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I've played quite a bit of the latest entry in Croteam's twitchtastic first-person shooter series, but I never encountered the super-speedy giant unkillable pink spider creature in the first level. Know why? Because my copy isn't pirated. More »
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Here's a heartwarming tale full of good holiday cheer. In an interview with IncGamers, Stanislas Mettra, the creative director behind Ubisoft's thought-provoking survival tale I Am Alive said chances of a PC port are about zero because a) um, piracy and b) lol, nobody buys PC games anymore. More »
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Could a little-known company from the UK swoop in and change the way we play, create, and sell games forever. utilizing a device that looks like a super-sized Game Boy Micro? Probably not, but their heart is in the right place. More »
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In their attempts to thwart pirates, most PC publishers end up pissing off paying customers with intrusive or bothersome DRM. All, that is, except for Bohemia Interactive, who the likes of EA and Ubisoft could learn a thing or two from. More »
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Later this month Sony will begin limiting the number of PS3s and PSPs that can share a game purchased through the Playstation Network, the UK and U.S. Playstation blogs said this morning. More »
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Mandatory constant Internet connections piss off PC gamers. No studio can has yet put that news in any light that didn't summon an extremely indignant reaction. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2's tried to put it in a different light by saying the constant connection is how players will be served actual game content. Like missions. That does not sound any better than a constant DRM check. More »
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In recent years publishers like Ubisoft, 2K and EA have done a great job pissing off paying customers with systems aimed at preventing piracy. Which, uh, is counter-productive! Especially when PC pirates are able to easily circumvent said measures. More »
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Computer games have long lived online, but nowadays video game consoles are joining them, becoming a form of entertainment that can be not just enjoyed online, but increasingly, purchased online. More »
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When PC title From Dust was released, PC gamers discovered that, yes, you must have an always-on internet connection. Previous claims stated that it wouldn't. Now, Ubisoft is ready to make amends. More »
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Ubisoft's release of From Dust on the PC has been, in every sense of the word, a disaster. Just the fact that the game requires an always-on Internet connection—putting the lie to earlier claims that it wouldn't—is a throat-slash to its credibility. The additional fact it's a glitch-strewn port of a console game is the cherry atop a shit sundae for a raving mad PC gaming community. More »
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Ubisoft has about the worst digital rights management system in all of PC gaming, forcing users to stay connected to the internet at all times to play a game, even if it's singleplayer. Yet despite almost universal loathing for it, the company thinks it's a "success". More »
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Like that comeback no one wants to see happen, Ubisoft's always-on DRM is making an encore appearance for the PC version of Driver: San Francisco. Ergo, if you don't have an internet connection, or if Ubisoft's servers go down due to maintenance or hackers or Act of God(s), you can't play the game. Not even in single player (also known colloquially as "offline" mode). More »
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Namco Bandai is suing the parent company of the maker of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, the acclaimed PC role-playing game that will make its way to Xbox 360 later this year, over the rights to distribute that version of the game in Europe. More »
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Used Copies of Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D might not be worth your money because Capcom made it impossible to for anyone to erase game save date from the game card. More »
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Capcom will remove the "limited offline" restrictions DRM places on the PC versions of Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, saying its community convinced it that such measures meant legitimate users would have a worse experience than the pirates the DRM means to thwart. More »
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Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition will use Games For Windows Live to administer the game's DRM, says Capcom's Christian Svensson, and while the game will not require an always-on Internet connection to be played, it'll have a "limited offline" mode for those with no uplink. More »
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It seems like it should go without saying, but commenter CornflakeJustice felt like saying it anyway, and since this is Speak Up on Kotaku and not sit quietly and say nothing on Kotaku, here we are. More »
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Don't be fooled, I say. Ubisoft, amongst others, have been getting a lot of good press lately, including from this very site, [Kotaku editor's note: he means Rock Paper Shotgun, where this originally ran.] for the apparent backtracking on the DRM that had crippled a number of games. By insisting that players be always online as they played, Ubisoft's games became a subject of headlines – gamers' progress would be lost, players dumped out of their games, because BT pressed a wrong button somewhere, or the Sun's flares caused a blip in a wifi signal. It took Digital Rights Management to a whole new level of pointlessly ruining valid customers' experiences; while the pirates they were pretending to fight continued to enjoy a far better game. And so we celebrate as they remove this, and we compliment them for backing down from the nonsense. But I (John Walker, whose views don't necessarily reflect those of his (inevitably wrong) colleagues) say: let's just think about that a little more carefully. More »
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For its last few big PC releases, publisher Ubisoft thought it was a good idea to force users to stay connected to the internet at all times. It wasn't, people got upset, and the company's next big release won't do it. More »
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For some, the inclusion of DRM - "digital rights management" which prevents copying - is a provocative act. That makes requiring an online check-in for a game with no online component, like Bionic Commando: Rearmed 2, both perplexing and obnoxious. More »
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There are two ways to buy a game about a violent rabbit on Apple's Mac store. You could pay the game's creators $10 or you could buy the version that is making them angry. That one costs two bucks. More »
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Dead Space 2 became available for pre-purchase on digital download service Steam yesterday. It went live early this morning. So why aren't Steam users able to play it yet? More »
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Beginning with this summer's release of RUSE, Ubisoft curbed the use of its atrociously executed antipiracy safeguards, which required a constant Internet connection for the game to function. Apparently, an online connection is now only required at startup. More »
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The entire site of Good Old Games, the online seller of classic - and DRM-free - video games, has been taken offline and replaced with a message saying the service has been closed. Update: This is looking like a marketing move. More »
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Ubisoft's digital rights management system for its PC games has been wildly unpopular since first adopted. And that's putting it mildly. Which might explain why the company's next PC game is ditching it. More »
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Librarian of Congress James H. Billington today reveals new exceptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that address the legality of jailbreaking your Apple products, unlocking your cell phone, and bypassing computer game digital rights management systems. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5596568&view=rss&microfeed=true Blizzard tells VideoGamer it has spent more development time focusing on "content and cool features" than on anti-piracy tech. What's more, DRM is described as a "losing battle". This attitude, however, sounds like a winning one. More »
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Nobody like DRM, AKA Digital Rights Management. Game companies, however, seem to think they need it. Japan-based game company SEGA has come up with its own in-house DRM solution and has explained what exactly it is. More »
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Capcom acknowledged that copy protection in the PS3 version of Final Fight: Double Impact requires an always-on Internet connection to play the game, and apologized that a notice of such DRM was not given at the time of purchase. More »
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Ubisoft wants PC gamers to know it's heard the complaints and anger regarding its DRM "online services platform," and, after careful consideration, it's digging in. The creative side of the company is now calling it vital to what they do. More »
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Good news, everyone! Ubisoft says it's "constantly working to evolve and improve" its new "online services platform" for gamers. Awesome! What's this "online services platform"? Why, it's Orwellian b.s. for "DRM." More »
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We've been mentioning DRM, or Digital Rights Management, a lot lately here on Kotaku. It's an important topic! Thing is, we've been made aware a lot of you don't entirely know what it is. If that's you, here's a guide. More »
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Ubisoft's digital rights management woes continue, with news that Australians - a people already suffering when it comes to video games - are now being locked out of Ubisoft PC games as well. More »
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Ubisoft apologizes to Assassin's Creed 2 purchasers who found themselves unable to play due to attacks on the verification servers, offering free game downloads in exchange for their forgiveness. More »
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Well, here's something that slipped through the cracks. While we were all busy condemning Ubisoft for its restrictive, must-be-online PC digital rights management, EA has crept in and done the exact same thing. More »
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The Steam version of EA's Battlefield Bad Company 2 is about to get a new patch, and amidst the little tweaks and fixes is some welcome news: the game's SecuROM DRM software will also be uninstalled. More »
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The downtime that plagued PC gamers trying to play Assassin's Creed II yesterday was the result of a denial-of-service attack, causing one of Ubisoft's new DRM-servers to become unreachable. But hey, at least no one has hacked the game yet. More »
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Hey, Ubisoft: when you force users to maintain an internet connection even when playing a singleplayer game offline, you'd damn well better make sure you hold up your end of the bargain. More »
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Publisher Ubisoft has fired back about rumors that games like Silent Hunter 5 have already been cracked by pirates. More »
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With Ubisoft's new digital rights management regime for the PC proving both easy to circumvent and wildly unpopular, the publisher has been rushing to make changes to the system in an attempt to appease consumers. More »
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