News RUSE drops Ubi DRM for Steamworks

Would that not support the point I made?

I wouldn't sound the death knell for UbiDRM, SecuROM online and other systems yet - but yes, different folks tolerate different strokes.

Ah, but how could anyone revolt if it meant losing all their previous purchases? If you had say, £300-500 worth of Steam software, would you be prepared to lose it all over a £10 fee?

To be fair, this applies to other systems where multiple purchases are tied to a single account (Stardock's Impulse or Paradox's GamersGate) but with Steam being the largest by some margin, they're likely to be the first to try pushing the envelope.

 

so? if you purchase games on steam you have to be prepared for this. games are tied to your account. this has been clear from the very beginning. I don't see an issue with this. The only alternative is to not play those games. If I want to play the PC version of Half-Life 2 Episode Three I will have to buy it on steam. There is no way around that. The only other alternative is illegal as we all know.

In a perfect world nobody would be forced to do anything. and there would be no need for laws. and everybody did what they were supposed to do. but the world is not perfect and thus we have DRM.

 

NO! For the love of god not disk checks!

 

Well yes, if you join a club, you have to accept the rules. However did you review Steam's subscriber agreement and consider the possible ramifications beforehand?

Wouldn't a better one be to support those publishers and developers who don't impose DRM on their customers? If enough people boycott DRM-ware then it will die out and everyone will be the happier for it (except for those whose livelihood depends on it).

 

Ah the beauty of legal-ese. If you're scared by Valve's agreement for Steam then I suggest emptying any bank accounts this very instant and dealing with only cash for the rest of your life.

You might notice that you are given 30 days to cancel your account before any subscription is implemented. That's entirely reasonable and fair, Valve is not going to go charging people's accounts without any sort of notice. If you're bothered about losing access to your games due to not accepting the subscription, well, that's really your own fault and should be common sense that when buying a game via digital distrobution you are entirely reliant on access to Steam to access your games. You should never buy a digital copy of anything if that bothers you.

Section 5, again, is quite similar to ANY disclaimer for any sort of service. Check the agreement with your ISP, or any other utility providers.

9A... now you're just getting into conspiracy theories. All it's saying is that Valve is not held by any common law duty to maintain and work on Steam. They could abandon it right now and it would be entirely in their rights. Again, quite a common disclaimer.

9C, good luck living in the modern world if this bothers you. I'd like to quote Newegg.com's limitation of liability policy for an example: "NEWEGG.COM SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR THIRD PARTY CLAIMS FOR DAMAGES AGAINST THE CUSTOMER, OR FOR MALFUNCTION, DELAYS, INTERRUPTION OF SERVICE, LOSS OF BUSINESS, LOSS OR DAMAGE TO EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, WHETHER OR NOT NEWEGG.COM HAS BEEN MADE AWARE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH CLAIMS OR DAMAGES". It's simply a way to make themselves safe against thousands of lawsuits from money hungry pricks. Start dealing with it or trade with furs and skins at your local market.

Don't mean to get too off-topic, so tl;dr good luck finding something which doesn't contain these disclaimers. Anything that reaches Steam's size without them will be brought down by lawsuits.

 

Awesome! Really enjoyed playing the beta on Steam and the Free Preview, but I would never buy a game with the Ubisoft DRM. This solves that problem, hope they realize they're only alienating their own customers by using draconian DRM.

I'll take Steam over any other DRM system any day.

 

What's wrong with having to put your disc in...... the one you bought that you actually own and can use to run YOUR game without even having an internet connection ? Now they have it you don't even own YOUR game and you have to check in with "Big Brother" just to play single player.... c'mon man..... YOU/WE paid for it but it still ISN'T OURS.....

 

I for one welcome this decision. In all honesty, I am actively boycotting ALL Ubi games until they end this ridiculous form of DRM.

However, I admit I did install the RUSE beta as I am genuinely interested in this game. Who knows, if they do end their DRM experiment I might even purchase it!

PS. And no sammy, disc checks are not the way to go - thankfully they have gone the way of the dodo. Exampels of why?
- My bf2 disc got so much use it was scratched to buggery - I had to buy a new disc, as did my friend.
- When travelling to different cities (and yes, some people live and work in different cities during week/weekend), you have to remember the discs! ARGHH!!!
- My son destroyed one of my game disks once - yep, never played that game again...

There are millions of reasons... Steam Cheesecake.

 

They break, they get lost, they take up room in your house, you have to fetch the disk if you want to play a game, and if god forbid you want to play a different game you have to fetch the other game's disk and swap them out first.

Not to mention the "put in disk 1 to install. Now put in disk 2. Now put disk 1 back in just to make sure you still have it lolol" ******** when installing a game.

 

Now insert disk 3, now insert disk 4. In the case of beyond good and evil, oh and did I mention the incredibly slow speed of game installation from a DVD? I back all my games up to a F3 1TB from steam and back up all my game DVD's to a UIF/ISO file for quick installation, I refuse to install with a disc.

 

Ever tried Ground Control?
Fog-of-War. Advantage of high grounds, angle dependant hitzones, height dependant hitzones. AI that can be "lured" away and then hit in the back. Units out of line of sight are hidden. Infantry in the bushes is hidden. Free zoom camera.
It's only about ten years old, maybe on current systems you can set environment details to max

EDIT: aahhh, the makers of Groun Control was Massive Entertainment, which belonged to Vivendi, who sold it to Ubisoft.....
And there the circle ends

 

I think they're only doing this because RUSE is a relatively risky title, as in it is not guaranteed to sell a crap tonne on consoles (new IP, RTS). Not giving the traditional PC RTS market an excuse to boycott it makes sense. Assassins Creed 3 will probably bring back the Ubi system.

 

There are good and bad points to all forms of DRM be it disk based or Internet based.

Personally I prefer the disk based DRM because my Internet connection is crap. Not the games makes fault but it means it affects my purchasing decisions. You might think installing a game from disk is tiresum imaging installing a big game from the Internet over my connection. Something like MW2 which is approx 12 GB would take 4 months at least to download and install on my connection (Limited to 3GB per month, crap I know but the best I can get out here in the sticks)

At least with disk based stuff I don't have to rely on the good will of the game maker (i.e. to activate it) and my Internet connection.

Hopefully they will realise the folly of trying their games to the good will of a 3rd party and release it with sensible off-line DRM or better yet no DRM!

 

Somewhat excessive - wouldn't boycotting Valve be a more appropriate option?

The notice period is irrelevant when the option to refuse involves losing all your previous purchases on Steam.

Surely a more sensible course of action would be to use DRM-free digital distributors like GOG. Furthermore this isn't limited to digital copies - the physical copy of RUSE will require Steam just as physical copies of Half Life 2 or Napoleon: Total War did.

I have and they have nothing comparable to the "negatively affects the enjoyment of" phrase which is the real problem with that section.

Then why don't they say so? "Lack of workmanlike effort" translates to "if our software is a pile of cack, then tough".

Which, if you examine closely, makes no mention of avoiding liability due to security breaches at their end. It's also rather an apples-to-oranges comparison since NewEgg don't send software updates to your system in the way that Steam does.

As for media/CD checks - yes, they are a pain in the proverbial but at least the downsides are under user control (i.e. take good care of the disks and you're unlikely to come a cropper). Many games using these have had updates removing such checks (examples include Supreme Commander, Neverwinter Nights 2 and X3: Reunion) and for those that haven't, there's always the option of a no-cd patch from GameCopyWorld.

 

And then Massive went on to make World in Conflict for Ubisoft.

 

No - the developers of RUSE did, not Ubisoft. Think about it - why would Ubisoft. who developed their own DRM, drop it for another one? And don't be telling me 'Ubi are being honest and doing what the punter want'; you just KNOW that ain't gonna happen!

 

Surely a more sensible course of action would be to use DRM-free digital distributors like GOG. Furthermore this isn't limited to digital copies - the physical copy of RUSE will require Steam just as physical copies of Half Life 2 or Napoleon: Total War did.
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The only problem here is that GOG sell only games that are years old, so there's no DRM on those games because their not protecting retail sales, developing costs etc.

 

That was certainly the case when GOG started - however they now have more recent releases like Empire Earth 3 (2007) or Two Worlds (2007) and the 1994 classic scrolling shooter Raptor has received a 2010 remake.

 

That was certainly the case when GOG started - however they now have more recent releases like Empire Earth 3 (2007) or Two Worlds (2007) and the 1994 classic scrolling shooter Raptor has received a 2010 remake.[/QUOTE]

You're right - fair eneough. That is, if you can 2007 ''recent' (in the PC Game world, three years is a lifetime) Meh.