I agree that this is bad DRM. I won’t be supporting it and I won’t pick up the game. Sad, 'cause it looks really good.
What I found really funny though is the frustration from the pirates online. I was trolling some P2P sites looking for some star craft beta footage, and I saw AC2, so I went to look at the comments.
Man, you wouldn’t believe the whining in there! Sweet.
“Does any one have a saved game that works?” " I can’t get mine to work, some one please tell me how I can get it to work! Waaahhh!"
Of course this goes to show that we have to really not purchase this game. 'cause if this DRM takes a while to crack, they’ll keep using it, unless the bad press affects their bottom line significantly. I’d almost would rather see no Ubisoft games on the PC than have that kind of thinking spreading to other companies.
From what I’ve seen posted in other threads (mostly from SomethingAwful) this DRM is particularly hard to crack. The game gets lines of code (containing things like mission objectives) streamed to the PC which after it ‘activates’ on the game is deleted off again. Someone is going to have to play through the entire game copying all those lines of code and re-integrating them into the game before a working crack can be released.
It’s interesting. I hope piracy dies so people can stop using it for a scapegoat but I’m really hoping the pirates crush this DRM and soon. It is a terrible idea on every possible level.
Hmm, that sounds incredibly complex to crack. Imagine if the code being streamed is particular to that playthrough? As in, what if the code streamed is dependent on the things you have done in the game, decisions you have made, the order at which you handle missions, etc?
You’d have to play though every possible option or the game would fail.
From what I understand there’s no ‘legit’ crack. It was reported as working but then found it only let you load the game and wander the levels but you couldn’t continue the game because the mission objectives didn’t load.
Obviously I could be wrong I’m just posting what I read.
Not necessarily. The Xbox version of the game doesn’t have the DRM, so all the game’s files are on that disc and presumably all the pirates need to do is a differential between the PC install and the Xbox install. Assuming of course the file formats are the same - I admit I know very little about the inner workings of the Xbox, but I was given to understand it’s merely a standardized PC, so…
Did EA look at this and actually think “wow, that worked out well!”? And didn’t EA learn their lesson after the massive Spore backlash? Are there companies more arrogant and stupid than video game publishers? They’re trying to kill themselves.
ETA: And strangely enough, they just removed the secuROM from the steam version of bc2 because it was dumb and obnoxious. Now they turn around and do this…
