Le sigh.

[DaFox]

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/62098

Prediction: New DRM so... It will work great once, Pirates will be without Assassin's Creed 2 Settlers 7 for a week or two (which is substantial piracy protection I fully admit) Then they get a crack out and, bam any games to use this DRM will take mere hours to crack.

As seen in SecuROM 7.34.0007 with online activation as first used in a little game called Bioshock. 10 Days from release to a proper working crack, Enough time to have people excited to pirate it go "Okay this is taking too long I'm just going to go buy it so that I can finally play it". It worked, SecuROM 7 was a success for once. Now? It takes about 25 minutes to fully crack something with SecuROM 7.

[StingingVelvet]

I'll buy the retail edition... online only shouldn't cause me any hassles for now and when a crack comes out, which it will, I will download it and burn it to a CD and put it in the box, then YAY... DRM free copy.

It is annoying of course to have to do such things.

[The_cranky_hermit]

Doesn't bother me any. If I were interested in this game, I'd just wait for the inevitable crack, then buy the game, apply the crack, and make my own backup, as I do with all of my games (aside from Source/GoldSrc engine stuff which I consider too closely integrated with Steam to be truly cracked).

*is waiting for an Aliens vs Predator Classic 2000 crack to come out*

[MobsterOO7]

As long as it's not installing anything ridiculous or harmful it's OK with me.

Also, if it does indeed increase the sales for the first games that use it. There is no reason they shouldn't update the anti-piracy software.

[KreK]

It doesn't look much different from Steam or GfWL.

What I don't like is creating yet another online account for playing games. I already have Steam, Impulse, GfWL, EA, Battle.Net and probably a dozen others. It seems in the future you'll need to have an account for every major game publisher.

That's one more area where consoles will be far more user friendly than PC.

[Skid]

Sighs, they will never win why do they even bother, PC versions come out now a days months after the console version anyway. Internet copy protection is all very well but forcing someone to maintain and internet connection just to play the game is stupid, what happens if that persons phone line goes down for a few hours, there expected to just sit and twiddle their thumbs while the pirates happily play the game anyway. When will they learn DRM only ever effect legitimate customers.

[GeneralAdmission]

Update: Ubisoft has sent over an FAQ with more details (below) including a promise that should the service be stopped, games would be patched to remain playable

Well staple my head to the carpet and call me Clark Griswold, they gave us a promise! Ubisoft, please help yourself to my wallet!

One thing I will simply never be ok with...online-only savegames.

[Dem Pyros]

One thing I will simply never be ok with...online-only savegames.

Those of you playing Batman: AA, watch out for this...I ran into it just the other day when reinstalling.

[GeneralAdmission]

[quote]One thing I will simply never be ok with...online-only savegames.

Those of you playing Batman: AA, watch out for this...I ran into it just the other day when reinstalling.
Great. Didn't know about that. Guess I need to google for a workaround...

[Dem Pyros]

Great. Didn't know about that. Guess I need to google for a workaround...

It's not that the saves are online, but that GFW:L links your saves to whatever "Profile" you used while playing the game. Which means that
#1 you can't back up individual saves, only whatever "profiles" you have
#2 if you lose the "profile" data you can't even load a correct save; the game will say that it's "corrupted."

Thread on the topic:
http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?t=96261

[DaFox]

One thing I will simply never be ok with...online-only savegames.

Online-ONLY save games I really do not like, Steam Cloud stuff though, that is great where it basically just sync's your files upward to the cloud when you are done playing, but you always have that local copy, and you save/load from the local copy.

[StingingVelvet]

Yeah, I play my GFWL games offline now because the profile thing is retarded, they had a server issue while I was neck-deep in Batman and I couldn't access my saves offline.

[maherie]

small diversion off topic, but still along those lines... I bought GTAIV the other day and by the time I installed windows live, and rockstar social club, I wanted to punch myself in the face and delete the game. I'm okay with new drm, as long as it doesn't install fucked up shit on my hard drive.

[Abram]

Ya it only really seems to need the RGSC thing the sharing and uploading of videos... I've never EVER used any of that. Sadly, I'm used to stupid GFWL. At least it doesn't need an install for each game or something.

Back to Ass Creed 2.... I agree; "Sigh".

And of course it'll get cracked.

[whismerhill]

too bad ... I actually liked revocable activation DRMs, then play offline unless you need to update ....

only issue I still don't know whether I might be impacted.... is activation DRMs on DLC with no revoke tool
(Mass Effect Bring Down The Sky ...)

10 Days from release to a proper working crack, Enough time to have people excited to pirate it go "Okay this is taking too long I'm just going to go buy it so that I can finally play it". It worked, SecuROM 7 was a success for once.

I wonder how effective this really was .... I mean 10 days is nothing in a life ffs ...
I tend to think there was probably more pissed off wannabe pirates that waited than pissed off wannabe pirates that bought it ...
but I may well be wrong

[yogibbear]

This ubisoft thing is going to suck so hard...

AC2
New Prince of Persia

Grrrr

Ubi are so crap. Typical. 2k are almost as bad.

Hilariously enough I am actually liking EA's stance on DRM of late and have started buying their games again (all the one's with minimal or no DRM)

[StingingVelvet]

small diversion off topic, but still along those lines... I bought GTAIV the other day and by the time I installed windows live, and rockstar social club, I wanted to punch myself in the face and delete the game. I'm okay with new drm, as long as it doesn't install fucked up shit on my hard drive.

I've never really understood why some people are so bothered by such things. I don't even notice really.

[The_cranky_hermit]

Being asked to sign up for two different services before you can even play the game is a little hard to miss, I think. Fortunately, there's this thing called "xliveless" that lets one play GTA4 without these things. It disables multiplayer, but I'm fine with being able to choose between multiplayer and singleplayer free of online services.

[StingingVelvet]

Being asked to sign up for two different services before you can even play the game is a little hard to miss, I think.

Not really, Xbox accounts are just microsoft accounts, so if you ever had a hotmail, Xbox or what-have-you then you are setup already. The Rockstar one you could make your account right there within the program in like 10 seconds. For all the complaining I heard about GTA4's account troubles it took me like 2 minutes to get everything setup, hardly a chore.

[MobsterOO7]

I have installed a GFWL game on three operating systems (XP, W7RC, W7) and every time I did I was forced to go to the support webpage and follow instructions on changing some really in depth settings to get it to work. Once it is working it's fairly transparent though, until a patch comes out; then you are forced to either install the patch through GFWL or be signed out and lose access to your saves.

Now for GTA IV. If you try to start GTAIV from a cold start:
You click the desktop shortcut
STEAM starts up
Maybe STEAM has to update
Now the R* Social Club app has to start
Maybe it has to update
Now you have to click "Play"
Now you have to wait for the game to start
GFWL signs in while game starts
Maybe there is a game update
If there is you have to install it
Now you click "Continue"
Now you wait for the game to load
Now you play

This reminds me of trying to quit to the desktop while playing Assassins Creed, unnecessarily convoluted and intrusive. Yes you can make your own shortcut to bypass STEAM, but that's a small consolation.