Ubisoft Dumps Prince of Persia DRM, Remains Skeptical
Written by enigmax on December 12, 2008Earlier this year we reported that Ubisoft faced with problems with the DRM on Rainbox 6: Vegas 2, and released a fix - in the form of a no-CD crack actually created by warez group. Following on from this bad experience, Ubisoft has just released the PC version of Prince of Persia without DRM, but expect piracy to be high.
Ubisoft haven’t had much luck with DRM (Digital Rights Management) in 2008. First off it was criticized for the copy protection it embedded in its title Assassins Creed. Apparently the game tried to ‘phone home’, continually trying to access a Ubisoft server while the host PC was connected to the Internet. But the red faces didn’t stop there.
Faced with technical issues surrounding the DRM on the PC version of Rainbow Six Vegas 2, developer Ubisoft made a ‘fix’ available. Unfortunately, it became clear that far from being their own code, the patch was actually a ‘No-CD crack‘ created by warez group, Reloaded.
Getting caught pirating in an attempt fix broken anti-piracy measures was probably a step too far for Ubisoft, so it has taken the radical step of removing the DRM from the PC retail version of its latest ‘Prince of Persia‘ game.
Posting on the company’s forum, Ubisoft community development manager Chris Easton announced the move.
“You`re right when you say that when people want to pirate the game they will, but DRM is there to make it as difficult as possible for pirates to make copies of our games. A lot of people complain that DRM is what forces people to pirate games but as PoP [Prince of Persia] PC has no DRM we`ll see how truthful people actually are.”
But does Chris really expect that dropping the DRM will be a success? How ‘truthful’ will people be when it comes to not pirating the title?
“Not very, I imagine,” he adds.
One user of the forum responds, “Did anyone here mention how devs blame piracy for everything these days? If the game sucks to begin with, they blame piracy. If they don’t have money or are just lazy to make a decent PC port…they blame piracy.” He finishes up with a common statement - If you make a good game, people will buy it.
“Well this time we’ve got a good game with no DRM so there really is no reason to pirate it, right? We should expect good sales because there’s no reason to not buy a copy,” notes Chris, although he doesn’t seem that confident overall.
“I’m fairly skeptical as it’s an easy answer given by a lot of people why they pirate games but if you’re going to buy this game instead of pirating purely because of no DRM in the store version, then if I ever meet you in real life I’ll happily shake your hand and buy you a drink.”
Just recently, developer 2D Boy released their ‘World of Goo’ without DRM. It was heavily pirated, but sales were high enough to make the project worthwhile. At the time, TorrentFreak spoke with Kyle Gabler from 2D Boy who told us that he believed that their customers realized that the company was trying to do “the right thing” which they hoped would translate into a certain amount of goodwill.
If the backlash linked to the terrible DRM included with Spore is anything to go by, Kyle might be on to something and time will tell if Ubisoft’s experiment pays off too. In the end, games always will be pirated, with or without DRM, and there is no reason to believe that piracy increases when there is no ‘protection’. In fact, it only annoys legitimate customers who bought the game.
TorrentFreak will count the downloads and report back in a little while…..
Previously: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of 2008
Next: Anti-Piracy Outfit Shuts Down 75 Torrent Sites
80 Responses
there are so many things that affect piracy. this kinda advertising (which is what this NO-DRM thing is used as) will encourage people to download. if people will buy, they will buy. if they wont, they wont. Nothing will change that.
actually, I’ve seen statements from many people who are willing to buy the game because it’s DRM free and because it’s good. They want to support the developers.
I bought this game :)
@2: I’m one of those, but as I’m a bit short on money right now I’m clueless to what I should do… :/ Downloading and enjoy the game, or waiting months to buy it, and possibly forget it?
I’m gonna download and test it but if it’s good enough i do promise to buy it. A developer who releases their products without drm should get rewarded for it. :)
I think I’ll get myself that handshake and the drink…
Honestly after the GTA4 desaster I experienced I will NEVER buy a DRM infected game EVER again.
This is the right way Ubisoft and I’m going to support this…
So cool! Ubisoft has risen in esteem! I’m gonna put a smiley next to their name.
This is good. I’ll be buying this game if I like the demo. Looks good.
Nice move, Ubisoft!
It’s always a comforting idea to know that if you buy the game you’ll be able to play it 10 years down the road or more without having to resort to cracks.
PoP was originally on my to-pirate list (if anything) since I wasn’t too excited about it because of the dumbed-down challenge, but I just might move it to my to-buy list thanks to this, just to show my support for DRM-free products (just as I bought World of Goo, which, btw, is a lovely game). I hope more people will follow suit, if only to prove that DRM is a pointless annoyance that probably hurts sales more than it helps them.
BTW, fix the gameplay issues on Assassin’s Creed 2 and keep the DRM away and I’ll be a sure buy.
You keep DRM = customers are pissed and pirates do their thing anyway.
You get rid of DRM = customers buy your game and pirates do their thing anyway.
Where’s the difference except w/o DRM you sell more copies …
I hope some more studios will start to realize this.
What #10 wrote.
Digital content will be distributed freely, will be pirated, whatever the measures may be. What matters are the sales, however, not unauthorized downloads. If the game is good and people want to buy it, they will, but there will always be a considerable amount of illegal downloading going on and that simply has to be accepted.
DRM is useless, it doesnt matter one bit if a game has DRM or not, exept for all the problems it causes for people who buy the game. People who want to download the game will allways download the game because the useless DRM’s are cracked within 2 or 3 days of the games release. DRM is the reason many people download games because the cracked games work better. Some download games just because the games have DRM, even if it doesnt do anything. So why do they think piracy would be any higher without DRM? Games without DRM sell more…
What a sly move by Ubisoft, anything to drum more sales from a low quality gaming franchise.
“Rainbox 6″? Heh… that’s the same typo I made on my copy of Rainbow 6 I. :)
Forgot to add that they could sell games with the same price as now but save lots of money by not using useless DRM crap. No DRM = more money from the game.
Unfortunately the game isn’t that good.
All of Ubisoft Montreal’s releases this year have suffered from the same problem, they get really boring really fast.
Far Cry 2, Assassin’s Creed and now Prince of Persia all look great, initially play great, but lack that certain depth that keeps you hooked for 50 hours instead of 5.
You’ll be sorry you paid for it.
actually it’s not that awesome. DRM is outrageous and no DRM is just the way it used to be and has to be.
btw is there just no DRM like in Spore or does it really have no copy protection at all?
Yes! Some developers are getting the idea! (Hopefully, at least)
If this was the type of game I liked, I would buy it. Unfortunately, I’m not into the Prince of Persia games.
If anything, I’ve been itching to play some of my old games, like Baldur’s Gate 2, for a month now. And with DRM, I would not be able to without pirating it. But wait! I have legally bought CDs at home where I shall be going tomorrow!
you are a game developer and you want people to pay you money? offer something for it.
if you want to get money for a single player game you are behind the times.
make your game multiplayer and you will be able to force people to pay you money.
I haven’t bought a game in a while, but as a fan of Prince of Persia, and a proud pirate, I bought this one. At least the company is trying something new, and we should encourage the much less dickish release of a game drm-free.
I would say download it if your short on cash ATM, and when you get all of your xmas money, leave some love for UBISOFT.
I personally have never been a fan of the game but would probably buy it just to support the cause of DRMless merchandise.
i am one of those ANTI drm guys who just stopped buying games that containd drm but looking as this one is drm free i am waiting to buy it !
my local best buy is completly sold out witch is a good indication that nppl are buying the game allot !
here in Canada it sells for 29$ witch is a steal !
I have too much respect for what they did for the consummer by removingthe stupid drm and i will buy the game as soon as is back in stock !
At this price and witchout DRM, now thats what y call VALUE !
Please people buy this game if you love it !
If sales are enough, a clear message will be sent trough the game industry !
I really don’t care if it has DRM or not. I pirate because I like to and it saves money.
This is a great step in the right direction :)
Already hear by the name that i wont like it.
will i download it? ofcourse i download all new games to help seed to my friends ;)
Why will i download it? I look for games that suit me and that i think are good games, any dev saying their game is good are right, but they dont consider on what everyone else but them think and/or want.
Does DRM matter? Yes absolutely, will it have major impact on anyones sales if they dont use it?
Well they save some money from not using it, then there will be those who buy because they like the action taken, then there will be those like me who simply hates the game and wont even isntall it but will happely download and share to his/her friends.
How can we fix this? stop creating super companies buying up all the small stuff, Only thing EA games are good at is sport games for example, the rest they have basicly ruined or molested.
Console ports sucks aswell.
Small game developers are the only ones who make games that can become classics, Blizzard was one for example as everyone knows who they are now.
It will be interesting to see the future games that come from Blizzard, i imagine as with all other studios thats been bought up or became to fat the games will suffer. Diablo III already looks like its going to become a offline WoW with a Diablo twist more then a Diablo sequel.
Kinda how Red Alert/C&C also went down the line when EA came in and swinged their d**ks around, the name was taken and some other game was created for it.
Its like making a batman movie and not using the batmobile or dressing them up in telle tubbie suits? its RAPE! shame on you..
But anyways i agree make good games and people will buy them remember people dont like the same stuff and DRM is CANCER..
What your “market research” says people want, just burn it all down and fire the people kthx
and
im gonna add ubisoft that lat game i bought was diablo 2 after i got a download and loved it bought the box set that came wiht the expansion
im gonna get this game prolly pirated and if i like it your gonna get the 1st sale form me in years.
Show htem everyone that it is the way to go, dont look at how many pirate it look at the last games sales versus this games sales, if its more ya did somehting right, my bet is you did.
already downloaded installed>played>uninstalled not my sort of game
I think in the ancient days when you had to know someone who was a courier or had admin on a BBS, maybe copy protection made a slight difference. Back then, copying floppies was a major source of free stuff. Getting decent cracks before the internet was actually semi-difficult. I still remember those retarded code wheels and passcodes to play games in the 80s. I still remember flipping through my photocopied x-wing manual.
But now it is pointless- with the ability to get a perfectly cracked game before it is available in local stores, anyone who wants to download can do so. 100 percent of the time, with zero effort.
Make good games, people will pay you money. Make shit games or (worse) ruin good ones with idiotic patching or poorly implemented DRM and people will resent you for years and stop buying your games. I’m looking at you EA, you ruined BF2 and CnC3.
Also, about PoP, I had no plans to buy it, download it or play it. The modern 3d PoP series is fricken tedious to play.
One of the things I absolutely hate about buying games is that if I lose the CDs or the jewel case, I am completely screwed.
The same goes for DVDs actually. I lost my Aliens Special Edition DVD a couple of weeks ago (reason I bought a DVD player like 10 years ago) and after raging for like 30 seconds I went and downloaded it as a dvdrip. And you know what I realized? The stupid minute long FBI warning is gone! I can just click on the movie and it plays. Where is this level of convenience when I give you money? Why should I have to sit through commercials/FBI warnings or long flashy menus at the beginning of every DVD I buy?
People should buy the game if for no ther reason than to prove that DRM is useless. If the game sells well then we have effectively proved what we’ve been saying all along about the relationship between piracy and sales. Of course in order for us to use this to our favour and as proof of our argument, people need to buy it. This may be a problem because some feel no compultion to buy ANYTHING. the leeching freetard who when presented with an opportunity will simply scoff and download it simply because they feel they have a god given right to take take take and offer nothing in return.
Ubisoft, you’ve just sold a copy more.
I will buy PoP instead of buying GTA.
I intended to do the opposite, but after downloading both, there is no question anymore.
No DRM + Well coded good game = I buy
DRM Crippled + outrageous lame coding = lol
DRM has never protected games from widespread piracy. It only hinders casual copying — and making personal backup disks — as well as no-CD gameplay.
Most people would much rather run a game from their PC’s hard drive than being forced to insert the original CD/DVD each time the game is played. If game makers were smart, they’d allow no-CD installations up-front.
The way things are going, soon just about everyone will have a “netbook” and what are they supposed to do to play even card games, since netbooks don’t have CD/DVD drives?
+1 CD Sale to Ubisoft.
An honest attempt, or they built a bad game that no one will by after the reviews are out, and thus insist DRM is needed cause every one pirated it.
Time will tell
Personally, if the game is very good, I buy it and support the team. best examples are Prince of Persia trilogy, HL2, and the Orange Box.
I would never buy spore, Las Vegas 2 or any game that limits the number of installations…
wow, i am so impressed, i think i’ll have to buy the game even if i’m not interested. We need to support this. Go Ubisoft!
This has got to be hard for them … go buy the game! :)
“I think in the ancient days when you had to know someone who was a courier or had admin on a BBS, maybe copy protection made a slight difference. Back then, copying floppies was a major source of free stuff.”
Not really. Everyone I knew with a C64 had huge collections of games that they could copy easily. There were at least 7-8 pirate BBSs in this area and they would all get something new almost every day.
“Getting decent cracks before the internet was actually semi-difficult.”
Companies used to make and sell “parameter” copiers that would copy the really tough disks. One thing I always found amusing was that EA used the exact same copy protection on almost all their titles for the C64, from Marble Madness on. I used to call the Marble Madness parameter, the “Universal EA parameter” since it works on virtually everything they released after MM.
Lots of people also had memory snapshot cartridges (Isepic, Super Snapshot, Final Cartridge) that could dump the contents of memory at the push of a button to an executable file.
“I still remember those retarded code wheels and passcodes to play games in the 80s. I still remember flipping through my photocopied x-wing manual.”
Me too. Back then, scanners were rare and printers didn’t have the resolution to accurately reproduce a codewheel, so I used to create printable code “rings”. Same idea as the wheel, but in ring form. Not only could my picture be distributed online, but you didn’t have to rip the original codewheel apart to make it. :)
I forgot to add that while I’m not exactly in favor of DRM in the first place, I never had a problem with the old versions of SafeDisc or SecureROM, which were only meant to verify the authenticity of the disc, but which didn’t phone home or limits your installs.
If a company wants to put unobtrusive DRM on the disc to stop casual copying by verifying the disc or asking for a CD-key, I don’t have a problem with that. I do have a problem with DRM that phones home, that installs secret drivers on my system, or that prevents me from having certain types of software installed.
How much will it help sales? I don’t know. What I do know is that without DRM, there is absolutely no chance that people will not buy it because of the DRM.
Good move by Ubisoft, but they really could have chosen a better way to announce it.
You could tell by the tone given in the forum posting that they aren’t thrilled about removing DRM, but did it only because people demanded that it be done. When I read it, it felt like I was being accused of dishonesty just because I didn’t believe in DRM. That alone is going to turn some people away.
On a side note, many of the people that I know do download games and movies, but if it’s good, they almost immediately turn around and buy it. They think of it as a form of renting it.
I never liked prince of persia, and I won’t buy it nor download it…..that’s a lost sale….am I a pirate now?
I buy games if there GOOD or not, the DRM thing is just a side note.
Pirating has saved me countless dollars from buying shit games I cant return, but it only makes me feel that much better when I pirate a game worth buying.. and then I buy it.
“Digital content will be distributed freely, will be pirated, whatever the measures may be.”
Wrong. Haven’t you heard of PS3?
I personally would buy this game knowing it is DRM free. Infact, I think I just will. Bad enough I have to pirate all of EAs new stuff because there is no way I will ever pay for DRM software. EVER.
i’m not going to buy it.
i don’t gain anything from buying it as against downloading so why would i buy it?
don’t give me any crap about it “making games more expensive in the future” or “games companies going out of business”, that’s bullshit. it’s not happened with music has it? in fact music’s got cheaper because of piracy so it can compete.
having said that i don’t think i’ll download it just yet: i can’t afford 7 gig of ratio on bitgamer :D
Wow sounds like he has a cool job. I’m only 15 but when im older I want a job like the developer their. It would be cool if I could be paid heaps for not much and get to say to my boss that it was a complete success only due to those theives that pirate stuff I sold no games, however it is important to note that the game is good and it is not my fault. Hell that would be awsome. Paid heaps, do not much, be not so good at it and get to blame it on someone/something else. Anyways I am shure lots of people would like a job like that.
I should really be buying christmas presents for my friends, but now I’m going to buy this game :) thanks Ubisoft
Pirates will always pirate, regardless of DRM.
As a person who actually buys games he likes, I find DRM just getting in the way. More than once have I bought the game only to then go and download a copy of it so I can get the crack and not deal with the DRM.
I for one applaud Ubisoft for their decision. Okay, so I won’t be buying their game, but that’s merely because I have no interest in that type of game. If I did and thought I’d enjoy it a lot, I’d surely buy it instead of pirating it, in large part due to a lack of DRM.
Outstanding! go UbiSoft!
jess
http://www.anonymity.pro.tc
There’s a good reason publishers should be afraid of game piracy. It’s not just because people can get the game for free - it’s because people can decide to play the game before they actually pay for it, to determine if it’s worth paying for.
For example, I pre-ordered Splinter Cell: Double Agent. Now, that game was terrible. Crashed over 9,000 times during my single play through, and I say that with very little exageration. And the post-sale developer support was almost non existent. I think they did release a patch, which didn’t really help.
Now, if I had downloaded and played a pirate copy before I bought the game, I would NEVER have paid for it. The game was in such a poor state that it did not deserve a cent of my money. And that’s why publishers should be scared, because if they release shitty games people can find out before laying down cash for them.
Publishers: Give the developers the time they need to make, finish, and polish a good game before release.
Developers: Don’t make shitty games.
Make games worth paying for, and mmay you earn all the money you deserve.
I bought this game… I downloaded it, was hooked, and subsequently went out to buy it because it was _EXCELLENT_
Didn’t even know there wasn’t any DRM. But it was a great game from developers I highly respect and have supported for years…
I ALWAYS buy games I feel the developers put time and money into regardless of DRM status, ratings, etc. Even if I play through the entire game first.
I can’t tell you how many games I have played the extremely polished demo for, where I went out and bought the game and it was the biggest shit heap with the worst support I’ve ever gotten. Pisses me off to no end.
Thank you Ubisoft for a great game!
drm-free online game store is the way to go! no additional costs for protection development and packaging/distribution plus instant world-wide releases == massive earnings. it is exactly the same situation as in the music industry.
tf sux dix
I for one might actually buy this game just to support the company in trusting people. I’ve been thinking of getting a PoP game for a while but the number of different DRM systems on my machine already from all the other games makes me wary usually - but a game that doesn’t use it would be a breath of fresh air!
People who won’t pay for games, won’t pay for games - this doesn’t cost the manufacturers ‘real’ money as it’s usually either because they don’t have the money to have bought the game in the first place, or they just wanted to try the game but not enough to be worth the money to buy it.
Any form of DRM has to be able to be circumvented in order for the game to work, therefore that can be learned and used by pirates. Most pirates enjoy the challenge of doing so, and they will be the only ones to lose out if games drop DRM as they’ll lose their thrill and entertainment.
DRM always only impacts the loyal customers of the genuine software (or music etc) - people who obtain pirated versions don’t have to put up with it, so it actually acts as a positive pressure for more people obtain a pirate version rather than an original paid for versions.
The creators of the games can also then enjoy the extra proffit from not wasting money producing and supporting DRM products - so it’s a win win for everyone except the pirates!
what they fail to see is that people should (and probably will) buy games that they enjoy - not games that do not have DRM. just because they release a DRM-free game doesn’t mean people will automatically buy it en masse (unless it is a good game). they mistakenly take for granted that all the crap they pump out is golden when in fact it is not.
It doesn’t really matter.
Lets be honest here for a moment, shall we?
Whether or not any form of DRM is present is irrevelant.
The truth is, DRM simply gives pirates an excuse for getting the games they wish to play without paying the content creator a dime.
I estimate that over 90% of TorrentFreak’s visitors who have played this game have pirated it and are not planning to compensate Ubisoft any time soon.
It’s just human nature.
“Pirating has saved me countless dollars from buying shit games I cant return, but it only makes me feel that much better when I pirate a game worth buying.. and then I buy it.”
EXACTLY. I have pirated tons of games that I played for an hour or less then deleted because I didn’t like it or it was crap or buggy etc. but pirating has also convinced me to go out and buy many many more games. I grabbed a torrent of PoP and played it for about 30 mintues before I went straight to the nearest Best Buy. Because there is no disc check or activation or authentication or even a cdkey all I did was tuck the game away in my desk drawer, the disc has never been out of the case and probably never will, installing from an iso on a seperate hard drive is WAY faster anyways and now I have a handy booklet that fills in some of the “wtf is going on?” moments from the beginning of the game. This has been, by far, the easiest and most seamless game purchase in years. Good job Ubisoft.
a lot of people steal -> sellers put up security measure to protect profit -> security measure makes annoyances.
the cause of the annoyance to the real customers is the people who steal, not the security measure.
did the sellers agree that you can \”try\” their products before buying?
can\’t you decide if the product is good enough to buy with all the screen images, demos, trailers, forums, reviews available?
justification of piracy is based on selfishness.
what\’s on your heart directs your life. hope you find something that cannot be stolen. Merry Christmas.
Chris Easton: “You`re right when you say that when people want to pirate the game they will, but DRM is there to make it as difficult as possible for pirates to make copies of our games. ”
Uh… Chris? All it takes is one person cracking the DRM. It doesn’t matter if your copy protection makes a million pirates give up in frustration, as long as one pirate hangs in there and breaks it.
And there’s no such thing as unbreakable DRM, nor will there ever be.
Sigh… Well, kudos to Ubisoft anyway. Even though it’s basically just a test run, at least they’re giving it a shot. That’s more than anybody can say for the other big names in the business.
P.S.
Anonymous: “what\’s on your heart directs your life. hope you find something that cannot be stolen. Merry Christmas.”
BAHAHAHA!!
The irony of calling sharing “stealing”, then wishing everybody a merry Christmas is just jawdropping.
If you were there when Jesus Christ was turning water into wine, you’re the kind of person who’d be standing on the sidelines calling him a thief for robbing all the poor winemakers.
WWJD? P2P, baby.
I’ve been burned by buying shitty games, and I refuse to pay for DRM infected games.
Hence my course of action is to get a pirate copy to see if I like the game, then buy it if I do.
Means I show up in both columns of good games, and only in the “pirated” column for bad games… not sure what effect that would have on the analysis of the stats if the person doing the analysing hadn’t considered the “pirate then buy” contingent.
I will not purchase this game day 1 or even day 2 this has nothing to do with how good the game is or what sort of piracy measures are taken.
It is a fact that people get burned sinking $90 into a game that turns out to not be suitable for their entertainment needs and thus not of the paid for value.
While i am not alluding to the inherent value of THIS game, i am also someone who looks at his wage and determines the value of ANY game; choosing to purchase games when they fall to $10 or if i think it is a REALLY great game a maximum of about $30.
I will be definately trying before i buy any game now.
I guess game companies and i hate to admit it should also look at when they are releasing titles.
I am a student and therefor have a very low wage at the moment and in times of economic struggle no doubt there are others that will be less willing to spend a large some on very few titles and i have no doubt if i had a porportionally larger wage i wouldn’t care so much about getting things at full price day 1.
What i’m saying is there will be a lot of games competing for a dollar this christmas which a lot of people can’t justify spending all in one place and perhaps it is better to hold off release of titles at poor economic times rather than as this article seems to allude use it as a time for making a point about piracy.
I don’t pretend to understand the economics involved in the necessity of pushing titles out specifically at christmas but surely there is some way to improve the economic viability of any game by addressing the reality of a changing economic demographic.
Reviews and screenshots don’t tell jack.
I went and bought COD4 based on reviews and screenshots.
Screenshots just puts development focus on glitzy graphics when focus should be on making improvements to technologies already existing or innovating.
The only innovation i saw in COD4 was an arcade mode.
DOOM had infinite enemy respawns, Doom 3 had scripted respawning and neither were good/realistic.
It wasn’t just this that made the game feel cheap.
It was the fact that though you could shoot through walls it was a step back from things like RED FACTION and rellied on decals instead of deformable terrain (even shodily transformable would of been acceptable) and even though they quite clearly had the ability to infinately spawn bots did not seem to include them in multiplayer solely rellying on people using the internet to get a decent multiplayer experience.
Battlefield 1942 is STILL my favourite multiplayer game because i don’t have a super fast internet i live in australia and quite frankly i play LAN based because i use it to socialise with friends not put up with wankers all day.
None of this was shown in reviews apart from how glorious the game was *rolls eyes.
The game was a piece of shite that could have been rolled out on playstation 2 with nobody being the wiser.
If I wasn’t out of money for Xmas right now, I’d buy this game because it does fit everything. No DRM and a quality game.
Dude. About piracy: I only pirate because I’m too broke to buy the real thing, and I’m sure most other pirates are in the same boat. (A little nautical humor there.) If I didn’t pirate stuff, the people I’m pirating wouldn’t be making any more money. Most pirate copies don’t translate into lost money. I’m sure the point has been made PLENTY other times but it needs to be way over-made to death so people goddamn get it already.
OK here’s what I should have said instead, it’s simpler: I think most people pirate stuff only because it’s free, and if their only option was to pay, they wouldn’t. Pirating just leads to greater exposure and free marketing. Ta-DAAA!
I can tell you I pirate like a bitch, but I didn’t pirate portal even when somebody called me stupid for considering to buy it since it was a single player game, because I knew it was good, and it was from Valve.
I was only able to pay for it thanks to my recent job (I’m 17), but only pirated before because I didn’t pay for any.
So I guess some people will pay for a good game. Offer PoP on Steam and you will make lots Ubisoft
I was going to pirate it, but the news that is has no DRM is a breath of fresh air in the entertainment industry, and I have decided not to as it seems that Ubisoft is really going out on a limb and being very trusting towards their customers. I respect that.
DRM doesnt stop pirates, all you really have to do if you are inexperienced is search for a crack for the game in question with google, and within a small period of time, the game is yours to do with as you please.
DRM only serves to stop peaple who actually bought the game/people who cant use google search
Although the fact that you don’t have to bother waiting for a no CD crack or the like does make it very tempting…
I’ll still buy it though.
Bought it…. Shoulda Pirated it…
At least I can say I helped in the whole Non-DRM movement. =P
DRM or any forum of copy protection wont change piracy.
I think many people pirate games because the price of games is too much if they dropped the price of games by $10 or $20 more people would buy them.
Secondly a good game will always sell more and lets face it most the game coming out of late or just a clone of a clone of a clone there is very little orginal content. Pesonally I find a 10hr FPS to be a rip of in terms of cost and time ratio but usually a good RPG is worth the money spent.
So, now it’s out turn.
If you download it & like it. Please buy it.
There is no reason not to.
Let’s reward ubisoft if you like the game.
I did buy it, based off of the no DRM advertisement.
I wonder, if people say I pirate because “I want to test the game, see how it is before I buy;” well what if they come out with a decent demo? Will you still pirate?
The key to stopping people from downloading the game is to make it SO LARGE (with video cutscenes, music, and other random junk), that downloading will either A) take too long, B) use up tons of bandwidth, or C) force people who want to see the FMV cutscenes to buy the game.
No DRM? Okay! Now we’re talking. I’m going to be buying this game, but after xmas, when I know how much money I really have, after being gouged for buying gifts for family/friends.
Please make sure Ubisoft is aware that this customer is one that supports DRM-Free, and if it is an excellent title like PoP, then a sale has been made!
After all of the bullshit with securom, star force (which buried at least 2 of my disc drives), and the other “protection” that’s out there, it’s nice to see a company that I actually like stepping forward (although tentatively) with DRM-Free.
What these punks fail to understand is DRM does not fit into the business model.
They design these DRM protocols thinking they have created the worlds best DRM, untill they get their lunch eaten for them.
Back to business school me thinks!….
That Prince of Persia is a really good game. Hey, to make some very good money online, check out
www dot thespidersystem dot ws
It’s great that they removed the DRM for PoP but they left the cost in. It’s priced as if they’d spent money on copy protecting it. I guess it’s just a lack of faith… they figure the price has to stay high to make up for the increased piracy resulting from not having the DRM on it.
Either way hope gamers support them, here’s to hassle free software.
Prince Of Persia was one of the Best Action Adventure Last Gen. The new one may be good or bad. But like some of the above said, i will Buy this game to SUPPORT one of the Oldest and Greatest Franchises around - Prince Of Persia.
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