New Prince of Persia game has no DRM

[jayfella]

So, rumour has it that the new Prince of Persia game doesnt even have one spot of protection. Not a CD check, a CD-KEY, not a spot. It seems at least someone is listening! But im not so sure its a good idea.. I like the idea of no DRM, but dont like the idea of joe bloggs playing the game for free when i bought it for £30 or £50.. And not even having to go through the trouble of finding a working crack, or worry about updates messing up the crack... They can just play... So... Seems we got what we wanted.. but its kind of a kick in the teeth! with a sideways kick!

[Hardin]

I guess Ubisoft finally learned their lessons from starforce. It sure took awhile though.

[hajalie24]

well at least they dont have to spend $ putting drm since it only takes the pirate 5 minutes to get past it lol.

[shadin]

They're being snide about it though. I saw in their forums where they keep hearing that DRM doesn't affect piracy and they basically responded saying POP will test that idea. If this game isn't spectacular and sells poorly they'll probably just pull a Crysis and whine and cry about how it was all because of piracy and put their DRM back on.

[freakdiablo]

They're being snide about it though. I saw in their forums where they keep hearing that DRM doesn't affect piracy and they basically responded saying POP will test that idea. If this game isn't spectacular and sells poorly they'll probably just pull a Crysis and whine and cry about how it was all because of piracy and put their DRM back on.

If it fails, they blame piracy, if its a success, they give credit to designers. I doubt too much of this will lead back to DRM.

[lordkosc]

Oooh, and the videos I've seen of this game make me want to play PoP again. The last one they had out with the punk rock music was PURE CRAP.

[Impar]

Greetings!

Here is the source:
http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/861108132/m/6971093507?r=6721096017#6721096017

[Rabidhilljack]

I followed the link above, and UbiRazz just says that the game doesn't have DRM. It doesn't mean that it doesn't require a disc or CD Key or anything.

I think SPORE was evidence that DRM just doesn't help the situation. Although, I personally believe that a lot of people out there use DRM as an excuse to go and pirate a game. Since the "bad" developers put DRM on their game it is then "OK" to steal it... You can all slay me, but I find that logic to be pretty screwed up.

If you abstain from playing the game because of DRM then you are righteous and deserve respect. If not, you're either hyper paranoid or just being a cheap ass.

One day when there are no more good PC games to play we'll all know who to blame..... and it isn't the developers.

[torin3]

I got a free copy of (I think it was) the second PoP game with a video card I bought. I didn't really get into it, but I'm seriously thinking about buying this one, even if I don't play it, just to support the decision to not use DRM.

Reward good behavior. :beer:

[blueswitch]

I LOVED the first PoP when it came out...the next two didn't really look liked they did the series justice...and I played part of the second one, it was just ok didn;t grab me. This one looks pretty good...my poor laptop with a x700 probably wouldn't be able to to play this....stupid Wii never gets any games....I wish I had a 360

[tom10167]

Wasn't this an old, impossibly difficult DOS game?

[torin3]

Wasn't this an old, impossibly difficult DOS game?

Sorry, my mistake. You are talking about the original game:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Persia_(1989_video_game)

My first exposure to it was the Prince of Persia - Sands of Time game:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Persia:_The_Sands_of_Time

And the 'second' game I was talking about was the second in the Sands of Time trilogy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Persia:_Warrior_Within

Sorry for the confusion.

[jayfella]

i can tell you from personal experience that you dont need a cd inserted, nor a CD-KEY to install it.

I think the people that download these games illegally have no intention of buying it anyway, so are not lost customers ((EA) quote, unquote). It took Razor1911 3 days to crack GTAIV, and believe me, it was a hard cookie to crack (not that i know how to do it, nor were involved, but i read up on random things and pay an interest in coding)

So you have to ask yourself, is it worth shovelling thousands and thousands of pounds on something that is cracked in 3 days? Is it worth upsetting the paying customer with possible problems because of DRM? The answer is no. Spending maybe $180,000 on a custom DRM, only to be cracked wide open in the space of 3 days was a complete waste of time. It cant be used again, because the crackers know how to split it wide open now. So whats the point?

Those that downloaded it weren't even gonna buy the game anyway. So to hell with them. Thats life, sadly, but dont blame the paying customer, and upset them with DRM.

The biggest and best thing about buying a game as opposed to illegally downloading it is because you can update, patch, etc... without issues. There should be more "registered user" content and less "DRM overkill".

Back to the game; i dont like the "comic-book" graphics, and the way people constantly glow... Not very impressed atm, but i have only played it for half an hour.. It could be a grower.

[Rabidhilljack]

I have to disagree with the blanket statement that those who download the game illegally have no intention of buying it legally. There is legitimate time and effort that has to go into finding a good download of a cracked game. Then sometimes you have to modify files, etc.

If they care enough to spend this time and thought to get at the game... they just might spend $50 if there were simply no other way to get their hands on the game.

Pirates aren't stealing from corporations... They're stealing from people. Stealing from the salaries of programmers, marketing staff, accountants, art directors, etc.

[rainless]

So, rumour has it that the new Prince of Persia game doesnt even have one spot of protection. Not a CD check, a CD-KEY, not a spot. It seems at least someone is listening! But im not so sure its a good idea.. I like the idea of no DRM, but dont like the idea of joe bloggs playing the game for free when i bought it for £30 or £50.. And not even having to go through the trouble of finding a working crack, or worry about updates messing up the crack... They can just play... So... Seems we got what we wanted.. but its kind of a kick in the teeth! with a sideways kick!

It would've taken Joe Bloggs about 16 seconds to download the crack. If you haven't guessed it now (and not much has changed in the past THIRTY YEARS) but if somebody isn't going to buy a game... then they're just not going to buy it. No matter WHAT the copy protection is.

So this idea of "It's not fair! I paid for it... they should have to pay too..." is just a red herring. They weren't going to pay for it anyway. Either they were going to download it, or they just weren't going to play it. That doesn't count as a lost sale... nor do YOU wind up paying any more for it.

Me personally (and particularly with Steam games) I just wait for the price to go down to something that *I* deem acceptable. And I don't care if I have to wait YEARS (like I did with Baldur's Gate, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Warcraft III... and Civ III...) I'll get it when it hits my price.

[Impar]

Greetings!
Pirates aren't stealing from corporations... They're stealing from people. Stealing from the salaries of programmers, marketing staff, accountants, art directors, etc.
And parasiting the legitimate buyers of the game, who are the ones that pay the expenses of the game they pirated.

[TheGreySpectre]

it makes sense, what was the last single player game where the DRM actually prevented it from being pirated?

It seems like this serves 2 purposes for ubisoft:
1)It does not create hassels for thier legitmate customers
2) They don't have to pay liscencing fees to the DRM companies


I hope more games start going this way.

[Impar]

Greetings!

PC Prince of Persia contains no DRM. It's a trap! (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081212-pc-prince-of-persia-contains-no-drm-its-a-trap.html)

Let me fill you in on something we've learned in the past year: PC gamers do not like DRM. EA was reminded of this the hard way, and every PC release that includes SecuROM inspires legions of gamers to claim that they'll refuse to buy the game because of the program's inclusion. Ubisoft has heard you, and the retail, boxed version of Prince of Persia on the PC has absolutely no copy protection. It's doubtful the company is doing this out of the goodness of its heart, however.
...
So what will happen with Prince of Persia? The game will be pirated. The game would have been pirated no matter what DRM was placed in the game, naturally, but by removing DRM and waiting for the title to hit the torrents, Ubisoft has given itself an out whenever they're taken to task over DRM in the future. "We tried removing it, and we lost money!" will be an easy answer from now on.

[rainless]

But for all the reasons that guy just mentioned it's NOT a trap.

That's like saying "Well we tried to make a horror/survival game WITHOUT pink ponies in it, and 7 year old girls refused to buy it..."