DRM Strikes Again: Ubisoft Makes Its Own Game Unplayable By Shutting Down DRM Server

from the legit-screwed dept

It's not exactly a secret that we've been very anti-DRM here at Techdirt for some time. It's honestly perplexing how anyone can be otherwise. DRM has shown time after time to be of almost no hindrance whatsoever for those seeking to pirate video games, but has done an excellent job of hindering those who actually bought the game in playing what they've bought. Ubisoft, in particular, has had issues with this over the years, with DRM servers failing and preventing customers from playing games that can no longer ping the DRM server.

And while those instances involved unforeseen downtime or migrations impacting customers' ability to play their games, this time it turns out that Ubisoft simply stopped supporting the DRM server for Might and Magic X-Legacy. And now basically everyone is screwed.

Last month, Ubisoft decided to end online support for a bunch of older games, but in doing so also brought down the DRM servers for Might and Magic X - Legacy, meaning players couldn’t access the game’s single-player content or DLC.

As Eurogamer reports, fans were not happy, having to cobble together an unofficial workaround to be able to continue playing past a certain point in the single-player. But instead of Ubisoft taking the intervening weeks to release something official to fix this, or reversing their original move to shut down the game’s DRM servers, they’ve decided to do something else.

They have simply removed the game for sale on Steam.

This, of course, does nothing for the people who already bought the game and now suddenly cannot progress through it completely, as all the DLC is non-functional. They can play the game up until a point, but then it just doesn't work.

There are multiple bad actions on Ubisoft's part here. First, using DRM like this is a terrible idea with almost no good consequences. But once it's in use, you would think it would be the obligation of the company to ensure any changes it makes on its end don't suddenly render purchases made by its customers unplayable. In other words, rather than ending support for a DRM server that nixes parts of a paid-for game, the company could have rolled out patches to remove the DRM completely so that none of this happened. After all, with the game no longer even available as a new purchase, what would be the harm in removing the DRM? And, of course, there's the total lack of communication to Ubisoft customers about basically all of this.

Which is what has people so understandably pissed.

Players are now understandably pissed, taking to the game’s Steam reviews to leave messages like:

“Doesn’t work anymore. Ubisoft refuses to fix the game. Pathetic.”

“Ubisoft took my money then shut it down.”

“This is theft, and if Steam and the relevant governments are fine about it, it’s legal theft. I will never purchase anything from Ubisoft anymore on principle, even if they decide to try and do something about this mess.”

All because Ubisoft just cannot imagine a world where the DRM its using could just go away, leading to happier paying customers.

Filed Under: copyright, dlc, drm, might and magic x-legacy, ownership
Companies: ubisoft

Ubisoft Teams Up With Mystery Rights Holder To Remove Fun Fan-Made 'GoldenEye 007' Maps From 'Far Cry'

from the no-fun-for-you dept

We have seen our monumentally absurd permission and copyright culture kill off all sorts of cool fan projects. Perhaps no industry is impacted by this more than the video game space, where you have the combination of rabid fans of particular games and franchises coupled with an above average level of technical skill in exhibiting that fandom. This combination sees an absolute ton of fan-made projects, including ports of games to different hardware, fan-made games, and even the re-creation of old games within new ones. It should be obvious that all of this carries very little monetary risk for the game makers, and, in fact, often times could be a boon, and yet it is all too common for publishers and developers to sic lawyers on their own fans rather than figuring out a way to coexist or benefit from them.

But sometimes this nonsense gets down to an absurdly granular level. Such appears to the be the case with one YouTuber going by Krollywood, who spent hundreds of hours recreating the maps for the classic N64 game GoldenEye 007 in Far Cry 5, only to have those maps removed by Ubisoft in response to a copyright claim.

You could find and play these levels yourself by hopping into Far Cry 5’s arcade mode and punching in Krollywood’s username. As of this writing, you no longer can. Ubisoft removed them all from Far Cry 5, a move that Krollywood described as “really sad,” noting that he probably won’t be able to restore them since he’s “on their radar now.”

“I’m really sad—not because of myself or the work I put in the last three years, [but] because of the players who wanna play it or bought Far Cry just to play my levels,” Krollywood told Kotaku in an email today.

Ubisoft hasn't responded as of this writing as to who made the copyright claim, but it appears the rights are held by MGM, the film studio that put out the movie of the same name. Notably, it's unclear just how valid a copyright claim would even be. Ubisoft owns the code used to make the game and used by fans to make new levels. Krollywood recreated the levels, rather than borrowing any digital assets from the original. Also, the maps were not for sale; they were free to download.

But even if we granted that MGM or someone else could make a valid copyright claim on these maps... why the hell bother to do so? What precisely is the threat being staved off here?

Players just want a taste of nostalgia, and MGM has a track record of shattering the plates before they’re even delivered to the table. (Recall GoldenEye 25, the fan remake of GoldenEye 007 remade entirely in Unreal 4 that was lawyered into oblivion last year.) MGM has further neglected to do anything with the license it’s sitting on—for a game that’s older than the Game Boy Color, by the way. At the end of the day, shooting this latest fan-made project out of the sky comes across as a punitive move, at best.

“In the beginning, I started this project just for me and my best friend, because we loved the original game so much,” Krollywood said. “But there are many GoldenEye fans out there … [The project] found many new fans and I’m so happy about it.”

Sadly, it appears happiness is not on the menu at present, to keep the analogy going. Instead, the only dish served is cold, hard copyright.

Filed Under: fan made maps, fans, far cry 5, goldeneye 007, video games
Companies: ubisoft

Ubisoft Shifts Its Future Plans To Include More 'Free To Play' Games

from the freebiesoft dept

The embrace of "free" in the video game industry continues to pick up speed. We were just discussing the years-long success Epic Games has had with Fortnite, a free-to-play game that has nevertheless racked up $9 billion over the course of two years. The point of that post wasn't that all games have to be free-to-play. The point was that there are methods in the industry that completely negate the idea that has far too long permeated industry mentality which amounts to: you cannot compete with "free" or piracy. Not only does the story of Fortnite prove that isn't true, it proves that it's not true in spectacular fashion.

Ubisoft, as a company, has a somewhat tortured history when it comes to its own outlook on this sort of thing. On the one hand, the company has looked for data on just what kind of impact piracy has on its own bottom line. On the other hand, Ubisoft is also a company that has done more to implement restrictive, broken, annoying, and failed DRM than perhaps any other video game company on the planet. It's also a company that certainly has experimented with free-to-play games in the past, but it has always been much more focused on releasing a handful of AAA games per year and making its money that way.

That, it seems, is about to change. During a recent earnings call, Ubisoft indicated that it was no longer going to primarily focus on that staccato AAA release strategy and will instead incorporate an increased focus on releasing free-to-play games as well.

The company provided an update on its game development strategy during its full-year earnings call on Tuesday, when it said it intends to be less reliant on AAA releases as part of its overall product mix.

“In line with the evolution of our high-quality line-up that is increasingly diverse, we are moving on from our prior comment regarding releasing 3-4 premium AAAs per year,” said Ubisoft’s chief financial officer Frederick Duguet. “It is indeed no longer a proper indication of our value creation dynamics. For example, our expectation for Just Dance and Riders Republic are consistent with some of the industry’s AAA performers. Additionally, we are building high-end free-to-play games to be trending towards AAA ambitions over the long-term,” he added.

Other Ubisoft reps chimed in on Twitter to assure fans of the company's AAA games that those will still come, but the company is looking to build a larger percentage of its revenue off the sort of free-to-play games that, again, negate the concern about piracy and "free". Notably, the company has also indicated that it is taking a cautious approach with this new strategy when it comes to the next fiscal year, but that it also sees a lot of potential in getting some of its biggest franchises into this model as well.

“We recognise this is the first year we are coming meaningfully into the space. That’s why we need to take reasonable assumptions for year one on the top line as well as on the contribution, but of course we want to make sure this is a strong contributor in the long-term to the expansion of the overall brand on console and PC, and then of course will come mobile at a later time.”

Duguet elaborated on the new direction: “We think that we have a great opportunity to meaningfully expand the audiences of our biggest franchises.

As with all things when it comes to releasing free-to-play games, the way it's done is everything. If Ubisoft is looking at all of this strictly as a cash-cow in the sense that it's going to load these games up with in-game purchases that effect core gameplay, it will fail. That type of thing just annoys, well, everyone. But, as several very well done free-to-play games including Fortnite have demonstrated, there are certainly right ways to do free-to-play. If Ubisoft does this the right way, perhaps it can largely get out of the dumb DRM, complaining about piracy business and back to making money off of making great games.

Filed Under: compete with free, copyright, free, free to play, piracy, video games
Companies: ubisoft

Ubisoft Bows To Monster Energy To Rename An Upcoming Game Horribly

from the scared-of-the-monster dept

Veteran Techdirt readers will have been so tempered by stories about Monster Energy playing the trademark bully at this point that the mere mention of the company should cause them to roll their eyes. Still, the history of what we've covered in the Monster's attempt to win the trademark-protectionist championship are still constructive in one very important way: Monster Energy regularly loses these disputes. That in itself shouldn't be terribly surprising; the company's decisions on just how often to enforce the trademark rights it has are often so absurd that it would be a shock if it put together any sort of real winning streak. But what is surprising is when victims of Monster's bullying choose to actually concede to the bullying, given that losing track record.

But it happens, even when the victim is a large enough entity that it could fight if it wanted to. A recent example of this is how Ubisoft changed the name of an upcoming video game after Monster Energy opposed its trademark application for it.

Ubisoft's Gods & Monsters recently underwent some rebranding, switching its name to the demonstrably-worse Immortals Fenyx Rising a few weeks ago. It has gone over like a lead balloon. In fact, it had our team wondering if we should just refuse the new name and stick with the old one!

As uncovered by TechRaptor, Monster Energy opposed Ubisoft's trademark for the title "Gods & Monsters." The logic goes that Monster has enough of a presence within video games that Ubisoft's use could reasonably cause confusion among consumers.

Logic which runs counter to the purpose of trademark law, to how trademark law actually works in terms of market designations, as well as to good business and marketing. Taking those in reverse order: the name change is almost objectively terrible. I have yet to find any publication that thinks the title switch was even a wash for Ubisoft, never mind beneficial. The universal opinion seems to be, and I agree with it, that Ubisoft to one extent or another participated in a bit of self-harm by this rebranding.

Now, on to the actual legal question. The consensus here too seems to be that Ubisoft could have easily have won this battle on the merits, but didn't want to simply to avoid any delay stemming from a legal battle.

Playing armchair attorney, this seems like something Ubisoft probably could've won, no? My guess is that it has less to do with whether or not Ubisoft cared to spend the money on this legal battle, and more to do with just getting the game out on shelves. Immortals has been delayed already, and its sales factor into Ubisoft's fiscal year that ends in March 2021. Fighting a protracted trademark infringement case would further delay the game. Going ahead with the name Gods & Monsters would result in an injunction. Ubisoft may be in the right, but it doesn't have the time to prove it.

Which is all probably true, but only if Ubisoft couldn't have gotten a declaratory judgement when Monster Energy first opposed the trademark application. Because it is quite clear that there is no infringement here. Whatever participation Monster Energy has in the video game space, most of which is mere sponsorship and advertising, it still isn't a maker of video games. Ubisoft should have needed merely to point that out to get its use declared legit. Couple that with the broader question as to whether literally anyone would make the association between a video game called Gods & Monsters and an energy drink company and I would guess getting a court to side with it would have been fairly easy for Ubisoft.

But Ubisoft decided against that route and bowed to Monster Energy's bullying. Which is how we get Immortals Fenyx Rising instead of Gods & Monsters. An objectively worse name. For no reason, other than trademark bullying.

Cool.

Filed Under: gods and monsters, immortals fenyx rising, monster, trademark
Companies: monster energy, ubisoft

Ubisoft Once Again Crowdsourcing Content For Video Game, Once Again Gets Unwarranted Backlash

from the cwf+rtb dept

Between crowdsourcing and the explosion of indie video game developers, many of which are far more permissive in IP realms and far better at actually connecting with their fans, we are perhaps entering a golden age for fan involvement in the video games they love. And it's not just the indie developers getting into this game either; the AAA publishers are, too. One example of this came up last year, when Ubisoft worked with HitRECord to allow fans of the Beyond Good and Evil franchise to submit potential in-game music creations. On HitRECord, other fans would be able to vote and even remix those works. At the end of it all, any music Ubisoft used for Beyond Good and Evil 2 would be paid for out of a pool of money the company had set aside. Cool, right?

Not for some in the gaming industry itself. Many who work in the industry decried Ubisoft's program as denying those who make music professionally income for the creation of the game music. Others called Ubisoft's potential payment to fans for their creations "on-spec" solicitations, in which companies only pay for work that actually makes it into the game, a practice that is seen as generally unethical in the industry. Except neither of those criticisms were accurate. Ubisoft specifically carved out a few places for fans to put music into the game, not the entire game. And the "on-spec" accusation would only make sense if these fans were in the gaming music industry, which they weren't. Instead, Ubisoft was actually just trying to connect with its own fans and create a cool program in which those fans could contribute artistically to the game they love, and even make a little money doing so.

Fortunately, Ubisoft has apparently not let the criticism keep it from continuing with these experiments, as the company has put out the call for the same sort of program for its next Watchdogs game.

Last week, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt ‏announced on Twitter that his music production company, HitRecord, would once again partner with Ubisoft, this time to help the publisher create 10 songs for its upcoming open world hacker game, Watch Dogs: Legion. This immediately re-ignited an old debate about the ethics of soliciting work for big budget games from fans.

“10 original songs. Collaboratively made for #WatchDogsLegion. By YOU. Come play w/ us,” Gordon-Levitt tweeted on July 11. According to the FAQ on Ubisoft’s website, the publisher will be paying $20,000 for the original music which will be played during the game, like, as one example offered, while you’re driving around the game’s version of London. At $2,000 per song, the proceeds will end up being paid out through HitRecord to whichever of the platform’s users helped create the music.

Once again, you have to really, really work hard to find something unethical in any of that. And, yet, all of the same criticisms are arising. On the one hand, sure, it's mildly understandable that creatives don't like being routed around by gaming companies. On the other hand, it's hard to come off as more anti-fan than complaining about a $20k payout for 10 fan-made songs within a professional game. And yet again, here come the complaints about this being some flavor of on-spec work.

“This sucks,” tweeted Mike Bithell, developer of Thomas Was Alone and the upcoming John Wick Hex game, under the “nospec” hashtag. “Pay people for their labour. Stop exploiting fans and hobbyists, while devaluing the work of those with the gall to actually expect consistent payment for work done. Do better Ubi, we’re counting on you.”

“I am still not a fan of what read[s] as ‘spec work under a proprietary open non-exclusive license’ model, & prefer the ‘pay someone to browse SoundCloud to find cool music for which you then talk to the creator & pay them too,’” tweeted Vambleer’s Rami Ismail.

And yet the fans appear to love this, having contributed to the previous game enough that Ubisoft wanted to do it all over again. Here's the thing: if professional video game music composers are confident in their work, they really shouldn't see this as some kind of a huge threat. And I say that as someone that loves video game music. A game company trying to get fans involved in certain parts of the game creation isn't some great evil. It's CwF+RtB, which is something we like around these parts.

Filed Under: competition, connect with fans, fans, music, video games, watchdogs
Companies: hitrecord, ubisoft

In Defense Of Ubisoft: Crowdsourcing Game Content Creation Is Actually Fun And Non-Exploitive

from the cwf+rtb dept

Crowdsourcing has obviously now been a thing for some time. Along internet timelines, in fact, crowdsourcing is now something close to a mature business practice and it's used for all manner of things, from the payment for goods created, to serving as a form of market research for new products and services, all the way up to and including getting fans involved in the creation and shaping of an end product. The video game industry was naturally an early adopter of this business model, given how well-suited the industry is to technological innovation. Here too we have seen a range of crowdsourcing efforts, from funding game creation through platforms like Kickstarter to empowering supporters to shape the development of the game.

In that last example, it was Double Fine and Tim Schafer getting gamers involved in what would otherwise be the job of the creative team behind their game. The personalities here may matter greatly, because Ubisoft has recently unveiled an attempt to further get their fans involved in the game-creation process, yet many people are up in arms over it. Let's start with what Ubisoft is attempting with its anticipated next installment in the Beyond Good & Evil franchise.

The long-awaited sequel to a 2003 Ubisoft game that was critically loved but flopped at retail, Beyond Good and Evil 2 will take place in an open universe full of strange creatures and cultures. During its E3 press conference, Ubisoft said that fans will be able to help populate that universe with their own music and artwork through a partnership with a company called HitRECord, with that company’s founder, actor-turned-entrepreneur Joseph Gordon-Levitt, appearing on stage.

The HitRECord-powered Space Monkey Program allows fans to submit ideas and works into a series of musical and visual categories like “devotional music,” “anti-hybrid propaganda,” and “anti-establishment art.” Other fans can then comment on and remix those works, which will ultimately be evaluated by HitRECord and—if they fit the game well enough—sent along to Ubisoft. Everybody who’s contributed at all to an accepted work will be paid.

If you're anything like me, your reaction to this was purely positive. Fans of Ubisoft titles and Beyond Good & Evil get to contribute to the game in a way they will recognize and be paid some amount of money for? How cool is that? Collaboration with fans on the creation of art is squarely in the realm of our CwF+RtB formula. To add some compensation to that makes this all the better. And, in my opinion, if this were anyone but Ubisoft doing this kind of thing, nobody would be pushing back on it at all. But because of Ubisoft's sketchy reputation, many are viewing this through purely cynical glasses and seeing nothing other than a company trying to avoid paying the full rate for the creation of its game.

Almost immediately after Ubisoft’s conference, critics and developers started asking questions: Why not just pay full-time, salaried developers to do this work? What happens if fans’ work doesn’t get accepted? Do they not get paid? Did they do it all for nothing?

Scott Benson, the co-creator of the indie game Night in the Woods and a vocal advocate for workers’ rights, pointed out that HitRECord’s business model seems to rely on what’s known as “spec work,” short for “speculation.” This is a common but nonetheless ethically muddy practice in creative and design fields. When you do work “on spec,” you’re producing something that a buyer might decide to pick up and then pay you for.

Great, except this isn't being done in the "creative industry" at all, but rather directly with fans of the game franchise. Were Ubisoft trying to strong-arm artists for content it would otherwise pay for up front, then, yeah, this would suck. That's not what it's doing at all, though. Instead, the company is going directly to fans and asking them, rather than coercing them, to get involved in the project in a way those fans will find meaningful. Does this have the happy coincidence of being somewhat less costly? Sure. There's no denying that. But so what? If fans of a game are able to compete with the art created by the creative industry and want to do that type of thing under this platform, where exactly is the ethical dilemma? Were Benson to have his way, fans should be denied this opportunity because... why? Because someone else might not get paid? Where is the sense in that?

There's also something to be said for HitRECord's meta-crowdsourcing experiment here and how interesting it will be to see if it can be pulled off.

“At HR, people build on each other’s ideas, and our website (and community) keeps track of how projects evolve—and how ideas influence one another,” HitRECord executive producer Jared Geller said in an email, noting that the company has paid out a total of nearly $3 million since it was founded in 2010. “So any contribution that is included in any of the songs or visuals (guitar parts, vocal stems, etc) delivered to the Beyond Good and Evil 2 dev team will get credited and paid. If your contribution isn’t used, you don’t get paid.”

So it's not just milking a fanbase for cheap labor, but allowing that fanbase to them play off of one another and build a community product, which will then be injected into the game and for which they will be paid. I mean, come on, if everyone could take their labor union hats off for just a second, they'd have to admit how cool an experiment this is. And, while HitRECord will have the ultimate decision-making authority on how compensation is divvied up between creators, it even takes feedback from multiple creators into account when making those decisions.

The one area where there might be real concern is copyright infringement.

There are other possible complications, as well, said a representative of NoSpec, an organization that advocates against the practice of spec work.

“When people who participate in spec work know that the chance of payment is slim-to-none, it invites the fastest possible turnaround, and we’ve found that spec websites (those that sell design contest listings) are rife with plagiarism,” wrote the rep in an email.

There is truth to this and Ubisoft and HitRECord have better have their shit in order if they don't want to turn this into some hellscape of accusations about plagiarism and copyright infringement. But if they can pull this off, the end result is going to be the injection of the voice of the fan directly into its game, which is about all we could hope for coming from a content producer.

I'll end this with a thought experiment. Imagine for a moment if I had written this same post, except I did a find/replace for "Ubisoft" and replaced it with "Sole game creator." Does anyone really think the same level of outrage would exist? If not, then this isn't a moral question at all, but a monetary one. And if that's the case, it should go without saying that Ubisoft's reputation shouldn't prevent it from being able to try something good and cool with its fans.

Filed Under: beyond good and evil, crowdsourcing, fans
Companies: ubisoft

Ubisoft Perma-Bans Creator Of Cool, Non-Cheating Tool For 'The Division' Because It Was Made With Cheating Software

from the cluster-bomb-collateral-damage dept

There are lots of ways companies can deal with those who cheat in online video games. We have seen developers and publishers sue those who cheat, we have seen national governments criminalize this kind of cheating, and we even got to see Rockstar's attempt to force cheaters to only play with other cheaters. While these sorts of efforts vary wildly, the common response from game publishers is to be entirely too ham-fisted in keeping cheaters out of online games. This results in all sorts of problems, ranging from punishing players who weren't actually cheating to creating all kinds of collateral damage.

One example of the latter recently transpired when the maker of a very cool tool for Ubisoft's Tom Clancy: The Division found himself permanently banned from the game even though he hadn't participated in anything resembling cheating at all. First, let's outline what he created.

Cinematic Tools is a program developed by a Finish physics student named Matti Hietanen to help players take control of in-game cameras for the purposes of capturing interesting footage and images. He’s made the tool for 22 games, from Battlefield 1 to Dark Souls III, to Star Wars: Battlefront II. When the program is running, players can map Hotkeys to things like a free cam mode, timestop, and HUD removal as well as play around with the camera’s depth of field. This means they can unhook the camera from their player, make the sun set, change the weather and snap a great screenshot of the game from an angle that normal players would never see. It can result in beautiful work.

Beautiful isn't the half of it. The tool is essentially designed to allow players to take cinematic shots in a variety of games, including The Division, which they can then share with the wider world. Put another way, the tool basically allows the fans of these games to show off the fantastic visuals within them from angles that would have otherwise been unavailable. Using the tool, you get artistic in-game shots such as this:

That's just an example; there are a ton more of these types of shots. Two things are immediately evident when you view the "photos" taken using the tool. First, there are many fans of these games that go to great lengths to add an artistic eye to setting up these shots. A great deal of care has gone into the positioning of the camera, the lighting, and the depth of field settings, all of which are enabled by Cinematic Tools. Second, the visuals in these shots are absolutely stunning and full credit for that aspect of the shots goes to the makers of these games. If these screenshots do anything at all, they highlight the dedication and effort that gamemakers like Ubisoft and the developers they partner with to create mind blowing visuals for these games. It should be seen as an advertisement for these titles, if nothing else.

So why did Hietanen get banned? Well, because of the technology he used to make his application.

Cinematic Tools isn’t designed for cheating, but it was built using things like Cheat Engine, a program that some players use to look for opponents’ information, positions, and aim angles in a multiplayer match. He said he used them in order to dig into the game’s code and find ways to take control of its third-person camera, day and night cycle, and weather effects. All of this breaches the game’s Code of Conduct. Hietanen warns potential users of Cinematic Tools on his website that bans are possible.

Hietanen thinks that its his use of Cheat Engine that got him in trouble and not for his own Cinematic Tools program. “I’ve heard of other people who have gotten banned for using Cheat Engine for screenshotting so that gives me some confidence it isn’t about the Cinematic Tools.” Using Cheat Engine to reverse engineer how a game’s camera works is currently an unavoidable part of how he builds his tools though. He added that while automated bans are expected, he hopes that appeals are at least looked at. “I don’t think that’d be too hard and staying completely silent to banned content creators, no matter how hard they try making contact, really sucks,” Hietanen said. This is the first time he’s ever been banned for life.

This serves to highlight a couple of things. To start, cluster-bomb style cheat blocking is going to create this kind of collateral damage. Period. Full stop. To be fair to Ubisoft, the company didn't start this war. Those who choose to cheat in its games did. Still, when a company's anti-piracy measures are so ham-fisted as to not only perma-ban a party that was not cheating, but also one who created a tool that is essentially a tool for advertising the visuals of the game in question, that's not a good anti-cheating strategy.

The other thing this highlights is that targeting tools and technology that can be used for cheating, but aren't limited to doing so, will end up causing collateral damage as well. In this case, it's hard to fault Ubisoft too much. I mean, the name of the program is "Cheat Engine." Still, it will hopefully be a useful bit of education for Ubisoft to have put a blanket target on that program only to see an innocent and beneficial result of that program caught up in a ban.

Hopefully Ubisoft will see the error in all of this and lift Hietanen's ban. He's essentially working for the company's advertising department for free, after all.

Filed Under: cheats, cinematic tools, matti hietanen, mods, the division
Companies: ubisoft

With Denuvo Broken, Ubisoft Doubles Up On DRM for Assasin's Creed Origin, Tanking Everyone's Computers

from the destroying-reputations-monumentally dept

There are really two themes when it comes to DRM, software supposedly created to stop video game piracy. The first and most notorious theme is what an utter failure DRM has been in accomplishing this core mission. Even once-vaunted DRM platforms like Denuvo have been reduced to code-bloat within the games they're meant to protect. And that's the DRM on the effective end of the spectrum, relatively speaking. But the other theme, one that is arguably far more important and impactful, is how absolutely great DRM software tends to be at annoying customers and prohibiting them from enjoying the games they legitimately purchased. This theme presents itself in multiple forms, from people being flatout unable to use the software they purchased at all, to performance hits due to the DRM software slowing down the customer's computers, to opening up grand new security holes through which malicious actors happily dive into the lives of those very same customers.

The track record for DRM, in other words, is almost laughably bad. That AAA publishers haven't acknowledged this reality and still use various forms of DRM is an absurdity. But what Ubisoft did in reacting to the demise of Denuvo, essentially to double up on DRM, is backfiring in predictably frustrating ways. Ubisoft, being Ubisoft, included Denuvo's DRM for Assasin's Creed Origins. But with all the news for Denuvo being bad, the company knew the game would be cracked in hours or days using Denuvo. So, instead of simply removing the customer-annoying DRM, Ubisoft decided to add another layer of DRM on top of it, in the form of VMProtect.

According to Voksi, whose ‘Revolt’ team cracked Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus before its commercial release last week, it’s none of these. The entire problem is directly connected to desperate anti-piracy measures. As widely reported (1,2), the infamous Denuvo anti-piracy technology has been taking a beating lately. Cracking groups are dismantling it in a matter of days, sometimes just hours, making the protection almost pointless. For Assassin’s Creed Origins, however, Ubisoft decided to double up, Voksi says.

“Basically, Ubisoft have implemented VMProtect on top of Denuvo, tanking the game’s performance by 30-40%, demanding that people have a more expensive CPU to play the game properly, only because of the DRM. It’s anti-consumer and a disgusting move,” he told TorrentFreak.

If the VMProtect name sounds familiar, that's because it was the company that actually accused Denuvo of using its software in its product without properly licensing it. And if layering DRMs on top of one another and expecting it not to have a negative effect on legit customers sounds like the product of insanity, that's because it is. Basically, unless you're running an upper end processor, the game is likely to be unplayable.

“What is the normal CPU usage for this game?” a user asked on Steam forums. “I randomly get between 60% to 90% and I’m wondering if this is too high or not.”

The individual reported running an i7 processor, which is no slouch. However, for those running a CPU with less oomph, matters are even worse. Another gamer, running an i5, reported a 100% load on all four cores of his processor, even when lower graphics settings were selected in an effort to free up resources.

“It really doesn’t seem to matter what kind of GPU you are using,” another complained. “The performance issues most people here are complaining about are tied to CPU getting maxed out 100 percent at all times. This results in FPS [frames per second] drops and stutter. As far as I know there is no workaround.”

Well, gentle Steam user, there is a workaround, but it mostly involves buying games from a company that is more interested in providing a great gaming experience to its actual customers than attempting to stamp out game piracy when doing so has proven the most futile task in the industry. If even lowering the graphics settings doesn't keep the game from stuttering noticeably, it won't be long before the refund requests start pouring in. Especially when this decision to layer DRMs like sweatshirts causes customer machines to overheat.

The situation is reportedly so bad that some users are getting the dreaded BSOD (blue screen of death) due to their machines overheating after just an hour or two’s play. It remains unclear whether these crashes are indeed due to the VMProtect/Denuvo combination but the perception is that these anti-piracy measures are at the root of users’ CPU utilization problems.

Ubisoft is always going to Ubisoft, I suppose.

Filed Under: assasin's creed origin, denuvo, drm, video games
Companies: ubisoft

Bolivia Initiates Diplomatic Action With France Over Portrayal In Fictional Video Game

from the un-bolivia-ble dept

There's been something of a trend recently in which the digital realm of video games have begun penetrating reality. This has taken several forms, from many countries attempting to dress up their real world military capabilities using video game footage, to infractions within the gaming realm resulting in real world criminal charges. This has come to be in part because gaming has become a dominant form of entertainment for so much of the population and in part because of how realistic games have become.

But neither seems to be much of a factor in what I think is a first: Bolivia has filed a dipolomatic complaint with France in response to the country's fictionalized portrayal in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands.

The Bolivian government has filed a formal complaint with the French embassy about a video game produced by a French company that portrays the South American country as an area controlled by drug traffickers, authorities said. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Interior Minister Carlos Romero said Bolivia had delivered a letter to the French ambassador and asked that the French government intervene, adding that Bolivia reserved the right to take legal action.

"We have the standing to do it (take legal action), but at first we prefer to go the route of diplomatic negotiation," Romero said.

Now, the setting for the game is a fictionalized version of Bolivia where, contrary to reality, large swaths of the country are controlled by Mexican drug cartels that are wreaking all manner of havoc over the land. The key part of that would be that it's fictional. As in not mirroring reality. You know, such as pretty much every other work of fictional art that has ever been created.

Oh, also, Ubisoft chose Bolivia for the setting specifically because of how much it appreciated the beauty of the country.

In a statement to Reuters on Thursday, Ubisoft said the game is "a work of fiction" and that Bolivia was chosen as the background for the game because of its "magnificent landscapes and rich culture."

"While the game's premise imagines a different reality than the one that exists in Bolivia today, we do hope that the in-game world comes close to representing the country's beautiful topography," Ubisoft said.

I don't know what the workload of the Bolivian diplomatic corps looks like, and I frankly don't care. There simply must be more relevant work to do than shaking a diplomatic fist against the home country of a video game company over an artistic work of fiction. I have no idea what Bolivia's end-game was in trying to get France to intervene in Ubisoft's work, but I'm sure it wasn't the actual outcome, which is to have Bolivia look both petty and silly, as well as hostile to art and free speech.

I'm not sure what standing Bolivia thinks it actually has to do anything about this, but I'm fairly certain that such standing is every bit as fictional as the Bolivia from the game.

Filed Under: bolivia, diplomacy, france, ghost recon wildlands
Companies: ubisoft

Far Cry 4 Publishers Messing With Pirates By Getting Them To Admit They Are Pirates

from the okay-then dept

Ubisoft and DRM go back a long, long way. In nearly every case, it hasn't exactly gone well for the game company, either. Its uPlay launcher, for instance, sort of stripped all the DRM out of publisher's games, which didn't make them too happy. Then there was the time its DRM allowed for the remote hacking of its customer's computers. Yay. Yet, even these experiences never really deterred Ubisoft from trying to beat the pirates at their own game with different, but always annoying DRM strategies. My favorite, frankly, is still the vuvuzela DRM.

I have no idea how far this latest strategy of Ubisoft's will go or what it plans to do with their honeypot trap, but the company sure has done a nice job getting Far Cry 4 pirates to out themselves.

If your copy of Far Cry 4 on PC doesn't have FOV (Field Of View) options, and you complained about this on a forum, you might want to go and delete your comments. Because there's a very good chance you've just outed yourself as someone who pirated the game. Seems the option to adjust the FOV was added as part of an update that came along with the retail release of the game, so anyone who doesn't have it is most likely (a small handful of folks might have bought a disc version and never gone online, but then, how would you be complaining online?) in possession of a pirated copy.

Which, I mean, meh. In and of itself, getting those who pirated the game to unwittingly out themselves is kind of funny, kind of clever, and certainly isn't of any harm. If used in conjunction with a human approach and a little social shaming, it could actually be quite productive. Ubisoft's reputation would have to be overcome, but, hey, this is the land of second chances or whatever. If this is part of some plan for Ubisoft to bring out a legal hammer however, well, that ain't going to work as a matter of a long term business plan.

Which is what makes this seem simultaneously exhausting and futile. This arms race with pirates at best will never end and more likely will always be lost eventually, so what's the point?

Filed Under: admissions, drm, far cry 4, piracy, video games
Companies: ubisoft