Yes, I know, there have been a lot of rants from me recently but what can I say? I'm in a ranting mood.
Yeah, always online DRM, those damn systems that keep us monitored to make sure we're not cheating and are playing a genuine copy of the game. Those systems that never really help anybody and only end up punishing legitimate customers and rewarding pirates.
In case you don't recall, let me go back to the release of the PC version of Assassin's Creed 2. AC2 was a game that used uPlay, Ubisoft's own online platform. The problem with the game using uPlay is that when it first released, uPlay had a requirement that the player be constantly connected to the internet, any breaks in connection would cause you to lose all progress made since the last checkpoint.
Yep, anybody with an unreliable connection was out of luck, just because of what is basically an anti-piracy measure. But hey, at least it worked right? Wrong, it was cracked incredibly quickly and pirates were able to play the game regardless of if they were online or not.
To make things worse, uPlay suffered a DDOS attack shortly after launch that crippled their servers leaving paying customers unable to play their new game. Several people could play the game however; the people who pirated it.
That's right, legitimate customers couldn't play their game because of an issue on Ubisoft's end whereas pirates were able to play it with no problem at all. Yeah, it's a bit of a problem isn't it.
This example alone should be reason enough to hate always online DRM, to drop any and all support for it. Even Ubisoft renounced all of their always online practices in 2012, leaving their games totally playable offline.
However, this kind of practice does still happen, SimCity's launch would be a good example of how always online DRM is a bad thing. I'm sure I don't need to remind of you of that incident.
Even I have been a victim of connecting to online services to play a game recently. I have been unable to play L.A. Noire for an entire year because Rockstar Social Club isn't functioning correctly on my system, leaving the game to endlessly display the "synchronizing" screen. I recently obtained Max Payne 3 in a sale and had the exact same issue, Rockstar Social Club refusing to work. If not for that system I would have completed L.A. Noire long ago and would be a good portion through Max Payne 3, instead I have spent over 8 hours looking at synchronization screens and just as long searching for fixes to said screens.
This should be summarized right here before this ends up too ranty.
- Always online DRM is bad, don't do it kids.
As always, thanks for reading.
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