Coming to Terms With UbiSoft

I have an insane theory about the airline industry — I think they genuinely want me to stop flying on their airplanes.

I think that when major air-carriers tuck into their silk sheets at night, they dream of a hyper-efficient fleet filled with steely-eyed business class flyers with practiced methods of travel and corporate expense accounts. Never again would they be burdened with a bunch of pesky amateur flyers with screaming kids and an over-inflated sense of entitlement just because the family managed to scrounge up a few hundred dollars to fly to Omaha.

Were I to write to Delta airlines and tell them of how I chose to spend three days driving across the country with my two boys rather than endure ten hours under their thumb, would the response be a curt but genuine, “Thank you?”

Sometimes it very much seems like certain companies are entirely comfortable with the idea of just annoying a certain segment of consumers away. You know, companies like Ubisoft.

Is it insanity to imagine that a game company would seed the foundation for catastrophic PC numbers so they can justify ending support for a customer base they neither like nor trust? Is that nutjob conspiracy theory territory, because every time I look at the evidence the slippery slope gets greased just a little more.

I had been looking forward to buying Assassin’s Creed 2 for the PC. As friends raved about the experience on the consoles, I decided to hold off for a release on my platform of choice: the trusty Personal Computer. But as Ubisoft slowly revealed worse terms than Lando Calrissian got from Vader in Empire, I realized that for me, a line had been crossed.

Historically my reaction would have been histrionics, but for a lot of reasons that I don’t want to explore right now, I have been thinking hard about learning to accept the things I can not change. It is a distressingly voluminous list, to which I must now grudgingly add the schemes and machinations of multi-national game publishing companies. Unless I’m willing to become a mid-80’s Sally Field movie, the only question left is how mad I am willing to let the whole thing get me.

Rather than take this to the next level of a broad and meaningless call to social action — Boycott Ubi, yo! — I have chosen instead to realize this is a very personal choice where no available option seems particularly desirable. Do I reward Ubi with my money in the hope that they might be grudgingly forced to create more PC games with even tighter restrictions? Do I deny myself the experience of playing a game I had been looking forward to? Do I build flimsy self-justifications for piracy, choosing to contribute to the problem out of an overwhelming sense of self-entitlement and convenient moral flexibility?

Ok, obviously not that last one. Whatever moral subjectivity it is that endows people with the latitude to pretend like rules don’t apply if they are sufficiently mad at the victim just doesn’t work for me. So, for me, the choice is only one of buy or sit out.

Why is this such an emotionally charged dichotomy for me and for that matter so many other people? Ubi and its ilk have presented a product and presented their terms. I can either take part, or I can abstain. That I am disgusted by the terms offered should be the point where I get the luxury of keeping my $50. I mean, it’s not like when some guy comes to the door asking if I’d like to let him fertilize my lawn for a hundred bucks, I suddenly have the urge to punch him in the face.

I recognize in a very rational way that the internet’s response to Ubisoft’s decision to make all PC gamers maintain constant internet connectivity to play their games is one of breathless hysterics. Three Stooges movies show more moderated self-control than message board discussions in response to this issue, and yet I am drawn to the furious debate like a moth drawn to a flame if that flame were the burning singularity of a super-massive black hole.

I hate the corporate policy of Ubisoft for this. I hate the precedent it entrenches for PC games, and I hate that I have no recourse to protest save a few hundred futile words and a well practiced glower. Therein lies my real problem, and the point this all draws back to.

I don’t get a vote, not even with my dollar. Choose to buy and I am supporting something I believe undermines the rights that should be afforded to PC gamers. Choose not to buy and Ubisoft is free to interpret diminished sales as evidence of the impact of piracy and the antipathy of the consumer base. Check and mate.

I must learn to accept that which can not be changed. It is a bitter lesson.

I choose not to buy, and I choose not to pirate if for no other reason than it would provide publishers with one drop of additional proof that PC games aren’t worth the trouble.

Now I must choose to accept my own decision, and that, so far, has been the hardest choice of all.

Comments

AManCalledBob:

I think the main point in my statement that needs clarification is that when I say that piracy is an economic activity, I mean to say that pirate copies are cheaper than legal ones.

"Well, of course!" one might say. It's free.

Well, no, it's not. It requires bandwidth, searching for torrents, fiddling with files, risk of virus attack, risk of crashes, risk of prosecution, moral ambiguity and so on.

The costs are not in dollars, but there is a cost.

In other words, for pirates, the cost of doing business one way is cheaper than the cost of doing business the other way, so they do it the cheaper way. It's a very straightforward manner of interpreting the activity.

psu_13:

I don't think it's all that rational, however, to extrapolate from there to saying that there is no reason to project a sense of moral outrage at people who decide to pirate content. People who pirate content are making a choice to do so and that choice has consequences on the people who created the content, and ultimately the decision to pirate is equivalent to saying that you think your desire to have the content is more important than those consequences.

It depends on what those consequences are. Let's say you work for an American furniture manufacturer in China, earning somewhere in the vicinity of 70 cents an hour.

You cannot afford a $60 game. This is not a matter of you choosing that the game is too expensive from a values perspective. The game really is too expensive for you to afford in any realistic sense. Your only real choices are to pirate the game, or not to play it at all.

In this kind of a scenario, it's actually good for Ubisoft to have AC2 available in pirate form, and it's for exactly the same reasons that Microsoft is fighting to push IE on people for free.

If you don't allow these people to pirate, and you don't offer your product in any practical form, then demand for your product dies. People don't care about it. They don't know about it. They don't know about you. The activity doesn't cost Ubisoft anything. The market is beyond what they calculate for their sales model, and it costs them nothing to have it available on Chinese servers.

It's free advertising.

Cutting off that market does nothing beneficial. What you want to do is to somehow monetize your market influence - not kill it.

How is all this talk of Chinese piracy relevant to American customers?

Well, Chinese pirates actually sell copies of pirated games on actual DVDs. Obviously, if Ubisoft would do that itself, it would also profit. The dollar sales of these pirated copies forms a strong incentive for these people to pirate American games. It's not just a hobby for these guys. It's their actual job, so they're going to keep at it until they succeed. If a game can be pirated at all, it will be.

The strategies for profiting off such a market are many, but none of them involve cutting off the entire market altogether by making the game impossible to pirate.

LarryC wrote:

It depends on what those consequences are. Let's say you work for an American furniture manufacturer in China, earning somewhere in the vicinity of 70 cents an hour.

You cannot afford a $60 game. This is not a matter of you choosing that the game is too expensive from a values perspective. The game really is too expensive for you to afford in any realistic sense. Your only real choices are to pirate the game, or not to play it at all.

In this kind of a scenario, it's actually good for Ubisoft to have AC2 available in pirate form, and it's for exactly the same reasons that Microsoft is fighting to push IE on people for free.

If you don't allow these people to pirate, and you don't offer your product in any practical form, then demand for your product dies. People don't care about it. They don't know about it. They don't know about you. The activity doesn't cost Ubisoft anything. The market is beyond what they calculate for their sales model, and it costs them nothing to have it available on Chinese servers.

It's free advertising.

I'm confused; free advertising to WHOM? Other low-paid Chinese workers who ALSO can't afford to pay $60 for AC2? How does that help anybody?

hbi2k wrote:
LarryC wrote:

It's free advertising.

I'm confused; free advertising to WHOM? Other low-paid Chinese workers who ALSO can't afford to pay $60 for AC2? How does that help anybody?

A conversation about piracy and I'm not involved? A travesty. It is free advertising if you're thinking long term. Chinese consumers don't have the buying power now, but it is growing at a very rapid pace. Think about piracy today as planting seeds for 5-10 years down the road--this is already true for fashion and Hollywood--it's still difficult to get tickets to see Avatar here in Beijing, and Chinese consumers totally know the difference between a fake Gucci and a real one--and they will absolutely buy the real one when they have the money.

Obviously piracy is as rampant as you imagine, with dvds going for a buck and games going for less (prices are strictly based on what kind of dvd you're buying--if it's a dvd-5, it's cheaper than a dvd-9), chipped Xboxes and Wiis are the norm. But people still buy PS3s and are paying full price for games--I went to buy Heavy Rain and it was sold out at my usual store. Note that consoles are technically banned in China and any game developer/publisher has to partner with a local company if it wants to sell games here, which is another reason game piracy is so high.

On the PC, however, gaming is growing at an explosive rate and is expected to pass the US in a few years. How can it grow so fast despite all the piracy? It's just a different business model, one that isn't so popular yet in the US, although is growing on social networks and some MMOs--free to play, and microtransactions. MMORPGs is the most popular genre in China, and with the exception of WOW, they're mostly locally developed F2Ps that rely on microtransactions for their revenue. Second most popular is casual gaming by companies like Tencent.

The question is then whether US developers see this model as the future of gaming--it all depends on how bad the piracy really is. So far it seems it isn't bad enough to deter Ubisoft and others from trying some obnoxious forms of DRM--my guess is the piracy really isn't having the economic impact that would justify risking a move to a completely different business model.

It isn't just long-term benefits, Mao. Chinese companies already make a buck doing games, and it's something of a status symbol to obtain an original of Western anythings - games included. Chinese who can afford to buy original do so, just because the added value of the status symbol more than justifies the price of an original copy, even if they have absolutely no plans to actually play that copy.

It's just a matter of tapping that market influence to monetize or benefit from it in some way.

Put another way, Ubisoft and other companies suffer greatly from piracy in areas like China and Malaysia because they don't care enough to price their games properly in those areas according to the local market structure. An "original" game, even at a slight premium to the pirated distribution network, will probably outsell pirated copies for a small profit for Ubisoft simply on the strength of status and quality assurance.

LarryC wrote:

It isn't just long-term benefits, Mao. Chinese companies already make a buck doing games, and it's something of a status symbol to obtain an original of Western anythings - games included. Chinese who can afford to buy original do so, just because the added value of the status symbol more than justifies the price of an original copy, even if they have absolutely no plans to actually play that copy.

You do realize that you're telling a Chinese person what Chinese people are like, don't you?

Of course. I'm trying to engage him in what could be rather than what is. There are a lot of wonderful things that our current technological level would allow us to do, if only we wanted to do it.

LarryC wrote:

Of course. I'm trying to engage him in what could be rather than what is. There are a lot of wonderful things that our current technological level would allow us to do, if only we wanted to do it.

This current technological level will always be a disappointment to me until i get my f*cking flying car. It is 2010 already, why do we still have wheels!!!

Just seen an article that reports that AC2 and SH5 are no longer available in the uk.

A statement from the firm released to CVG reads: 'The games listed are available for sale in all other countries on Steam. The fact they are not available on Steam UK has nothing to do with the DRM - but is linked to a local business discussion between Ubisoft and Steam in UK.'
...
A PC games industry insider told us this morning: "It's the latest in the Ubisoft DRM blow-up. Steam doesn't want to lose its reputation for customer service, and these games have angered its user-base."

I very much doubt such business discussions would be aired in public, but hopefully it shows that the situation isn't static and things might change.

Are initial sales figures for the games available now? I know that without digital distribution figures, and without knowing sales expectations for the games these numbers won't mean much, but I'm still curious.

I found 3 DD sales charts from the past week or so: 1 2 3.
AC2 is 16th, Settlers 7 is 33rd, SH5 is 55th on amazon uk's best sellers list.

I'm beginning to accept that the era of games being like books or movies or audio albums - that you can own them and enjoy them again years later - is coming to an end. When I decide whether to "buy" a game, I'm really deciding whether the lease price is a good value for the limited (though indefinite) time I'll get to use the content.

None of this stuff is going to be permanent any more. We're heading back to the days of the arcade (OnLive), the theater, and the live musical performance. There was a time when it was prohibitively expensive to own the hardware necessary to enjoy commercial entertainment at home. You had to go out to a theater, a concert, or an arcade. The experience was ephemeral.

In future it's not going to be prohibitively expensive - just prohibited.

I find it really sad that the impetus for all this comes from a delusion. The delusion is that revenues will increase - without having to create any additional value for the buyer - if only the publisher can trick people into thinking they're buying a durable good, but prevent them from playing without continuing to spend money.

The way things really work is that people have a certain amount of money to spend on entertainment. If they find themselves without entertainment because a DRM scheme has prevented them from buying used, or pirating, or borrowing from a friend, then they won't spend more; they'll play less.

I'd like to think that the Stardocks and 2DBoys of the world will win, and we'll all be able to have more games than time to play them, and be able to play them again years later. But I'm not holding my breath.

In any case, nerd rage won't help, attempted boycotts won't help, online petitions won't help, marching in the streets outside Ubisoft's offices won't help, and answering Ubisoft's surveys won't help me. For all practical purposes, I don't have a vote. All I can do is evaluate whether - for me - what they're offering is worth the money I'd spend.

Not being the sort to trade stuff doesn't really bother me personally, but that's just my perspective. What does concern me is not being able to play the game down the line if something out of my control happens.

Being on the PC, dealing with accounts, CD keys, the rapid depreciation of game, etc. means it's not really worth my while trading a game for a few quid versus storing the disc in a wallet and the manual/key somewhere safe, and of course trading the ability to play that game when nostalgia hits. PC games have a longer life than consoles as they're not really tied to a certain model of hardware, but rather need more hacks to get them to work on modern hardware/OSes. If I scratch up the disc or delete the file it's my own dumb fault, the same as if I rip a page from a book.

Having games tied to a zillion external dependencies means I need them to be up for the game to work (excluding the 'crack it' option). Reputation and trust are not built overnight, steam has been up since 2002 and mostly reliable, so in my mind I can trust that. Ubisoft hasn't built that trust yet, and their current record isn't great It's also based on having a perfect connection chain between you and their servers, any break anywhere in that chain and you're not playing, with no fall backs.

Releasing the PC game two weeks after the console version seems to be another feature of the DRM

Try 4 months in the case of AC2, or 5 months in the case of AC1.

I guess I should come out and say I'm not Chinese, I've just lived here for awhile.

LarryC, I don't disagree with you. Microsoft already prices its products differently for the Chinese market--much, much cheaper, and it has worked to some degree, but it does require more than just finding the right price point--in China you need to educate on the risks of piracy, make sure you provide excellent after-sales support, and probably most important of all, make sure you have gov't support in whatever you do. China is particularly uncomfortable with video and PC games, so the point isn't much worth discussing since most games we can play in the west would never pass censorship here--look at the silly things WOW had to have changed to get past the censors here, and that's already a relatively mild game in terms of violence. If companies did somehow manage to neuter their games enough to be sold here, people would still turn to the pirated copies to get the "real" versions of the game.

Chairman_Mao wrote:

I guess I should come out and say I'm not Chinese, I've just lived here for awhile.

I miss the days when you would make entire posts "in character", so to speak.

Chinese is as Chinese does, Mr. Mao. I don't subscribe to the quaint notion that your genetic heritage somehow matters in how you align culturally.

The question of translation and government intervention is always of concern. This is not only why Western games have a more difficult time adjusting to the Chinese market, it works the other way, too. Many Japanese games are not going to the Western market, partly because they won't pass ESRB, but partly also because something that's relatively normal for Japanese could be weird or repugnant for a Westerner.

The hopeful part is that the restriction in the Chinese market seems to be largely artificial. There is a good chance that pirate activity in the region can be eradicated, if the right measures were put in place.

I don't know to me coming out first on consoles is all the signage i need that this game is a console game.

Maybe if i were a dedicated PC and mainly PC guy but these days I mostly play pretty much dedicated PC games on my PC and only those. Frankly just the wait alone is more than enough to deter a purchase of Assasin's Creed.

I really have to wonder why they bothered to port AC2 to PC at all. It's clearly a game that was developed with consoles in mind. I doubt it looks significantly better on high-end hardware, I have a hard time imagining it playing better with a mouse and keyboard, and I doubt anyone is working on any badass total conversion mods for it. In short, I have a hard time imagining anyone choosing to play it on the PC if they have a choice. To top it off, the DRM is like putting a big "Kick Me" sign on their backs, daring pirates to try and crack it.

Do they really expect to make enough money in PC sales to offset the cost of porting it and maintaining authentication servers, not to mention the loss of customer goodwill they're suffering?

I love PC gaming and I want to believe that the current problems with that market will be worked out, but what I love about PC gaming are those features unique to it. I want PC games on my PC, not console ports. If a game was designed first and foremost for the consoles, I'd just as soon play it on the system it was designed for.

hbi2k wrote:

In short, I have a hard time imagining anyone choosing to play it on the PC if they have a choice.

Personally, I choose PC over console versions where I can as my PC is more powerful than a console and will often run it better, and often it is cheaper. The DRM counts as a negative against the former, and the AC2 price increase counts against the latter. The controls I can live with for AC2(I'd be using a gamepad on either platform), but there are games that are suited to one or the other.

LarryC wrote:

Chinese is as Chinese does, Mr. Mao. I don't subscribe to the quaint notion that your genetic heritage somehow matters in how you align culturally

Totally. I don't like subscribing to quaint notions either (although I can assure you a lot of mainland Chinese people do).

LarryC wrote:

The question of translation and government intervention is always of concern. This is not only why Western games have a more difficult time adjusting to the Chinese market, it works the other way, too. Many Japanese games are not going to the Western market, partly because they won't pass ESRB, but partly also because something that's relatively normal for Japanese could be weird or repugnant for a Westerner.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't most of the Japanese games that we Westerners find repugnant the rape simulators/anime child porn ones? I can't think of any Western games that Chinese people find repugnant for morally similar reasons.

When I said "China is particularly uncomfortable with video and PC games" I meant the Chinese government, not the people. Chinese gamers I know love a lot of the same ones we do (Counterstrike is still one of the most popular games here), and generally I think China will be an easier market for Western game makers to crack than Japan or Korea, once/if the game bans are lifted.

Minarchist wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:

I guess I should come out and say I'm not Chinese, I've just lived here for awhile.

I miss the days when you would make entire posts "in character", so to speak. :(

I know, I know, it's just that when you have the blood of 70 million people on your hands, it's hard to pretend you're something you're not all the time...

Chairman_Mao wrote:
Minarchist wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:

I guess I should come out and say I'm not Chinese, I've just lived here for awhile.

I miss the days when you would make entire posts "in character", so to speak. :(

I know, I know, it's just that when you have the blood of 70 million people on your hands, it's hard to pretend you're something you're not all the time...

Plus General Tso is still looking for his ass. He's gotta lay low til sh*t blows over.

hidannik wrote:

I'm beginning to accept that the era of games being like books or movies or audio albums - that you can on them and enjoy them again years later - is coming to an end. When I decide whether to "buy" a game, I'm really deciding whether the lease price is a good value for the limited (though indefinite) time I'll get to use the content.

None of this stuff is going to be permanent any more. We're heading back to the days of the arcade (OnLive), the theater, and the live musical performance. There was a time when it was prohibitively expensive to own the hardware necessary to enjoy commercial entertainment at home. You had to go out to a theater, a concert, or an arcade. The experience was ephemeral.

Legally, this has been the model for quite some time--read any Microsoft EULA if you want to confirm that.

Bullion Cube wrote:

Plus General Tso is still looking for his ass. He's gotta lay low til sh*t blows over.

Are you saying he's... chicken?

The EULA is actually worse than an arcade, theater, or a live musical performance. In any of the latter models of entertainment, you were reasonably assured that you would get something for your money. With the EULA, all bets are off.

Gaming as a service, in the manner of WoW or Ragnarok - that's actually closer to live performance in that the model is pushing the boundaries of technological capability, and you were reasonably assured of having something for your money.

The F2P model is actually quite generous in that regard. You get to road-test your game before you have to pay for pretty much anything. I consider it part of the future of worldwide gaming going forward, since it works very well.