Nerd Rage: Ubisoft DRM lifted back in June

What an appropriate topic to follow up my last post about Yves Guillemot's comment about Ubisoft's PC piracy rate. In an interview today with Rock Paper Shotgun, Ubisoft actually confirmed that their 'always-on' DRM that I hated on in that last post was quietly changed back in June. It wasn't until today at their interview that they made an official announcement about it. While this is a fortunate step in the right direction, I will remind readers that their DRM had been like this for years, at least as far back as the release of the first Assassin's Creed on PC which was in April of 2008.

Nerd Rage: 93-95% of PC games are pirated

I'm going to start out by linking my source for this article. Yves Guillemot is the CEO of Ubisoft and in a recent interview talking about Ubisoft's increased amount of free-to-play games, he throws out that statistic: 93-95% of all PC games are pirated. Without a source or anything, just states it as a fact.  If they're pirated, it wouldn't be as if that number is being reported by their servers or by those pirating the software to begin with. I'd love to know how he came up with the number. I think that he probably looked at an expected sales for one of Ubisoft's games on the PC, like say, Assassin's Creed Revelations, and say that they only made 5-7% of what they expected. "Huh, where did those sales go? They must be pirating!" he says to himself. "I guess we better make our DRM even tougher to crack.

The Future of PC Gaming

With Windows 8 announced to release on October 26th, PC gaming is about to get a bit of a shake up. I won't say that the changes coming in Windows 8 are going to be terrible for PC gaming, but the idea of Valve reaching out to Linux is giving me hope for the growth of PC 'platforms'. Heck, even Apple is looking at letting other companies connect video game controllers to iOS devices. With these developments and changes I thought it might be the right time to talk about where I see PC gaming going and where I hope it might go. Sadly, these things don't always match up.