As an anti-piracy tool DRM simply doesn’t work – and it never will, although not everyone fully realizes this. For example, Ubisoft recently decided to introduce a new solution to prevent pirates from playing their games. Their new DRM requires gamers to be online all the time when playing the game. Without an Internet connection the game simply won’t work.
The new plans were welcomed with skepticism by fellow game developers and the majority of gamers. Instead of hindering piracy the DRM only restricts legitimate customers from playing the game how and where they want, most people agreed.
A survey among members of the Subsim community regarding the DRM on Silent Hunter 5 shows that, if anything, the new DRM is putting off customers from actually buying the game. Only 15% of the respondents said that the DRM wouldn’t affect their plans to buy Silent Hunter 5, while 85% said they would delay or cancel their purchase until a DRM-free version becomes available.
From these responses it could be concluded that many potential customers would prefer to use a DRM-free (pirated) copy instead of the legitimate product, which is the opposite of what Ubisoft wanted to accomplish.
Silent Hunter 5 was released on Tuesday and just a few hours later a cracked version of the game was published on many file-sharing sites. Ubisoft, worrying that DRM-haters would download the game illegally, quickly responded to the news about the cracked DRM and released a statement in which they downplay ‘the issue’.
“You have probably seen rumors on the web that Assassin’s Creed II and Silent Hunter 5 have been cracked. Please know that this rumor is false and while a pirated version may seem to be complete at start up, any gamer who downloads and plays a cracked version will find that their version is not complete,” Ubisoft quickly responded.
While many downloaders report that the game works just fine, Ubisoft’s statement does hold some truth because in their view the game is obviously ‘not complete’ without the DRM. At this point it is not entirely clear what else could be “missing” in the cracked version, but that is beside the point.
The bottom line is that their revolutionary DRM invention was cracked in a matter of hours, and although the crack might not be perfect yet, it will be eventually. The end result will be that the pirated version of the game will be more appealing and less restrictive than the actual retail product. Thus, the DRM is encouraging and increasing piracy instead of putting a halt to it.
It looks like Ubisoft has made a massive mistake with their strong focus on DRM. In fact, the time and effort spent on fine-tuning the DRM would have been better spent on game development, so that they didn’t have to release a patch with bugfixes a day after the game was released.
Let’s hope Ubisoft quickly comes to its senses and releases another patch that removes the needless DRM from the game.
Amazon.fr has today launched Amazon Mp3 (www.amazon.fr/mp3). The French Amazon download store will look and function in exactly the same way as the USA version. The simple to use digital music store is launching with over 5.5 million DRM-free tracks in their catalogue, in which work on any mp3 player including the iPod and iPhone.
Pricing will be similar to the UK store in which top selling albums from just €2.99 and popular individual tracks from €0.49.
Amazon MP3 has all the things that Amazon customers have come to expect from Amazon.fr – a broad selection of albums and tracks across many genres, with a simplified user interface and all at the lowest possible prices. In addition, customers can find exclusive videos from artists such as Pep’s, Phoenix, Amandine Bourgeois, Dream Theater and more on www.amazon.fr/mp3.
“Amazon is excited to provide customers in France with more ways to find, discover and buy music,” said Greg Greeley, Vice-President, Amazon EU Retail. “With the launch of Amazon MP3 in France, customers can find a vast selection of digital music along with millions of lowpriced CDs available on Amazon.fr.”
Napster has hinted that the company is up for sale again, saying in its response to a dissident shareholder group that the company is once again exploring possible strategic alternatives, and has retained UBS Investment Bank to assist in the process. The company hired UBS two years ago to explore a possible sale, but no deal emerged. Napster informed shareholders of the move in a letter that also said the company believes that three proposed dissident board candidates are “unqualified.”
The company said the dissident candidates “have offered no specific business plan, other than suggesting a vague review of Napster’s business,” and also “have no significant ownership in Napster and, in fact, have been frequent sellers of Napster stock.”
Napster instead urged shareholders to re-elect its current slate of independent directors.
I predicted something like this happening to Napster back in December of last year. Napster has a business model that was rapidly decreasing and they didn’t even look like changing it. The company has a great brand, but they are still just moving in the wrong direction. A download store was never going to be right for this brand, they should have done something ad supported and in the same market as Imeem, build a community around this great brand. I so wish I had control of this brand!
A couple of weeks ago Spiral Frog claimed that they were the third largest legal music download store, now they are reporting some very interesting news. SpiralFrog has announced a licensing agreement with RoyaltyShare to add its independent label customers to the free ad supported service. Indie label MPress has also been added to the SpiralFrog catalog which now tops 1 million tracks.
Napster have announced that they are dumping their desktop client and re-launching with a new web-based version. Napster customers will now be able to listen to their music from any computer anywhere in the world. This will hopefully enable Napster to also develop embeddable widgets that can push their products on possible web enabled devices.
Napster is still going to be based as a subscription model, which most industry experts think is holding back the company, because it makes Napster incompatible with the iPod. Consequently Napster has lagged behind Apple’s end to end iTunes system which reportedly controls 70% of the digital music market.
UMG has announced they are now happy with iTunes and the revenue split, so it is only a matter of time before DRM free becomes standard and Napster will really need to gain some market share before Apple.
If you would like to see a slideshow of the new Napster service, please head over to Crave.
RouteNote has just signed a deal to provide our content on Audio Lunchbox. Audio Lunchbox will sell our content on their sites and services for the next three years. Audio Lunchbox has a licensed catalog of over 2 million songs in 79 sub-genres. Audio Lunchbox is the only service on the web to offer both a la carte and permanent subscription downloads side by side. Well thats what they claim.
