The Escapist Bulletin: Picking up pennies

There are plenty of issues that provoke a knee-jerk reaction from gamers, but the issue of piracy is the only one that seems to get the same type of response from publishers.

The thought of people playing games without paying for them just makes them see red, and cook up increasingly elaborate schemes to try and prevent piracy, like a software obsessed Wile E. Coyote.

Ubisoft's new solution is especially egregious, because not only does it require an internet connection to authenticate the game but all your saves are on the Ubisoft servers rather than on your local machine, and from the comments that have come from Ubisoft it doesn't sound like the system will have an offline mode.

This new system is just the latest in a long list of schemes to tackle piracy, but it shares something in common with all of them, and that is that it makes PC gaming less appealing to legitimate consumers. This isn’t conjecture either: Take Two has scaled back the DRM in BioShock 2 following a deluge of complaints.

It’s hardly surprising that PC gamers are upset, because every effort by publishers to keep hold of money from PC sales makes their gaming experience less pleasant, and not because they’ve done anything wrong - on the contrary, they’re the ones doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing - but because of the actions of others.

Take the inevitable Assassin’s Creed 3. For most people, the necessity for an internet connection isn’t going to be a problem, but if you’ve got the choice you might think twice before buying it for the PC.

Why buy it for the system where you might have a problem saving it if you can buy it for a system where that definitely won’t be an issue?

Internet connections might be common, but they are far from universal, so this move has effectively killed gaming on the move - or certainly made it significantly more difficult than it needs to be - for Ubisoft titles.

It’s very strange, though, to see publishers defending their smallest markets with such fervour. While PC sales are likely to be more profitable than a console on a one-to-one basis, due to the lack of licensing agreements on PC games, console sales more than make up for it in terms of volume.

Publishers haven’t failed to notice this disparity, and are shifting their focus away from doing anything particularly special for the PC market.

Again, this isn’t conjecture: Modern Warfare 2’s lack of dedicated servers caused all kinds of upset, and BioShock 2 and Rage won’t have them either. Yet publishers are expending a lot of effort and money to safeguard a platform all the evidence suggests they are abandoning.

Considering the platforms that actually make them their money are relatively secure, it just seems strange - like picking up pennies when you have a million dollars in the bank.

Nobody likes to lose money, but by forcing intrusive DRM down the throats of their customers, publishers run the risk of alienating their user base and losing customers instead, which will hurt them a lot more in the long term.