You know what they say. The incessantly squeaky, obnoxious wheel gets the grease.

I will say I'm feeling a little better about those cheap games I downloaded from the Ubisoft store. I got Driver: SF, Splinter Cell Conviction and Assassin's Creed 2 for like, 13 bucks.

Huzzah! that was the biggest problem ubisoft PC releases had, i don't care that when i bought splinter cell conviction it didnt work for 6 months, no its the drm that is slightly annoying thats the most important thing to fix.

good it failed everywhere its tried and gamers hated them for it.

If they actually do it, good on them.

They lie through their goddamn teeth all the time.

"95% piracy rate" my ass.

Guarantee you, they'll implement it in one of their crazy outlier game and then bitch about "entitled PC gamers" when people call them out on it.

Just like I guarantee you Epic is only having Fortnite "PC first" until the new consoles get announced and then suddenly it turns into a launch title.

I was only going to buy it on PS3. If UBIsoft really is going to treat me as a customer instead of a thief, I may try to kill this gaming laptop so I can see how the game should look. Hooray for using your perception even if it did take calling your customers thieves and what seems like a statistic you pulled out of your arse. I am a fan of their games and a potential buyer on steam like so many others will be now that you removed the demonic DRM. Belated hurray, I guess?

@Rowr said:

I remember clearly when this was announced and we all said it was a complete waste of time.

I hope people lost jobs over this.

Me too, maybe if they fire some people the credits on AS3 won't take 5 hours to finish.

I would like to congratulate everyone and especially those who will finally be able to play Ubisoft games; but most of all, I would like to congratulate Ubisoft on saving millions of dollars that would have gone into developing the DRM and running the authentication servers. :p

Remember when they said this about From Dust? And it was a lie? I'm still skeptical.

Thank god! I bought assassin's creed 2 last year on steam and was also lucky they didn't have this bullshit DRM on it. BUT! that uplay shit is somehow preventing me from playing it again now. :(

Obviously 93%-95% piracy rate estimates are completely ridiculous. That adds up to 3 to 4 PC pirates for every real Xbox player, which is just absurd.

Of course the simplest solution to piracy: make good games without horribly intrusive DRM is something that big publishers such as Ubisoft are remarkably slow to understand.

Doesn't really bother me as I always had a decent internet connection but HUZZAH FOR PROGRESS!!

I wonder if they ever considered the fact that the reason why piracy is so rampant among the Ubisoft catalogue is because their PC ports are quite simply utter garbage. Last time this story turned up, I seem to remember Ubisoft outright stating that they spend almost nothing on their PC versions and outsource the port. From a personal perspective, having experienced the PoP ports to PC, the R6:Vegas PC ports as well as (arguably) the worst port ever conceived - the Double Agent port to PS3, I can't say I am particularly enthusiastic about buying Ubisoft ports anymore.

Aside from that, the DRM that Ubisoft has implemented over the years (allegedly as a response to the great injustice that 'pirates' were doing to the PC sales) has hardly endeared me towards purchasing Ubisoft games. Hell, does anyone remember the monstrosity Starforce? That thing screwed over all of my virtual drives and was nigh impossible to remove to boot. It was like a God-damn parasite.

Now only if they can release their damn games the same time they release on the console!!!! sucks having to wait for AC3 a month later :(

That 93% piracy rate thing is total bullshit anyway. But glad to see they are making reprimands to PC gamers.

Will this affect previous Ubisoft games?

@Russcat said:

Obviously 93%-95% piracy rate estimates are completely ridiculous. That adds up to 3 to 4 PC pirates for every real Xbox player, which is just absurd.

Yeah... I would love to know where that number came from. It seems wholly unrealistic. In my computing course, there are about 15 PC gamers, a pretty broad spectrum of dudes around 18 - 29 (and two girls). I know that two of them have pirated games in the past, one of them only paying for games that he can't pirate. I myself have pirated borderlands when I bought it retail and I rolled my desk chair over the disk. I later bought the GOTY edition in the steam sale.

That's anecdotal, sure, but tha'ts the reality in my own small world. 93-95% reeks of sticky fresh bullshit.

"Internal Estimate" is all well and good, but it doesnt seem to align with reality judging from the PC gamers that I know.

I now feel less guilty about my decision to break my promise to myself and get that new HoMM game when it was on sale earlier this year.

About fucking time. I honestly wouldn't have any problem morally if someone pirated an UbiSoft game in the past just because of the DRM. A legitimate customer should not be treated like a criminal while an illegitimate customer doesn't have to worry about that stuff. It's a shame too because most of their PC ports actually played and looked really well. Assassins Creed: Brotherhood was fucking beautiful on PC and played great with my gamepad with absolutely no fuss.

But I do resent their ignorant statements that 95% of PC players pirate games. If that was the case then there wouldn't have been over 18 billion dollars last year going into these crooked publisher's pockets. These French fucks have their heads so far up their asses they can lick their own tonsils.

Of course the simplest solution to piracy: make good games without horribly intrusive DRM is something that big publishers such as Ubisoft are remarkably slow to understand.

Phooey, I just pre-ordered AC3 for the Xbox to avoid all the DRM.

95% piracy rate? I want to see the survey and methods they used to reach that conclusion, until then I'm calling it a complete and utter lie.

Maybe i'all actually consider getting it on PC now.

@warxsnake: The "good games without DRM won't get pirated" argument has been busted over and over again. I remember when people were claiming that Sins of a Solar Empire wouldn't get pirated because it wouldn't have DRM. Well, according to stats collected off bittorrent, there were at least three illegal downloads for every sale during the first week. So much for that. It's not going to stop people from making that argument, even though it's bogus.

That said, I don't buy the 93-95% stat. I'd need to see more data. I have no doubt that piracy will be high no matter what. It's a good thing that Ubisoft has changed its mind. I actually never had any trouble with their DRM, and thought the complaining was a bit over-the-top. Nevertheless, on principle you shouldn't have to be online to play a single-player game. It's good that Ubisoft wised up.

Yeah it sucks when you buy a game and then you have to pirate it just not have a migrane.

@wompa421 said:

D: damn 93-95% piracy that's insane to the point where i think it's hard to believe maybe it was a typo and they meant 93-95% aren't pirated.

Nah these kind of estimates have no shame, there are lobby organizations with way worse estimates.

Some of them even claim that damage trough piracy goes into triple digit billions of €. As long as nobody bothers to ask for sources/proof they gonna keep inflating these numbers to make up a point that doesn't exist.

They believe that they deserve +1000% more sales, that it ain't happening is solely the fault of dirty pirates in their little imaginary corporation world. Guess that kind of stuff happens when greed beats common sense..

My thoughts on the subject.

@scaramoosh said:

93% of people pirate? Where are they getting that from?

No, they're not saying 93% of people pirate. They're saying that for every legit copy purchased, about 9 were downloaded illegally. These are estimates based on tracking of torrent sites and they include attempts to download, not just completed downloads. So the effective piracy rate is probably in the 70% range. (and yes, I do know what I'm talking about)

And it's a global percentage. Piracy rates in Spain, Italy, Russia and Asian markets are much higher than in places like the US, UK, etc. So your experience with your group of friends is most likely not representative of where the majority of global software piracy is taking place.

'Bout damn time, but I'm still not going to give money to ubisoft.

@Nethlem said:

@wompa421 said:

D: damn 93-95% piracy that's insane to the point where i think it's hard to believe maybe it was a typo and they meant 93-95% aren't pirated.

Nah these kind of estimates have no shame, there are lobby organizations with way worse estimates.

Some of them even claim that damage trough piracy goes into triple digit billions of €. As long as nobody bothers to ask for sources/proof they gonna keep inflating these numbers to make up a point that doesn't exist.

They believe that they deserve +1000% more sales, that it ain't happening is solely the fault of dirty pirates in their little imaginary corporation world. Guess that kind of stuff happens when greed beats common sense..

And get real, they're pointing out the maximum opportunity cost. And no, they're not saying they deserve "1000% more sales" what they are saying is that some percentage of those who pirated would have bought the game had the piracy option not been available. You piracy apologists really do love your hyperbole even more than the Ubi guys do.

@Subjugation: It seems pretty high but I feel like companies always claim 90+ % piracy rates.

I'm sure there's some fudging going on but I actually doubt it's that much of an exaggeration for popular games. What do you think the piracy rate for music downloads is... 99.9%?

Some "clarification" here too: eurogamer

Must be a lot of people playing pc games if valve makes that kinda money with 90% piracy

http://www.gamersmint.com/valves-steam-make-nearly-a-billion-dollars-in-revenue-in-2010-portal-6th-most-selling-game

It would appear that punitive measures against the people who still pay for your service has been detrimental. Colour me surprised!

I'm guessing this isn't retroactive, with regards to previously released titles?

/golf clap

Very good news, as long as this continues as a trend we will be better off.

@Brackynews said:

That's good. But I still don't imagine I'll play Ubisoft games on PC.

AC3 will look best on Wii U after all. Oh Shane. ;)

heh, thanks for that, I was needing a laugh.

So just pulling statistics out of nowhere without sourcing how you got them... nice Ubisoft

They have practically admitted they took the piracy rates out of their asses. Ubisoft is backpedaling furiously right now.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-09-05-ubisoft-clarifies-93-95-percent-pc-piracy-rate-comments

@Robopengy:

Amen, brother. I bought Revelations last month on the X-Box 360, and I also pre-ordered Assassins Creed 3, too.

About time

I'd like to announce that I will be supporting Ubisoft PC releases more than ever before.

Sincerely, the PC fan base.

Is it retroactive? Maybe I'll start playing ANNO 2070 again!

"Better late than never, I suppose."

Only if they go back and remove this intrusive bullshit from all their previous titles, and offer a sincere written apology and/or refund/discount.

Otherwise, fuck them.

Finally! Finally they understand how pointless it is to resist piracy through dumbass drm - drm will be cracked anyway, and the rest of us will suffer.