When Prince of Persia launched, Ubisoft said they were trying it without DRM, and delivered this snarky comment along with it,
You`re right when you say that when people want to pirate the game they will but DRM is there to make it as difficult as possible for pirates to make copies of our games. A lot of people complain that DRM is what forces people to pirate games but as PoP PC has no DRM we`ll see how truthful people actually are. Not very, I imagine. Console piracy is something else entirely and I`m sure we`ll see more steps in future to try to combat that.
Perhaps the “Razz” in “UbiRazz” is more indicative of what the “community manager” role is all about. Getting the community up in arms?
Now, this happened a long time ago and I didn’t have anywhere to write about. So I’m writing about it now even though I bought this the day it was released.
Barring UbiSoft’s arrogant behaviour, and yes I will apply the community manager’s behaviour to Ubisoft, they did two good things. First, the lack of DRM. Second, the PC version of Prince of Persia was released at a $29.99 price point. That’s about the maximum I’m going to spend on a game unless it’s an 9+ rating and I know I’m going to like it (I bought the Sands of Time trilogy at full price).
So, I bought it. There. You happy now Ubisoft?
Maybe you shouldn’t be so happy because the game isn’t all that great.
It’s technically sound, which is why industry critics gave it a decent score. Good visuals, new art style, good sound, decent gameplay. But isolated analysis like that isn’t what game are about. Take a look at Metacritic’s user rating.
So, I took your bait, I bought your game, and you did two good things, no drm and price point, but then you released an average game.
What does that say to your users?
It says your no-drm and price-point were gimmicks to sell a poor game.
Nice try, Ubisoft.
You lost the magic of Sands of Time and you had no idea how to get it back.
You deserved what you got.