internets connection. Why not this?
Why is this ever considered a valid argument? WoW is a game that, by definition, requires an internet connection to play. Not as an anti-piracy measure, but as a condition of being an MMO. That is why it is okay for WoW to require an internet connection and not a single player game.
It's never been considered a valid argument.
That's like one of those hilarious argument examples you see in a logic and argumentation textbook that is supposed to show you the wrong way, and when the professor refers to it in front of the class, as it was in last night's reading, the half of the class that actually did last night's reading roll their eyes and laugh along with the professor at how stupendous it was.
All dogs are brown.
Bill has a brown coat.
Bill's coat is made of dog.
This seems wildly unlikely to be caused by Oblivion instead of how the LIVE DRM works.
Yeah, Live requires you to be signed in and connected to Live for things that you own but aren't registered to the console you're currently playing them on. You get a once a year license transfer that will move all of your licenses to one Xbox to help alleviate that.
Am I the only one pained by how certain gaming news sites are not only announcing that the DRM has been cracked but also mentioning the group that did it by name? And also quoting them? And also taking screenshots of their ASCII art?
I know that this stuff gets page views, but c'mon.
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FiggyFighter of the night manChampion of the sunRegistered Userregular
edited April 2010
What? It's news.
Journalism is about reporting the facts and what is happening. A story should be as revealing and forthcoming as possible, and unless there is an ethical or legal issue, it's fair game.
I don't see it as advertising for the crack group any more than a news story about a finance scandal is advertising for the company involved.
Zxerolfor the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't doso i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered Userregular
edited April 2010
I don't see what the big deal is. It's legit news. Just because the group in question operates on legally shady basis doesn't mean their name and imagery is automatically verboten, I don't think.
It's like if news sources refuse to mention the Islamic terror groups by name or show photos of them because they do bad shit.
It's not like they're a commercial entity. They don't have stockholders. Who cares if they get a mention on gaming news sites as the people responsible for the news?
Posts
This doom scenario of a subscription just to play single-player games is fucking idiotic.
1- You can not make the same assumption about online with consoles that you can with computers. To the average household, a PC is nothing more than an internet/email machine, so it's a safe assumption. Game consoles may never be within 50 feet of a router.
2- Kids won't look at the back of the box for requirements before getting mom to buy it, but that only makes the situation worse. What do you think Wal-Mart is going to do when they start getting irate customers coming demanding returns on opened games because it wouldn't work/requires a subscription? Wal-Mart made the fucking pharmaceutical industry blink. You think the game industry is going to stand up to them?
I don't buy that. If mandotory net connections for sp games slip past the net then anything is game.
Isn't that right there also an assumption?
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
Really? So you think a mom that just dropped $60 on a game for her little Timmy, gets home to find out it doesn't work and requires her to 1) figure out how to connect her PS480 to the internet (which requires a broadband connection, BTW, which still isn't that prevalent) and 2) pony up even more money for a subscription is just going to shrug, and go "meh"?
Yes, it's an assumption, but using logic and reason. What are the most common reasons people own computers?
*internet
*e-mail
*gaming
*word processing
Now, two of those require an internet connection by definition, and the third, gaming, doesn't strike me as a particularly big leap in logic to assume someone interested in gaming will also be interested in internet. So if those four reasons cover an estimated 99% of all consumer-level computers on the market, for Ubisoft's purposes it's a safe assumption that anyone buying Assassin's Creed II will already have an internet connection. Especially when the one reason that doesn't require an internet connection won't be buying their game anyway.
Except those two items you say require an internet connection don't require an internet connection. Welcome to the world of smart phones, where someone who doesn't want to pay for an home internet connection can freely add a data plan to their cell phone provider and pick up an iPhone/Blackberry/etc...
Furthermore, every study I've ever seen (I don't place much stock in your general study, but when they all come to the same consistent conclusion without a single dissenter...) shows that, at least in the US, internet connections aren't as common as everyone seems to believe. Largely because most people with an internet connection forget there are huge swaths of the country that can barely get a dial-up or sattelite connection, let alone something more reliable that they can use with the Ubisoft DRM scheme.
Case in point, right now I'm in a room with 10 other people. Of those 10, 9 have a PC and at least one family member that plays games. One has no internet connection and gets by stealing his neighbors wifi when needed, one has a satellite connection with bandwidth limits so he uses it sparingly, two have high-speed internet they regularly keep disconnected most of the time to control their kids, five of us have high-speed internet connections we keep connected all the time, and the last one (#10, the odd one out) is a strange situation I won't go into (has a high-speed internet connection, but doesn't have a family member interested in games that this discussion topic covers).
I'm not sure if it counts for Knights of the Nine or Shivering Isles, though. I installed using a disc and don't have to be online, but I'm not sure if that's the case for the downloaded version.
Further, not everyone who has a 360 has the ability to hook it up to the Internet.
So, did you just run around and conduct a survey for your post, or is that entire paragraph a product of your creativity?
Apparently.
73 percent of all XBOX 360 units sold are eventually connected to the internet? Does that specify for how long? Is that units currently connected daily? That seems like a pretty crazy stat.
There is no real explanation of how that number came to be that I saw. It was more to illustrate that more PS3s are online than 360s, which makes perfect sense considering the PS3 online is free.
Still, the PS3 is only a few percent higher.
How many tens of millions of 360s have been sold in the US? Creating a situation where 27% of them can't play games is a pretty bold move.
Besides, why are we discussing this? No one is saying Ubisoft's move was brilliant or that it was a rousing success, so where are we getting that other devs are going to follow suit on the PC, and eventually the consoles?
What will this accomplish anyway? People are still going to pirate console games, and console pirates don't usually take their consoles online anyway. Again, this would harm legitimate users only.
If I had a 360 and didn't have the net with it, what would I do if they pulled this move? I'd start pirating my games.
Will they one day always require us to be online? Maybe. I doubt it, but that's not outside of the realm of possibility. Requiring a paid subscription is just pure lunacy though.
So you had 100% of users unable to play the game, regardless of their connections' quality.
At one time people would have said the same thing about television, but now the vast majority of programing is unavailable unless you subscribe to a service. I'm not saying that everything will require it, but I can see a day when most games will. A bright future would be Steam-like (edit: a better example would be XBox Live, I guess) with added value for your subscription. A doomy-gloomy future would be paying extra for something like the Ubisoft DRM that has been the focus of this thread.
Yeah, but all the TV shows that were free 50 years ago are still free today. What you're paying for is new channels, and new content. The equivalent would be Xbox LIVE. You buy a game, you take it home, and you can play through the campaign with zero extra cost. But, if you want to go online, then it will cost you more.
Edit: Whether companies start making games worthless without Xbox LIVE is another matter. We're already seeing campaigns treated as the afterthought, with multiplayer being the main draw of the game.
Because it's broken.
Ironically, Assassin's Creed II is what broke it. Or, at the very least, it broke while I was playing Assassin's Creed II.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
That is also a terrible analogy because you aren't paying $60 for a disc to take home on top of a television subscription fee to view the program.
Except that it's not happening on PC. It has happened to a handful of games by one misguided publisher. It failed, in my opinion, yet people are running around like Chicken Little shouting, "All games will have this now!!!"
What, three games have this? Three games by the same publisher? Three games with huge public outcry against them? Three games that have been cracked, where people are pirating them out of spite?
Its not that bad anyways on the PC. 11million people play world of warcraft online, that requires internets connection. Why not this?
It's the direction Google is taking operating systems in; all of your data, files, and games are stored in a cloud and the convenient thing about it is that you can feasibly access it from anywhere. The drawback is that it gives the company more leverage.
Because it's not a multiplayer game? It has no reason to connect to any external servers, and even assuming a perfect world where everybody who ever wanted to play it had a stable internet connection (haha), and all the computers they wanted to play the game on were connected to the net in the first place, there's still the possibility of Ubi's servers being down (which, you know, happened).
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
Hence "haha" at the idea of everyone having stable internet connections.
Fuck Telstra.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
This seems wildly unlikely to be caused by Oblivion instead of how the LIVE DRM works.
Why is this ever considered a valid argument? WoW is a game that, by definition, requires an internet connection to play. Not as an anti-piracy measure, but as a condition of being an MMO. That is why it is okay for WoW to require an internet connection and not a single player game.
It's never been considered a valid argument.
That's like one of those hilarious argument examples you see in a logic and argumentation textbook that is supposed to show you the wrong way, and when the professor refers to it in front of the class, as it was in last night's reading, the half of the class that actually did last night's reading roll their eyes and laugh along with the professor at how stupendous it was.
All dogs are brown.
Bill has a brown coat.
Bill's coat is made of dog.
I know that this stuff gets page views, but c'mon.
Journalism is about reporting the facts and what is happening. A story should be as revealing and forthcoming as possible, and unless there is an ethical or legal issue, it's fair game.
I don't see it as advertising for the crack group any more than a news story about a finance scandal is advertising for the company involved.
It's like if news sources refuse to mention the Islamic terror groups by name or show photos of them because they do bad shit.
edit: what figgy said