Discworld II: Missing Presumed … !? Review

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Discworld II: Missing Presumed … !?

Review by ScoutFebruary 2004

There’s a saying that goes, “A child is talkative, a lively woman is loquacious, an old man in his dotage is garrulous.”  Having just completed Discworld II: Missing Presumed … !?, I’m left wondering if an adjective exists to describe a really, really, really verbose adventure game that still manages to be funny, witty and profoundly entertaining. Probably not. The two are usually considered mutually exclusive. Most gamers balk at too much dialogue.  They want their gameplay meat-and-potatoes simple, and I see their point, I really do. Still, with talent like Terry Pratchett and Eric Idle listed in the opening credits, perhaps it’s time to set preconceptions aside and let the masters of yakkity-yak have their say.

Adapting story lines, locations and characters from several of Pratchett’s Discworld novels, now-defunct Perfect Entertainment, helmed at the time by the very funny writer and director Greg Barnett, managed to develop one of the best games no one ever talks about.  Released by Psygnosis in 1996, Discworld II was subtitled Missing Presumed … !? in the UK and Mortality Bytes in the US and served as Barnett and Co.’s followup to their 1995 Discworld release.

The game starts off with a beautifully animated cutscene. Rincewind, the inept and cowardly wizard who starred in the first game, is back. He and his buddy, the ape librarian for Unseen University, are stumbling through the streets of Ankh-Morpork after a night of drunken debauchery when they happen upon a donkey cart rigged with explosives. Rincewind, always quick with a bad idea, insists on disarming the bomb.

The voice acting here, by the above-mentioned Eric Idle of Monty Python fame (he does Rincewind’s dialogue in both games) is wonderful and sets the tone for the rest of the game. When the librarian ape is hesitant to agree to Rincewind’s plan, the wizard quips, “It’s not dangerous. It’s the start of the game. They can’t kill us off yet.” I mention this because it’s an important element of Discworld II, this self-referential thing. At one point, further on, when saddled with yet another mind-boggling complex object quest, Rincewind grumbles, “Take axe, open door, kill dragon … why wasn’t I born in the days of text adventures?” There’s a lot of this throughout the game.

Rincewind’s drunken meddling has an unexpected result. Though Death arrives on schedule to whisk off the victim of the coming explosion, the bony one is inadvertently caught in the premature blast and propelled offscreen in a cloud of smoke and debris. Opening credits roll over a song-and-dance number, “That’s Death,” written and performed by Eric Idle with an animated skeleton in top hat and cane dancing on a small stage.

From here, the game unfolds in four acts and wraps up with a short epilogue. As each act is basically a smaller game within the larger game, each with a dramatic arc of its own but connected to the whole by a single, strong plot line, I thought I’d structure my review thusly.

Act I: The Rite Stuff

As the act begins, the Arch Chancellor, head wizard of Unseen University, the wizard college in the city of Ankh-Morpork, is overseeing one of his wizard’s funerals. Unfortunately, the event is derailed by the fact that the wizard corpse-to-be is still alive. Well, not alive but not dead either … technically, that is. Dead but undead, if you get my drift. In other words, he’s snuffed it properly, but his spirit won’t leave his now-dead body. All because Death is AWOL.  What else to do but perform the rite of AsheKent? This, of course, involves the use of certain objects, none of which the Arch Chancellor has on hand. Rincewind is summoned and given the task of gathering the required items and returning posthaste. It’s not pertinent to this review what or where the objects are or what they are to be used for because the fun, i.e., the whole point, is to traipse around Ankh-Morpork, to meet interesting people and take them for everything they own in the hopes that someone, somewhere, will give up the goods. (If you must know, the needed items are three sticks, some dribbly candles, glitter dust, a vile smell, and four ccs of mouse blood. Happy now?)

If you’ve played the first Discworld game, you will know already what you are in for, and you will be right. And wrong. Right in that, yes, there is a lot of “fill the hat with salted corn to feed to the donkey to make it thirsty so it will drink the puddle dry and reveal the ruby that the barber wants before he will give you the scissors you need to cut the ribbon …” Multiply that premise tenfold, bury any possible hints in acres of game world or discard clues altogether, and you more or less have the first Discworld game.

Not so in the sequel.

In Discworld II, there are lots of verbal hints and at times some downright hand-holding. The result: Puzzles that delight and entertain instead of simply torment. Of course, this assumes that, like every good adventurer, you’ll steal everything that isn’t nailed down and will religiously click on said item once it’s in inventory.  Do that and you’ll receive a witty description and complementary hint.

One final word on the first Discworld, and then I promise to shut up. It was brain-numbingly hard, far and away the most difficult adventure game I have ever played. Part of this was because of the tortured, twisted illogic required to solve the puzzles, and part due to the lack of coherent in-game clues needed to solve said puzzles.  Even one of the developers admitted as much in a 1997 Usenet post and indicated that had Perfect Entertainment not already wrapped the voice work, they would have indeed added dialogued hints in an attempt to balance the game. In my book, there is nothing classier than an outfit that sees its mistakes and admits them. Even better would have been to do something about them, but, hey, you can’t have everything.

Luckily, these lessons had been learned when it came time to make Discworld II. The developers delivered an easier game with fair and balanced puzzles and hints scattered liberally about. In fact, other than a single low-level UHS hint, I didn’t once have to resort to a walkthrough. And even then it was only because I overlooked part of a room. Be sure to exhaustively explore the edges of your screen when you come upon a new area, and you should be fine. If you are reading this and thinking the first Discworld game sounds like your cup of tea, what can I say? Go beat yourself on the head with a hammer. You’ll get approximately the same results with a thousandth of the effort.

Act II: Come Die with Me

After Rincewind gathers the required articles and after the rite of AsheKent is performed, Death appears before the gathered wizards.  They state their case, asking that he return, but to their surprise he has a problem with that. A really big problem. See, Death is tired of the scythe and the robe, tired of being the heavy. All he wants is to lay on the beach, wear hats with corks dangling from the brim and drink fancy cocktails. With that he disappears back to wherever he was hiding. Rincewind (who else?) is dispatched to bring Death back. After more object quests, Rincewind tracks Death down and makes his argument. Death agrees to return but only if Rincewind can arrange to get his poll numbers up. Rincewind immediately comes up with a plan to remake Death’s image, which necessitates drafting “Cut Me Own Throat” Dibbler, the sleazy, slimy salesman from Discworld I, to assist. Dibbler, big surprise, asks for three items, and so off Rincewind goes, ranging from squalid Ankh-Morpork to exotic Djelibeybi, from the kingdom of the Elven Queen to Bonedead Beach and back.

As I crisscrossed the game world, hunting and gathering, I was struck by how easily I fell into the rhythm of the game, how fluidly I moved from puzzle to puzzle, drawn along by the unfolding story.  It was a perfect balance. When confronted with the task of speeding up time a millionfold, I knew just what I had to do. When I needed to fool a coroner in order to get a death certificate, I saw all the steps in a single “aha” moment. This game is a prime example of how puzzle and story should each reinforce the other, and for that reason alone it serves as a precursor to and model of the way adventure games are being made today—simpler puzzles, more story. Regardless of what you think of the trend, it seems to be the way things are developing, and Discworld II was doing this back in the mid-90s. There was nothing particularly groundbreaking or stunningly creative in the puzzle design, and neither was the story anything to write home about. The thing here was the dynamic between the two. This was where the brainpower and the sweat were expended, and the results were worth the effort.

The graphics were just as superlative. My best guess is that, at the very least, the cutscenes were farmed out to an animation house.  The colors are rich and saturated, the figures sharp and crisp.  Watching a swarm of bees rise from a hive and buzz across the extreme foreground, tiny beads of sweat breaking out on their beaks, or the bitchy Elf Queen regally slouched on her throne, her hair rippling like golden wheat, or Death’s niece Susan in her little pink dress on her swing set in Death’s back yard, you’d think this was a Disney animated feature.

Act III: The Grim Rincewind

In Rincewind’s universe, no good deed goes unpunished. His plan has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, and now Death is at the top of everyone’s A list. And like any nouveau celeb, he intends to take full advantage, partying like there’s no tomorrow. Poor Rincewind is left with no choice but to go to Death’s estate and take up the mantle until Mr. D decides to return. Henry, Death’s butler, is not impressed and insists that Rincewind prove he can fill Death’s shoes.

This part of the game takes place in a single location comprised of three areas: Death’s house, Death’s stable and Death’s garden.  And it was here that an underlying theme of the game surfaced in full force, that of mirroring. I mentioned at the outset of the review that there was a self-referential tone to Discworld II.  It was made in the mid-90s, when irony ruled. In hindsight, it all seems a little self-indulgent, but at the time it was important to a lot of people, including, apparently, the good folks at Perfect Entertainment. In this game, Barnett, and possibly through him, Pratchett, held up a mirror to the player, to the game and to the whole concept of what an adventure game is. Here’s a sample.

Rincewind: “Collect a babe, a jingle and some novelties.  I don’t suppose you’d consider collecting them yourself?”

Dibbler: “No, mate. What sort of fool would waste his valuable leisure time voluntarily going off on annoying little quests set by stupid and ungrateful people, eh?”

Rincewind: “Ha. Ha. Ha. Yes! He’d have to be some sort of idiot, wouldn’t he?”

The obvious joke, of course, is that adventure gamers are a rather masochistic lot. The not-so-obvious joke is that the annoying little quests are not annoying at all but the very heart, the very meat of the game.

This self-mockery was funny enough in its own right, but then in the third act Barnett and his team did something entirely novel, something that deepened and enriched the entire game for me. You are required to almost exactly duplicate a puzzle from the first act, except instead of being in Unseen University you are now in Death’s garden. Otherwise, everything is identical, both the methodology and outcome. As in the light of day, so in the dark of night. As in life, so in death. Or something like that. There was a lot of this twisting and turning around the game on itself. Even the epilogue turned a well-loved movie trope on its head, not exactly mirroring it but inverting it. Active minds at work here is what I’m getting at, and that makes for a good game, regardless of the seemingly endless chatter.

Act IV: Till Death Do Us Part

This is where my bright idea about a review in four acts breaks down, as I really can’t reveal much more of the plot without doing the game and the reader a disservice. Suffice it to say, after delivering four-fifths of a perfect game, in the very short Act IV and the even shorter epilogue, Perfect Entertainment lost their focus and stumbled, slapping on a hurried, tacked-on ending. In fact, this game could have easily been structured in three acts and would have, I suspect, benefitted from the cutting.

There were a few other problems, nothing seriously damning. I experienced an error message once and had to reboot, but otherwise the game ran smoothly. I played in DOS 7.0 under Windows 95 on an older computer with an overly slow CD-ROM player, and because of that I had to copy quite a few graphics files to my hard drive, but that was my fault. Newer CD-ROM drives should do just fine. There are both Windows and DOS installs, so you have your choice. I played it in DOS, and other than the above-mentioned bug, I had no problems. I did read about a patch that was required for the Windows version.

Despite the stumble at the end, as Discworld II wound down, I was smiling and nodding and wishing there were more games like this. It was sly and satirical, dry and witty, gorgeous, smart and fun. I loved the constant banter, finding it by turns eloquent, penetrating and crass but never boring. I never felt I was being condescended to or hoodwinked or offered up the same old, same old in a slightly new version. It’s classic point-and-click 2D, no dying, cartoony adventure gaming with lots of funny-looking guys in pointy hats. What more could you want? The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Perfect Entertainment Publisher: Psygnosis Release Date: 1996 (PC); 1997 (PS)

Available for: DOS PlayStation Windows

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System Requirements

486 DX4-100 or better DOS 5.0 or Windows 95 and DirectX 3 or higher SVGA card with 512 KB or more RAM 16 MB RAM (Win95), 8 MB (DOS) 4X CD-ROM drive Mouse

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Links provided for informational purposes only.  FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered into by any party(ies).

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

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29 Responses to The Long, Sordid Tail of DRM

  • Meho

    Good one.

    Of course, it will be very interesting to see the battle between crackers and UBI’s cryptographers. PC version of Assassin’s Creed II is already circulating the warez scene, although as yet uncracked. Everybody seems to think it will be cracked in a couple of weeks time at worst, which, admittedly is better for UBI than what usually happens (games cracked before release). Of course, I won’t be buying it because I find this practice unnacceptable (and I do have the console version anyway) but the success of this game and its DRM might mean quite a lot in the future. Of course, we ARE moving towards the age where you will be required to be connected to do any playing at all, whatwith the Gaikai and OnLive systems rearing their heads on the horizon. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, eh?

  • Spike

    I went to the Ubisoft website and looked at their list of published games.  It seems that the last of their games I played was the last Myst game in 2005.  In fact the only Ubisoft games I’ve played have been Myst games.  So I don’t see that their new DRM crime-against-my-privacy will have much of an effect on me.  But I hate the idea.  It’s an “Off with their heads!” kind of development.  Reminds me of the idea that people will put up with lost privacy in exchange for security.  In this case the security is only to benefit Ubisoft.  Yes, I allow my privacy to be violated every day – each time I visit Amazon, or read Google News -the list goes on and on.  BUT THOSE ARE MY CHOICES.  I also have a choice about where and how I spend my money, and I’d refrain from buying a game that allows so much intrusion into my computer/life.  A game that tells me how I must live my life even in the smallest of ways such as always being connected to the internet is a game I can forgo.

  • Jason O

    Consoles CAN be connected to the internet 100% of the time, but there are still many consoles that never go online. Modern Warfare 2 sold over 11 million copies, yet XBox Live only shows 840,000 users that have been on-line with it. That’s not played online, that means they played the game in any mode while connected to XBox Live.

    Games that have required an internet connection and were multiplayer only have a history of vanishing quickly from the console marketplace. Phantasy Star ONLINE did much better on the Gamecube then it did on the XBox. What was the difference? Oh yeah, you could play PSO without an internet connection on the Gamecube, the XBox version require a live account and an internet connection. That’s hardly the only example but one that is near and dear to my heart.

  • Bennet

    No, no, you don’t get it! Ubisoft’s “always connected” requirement isn’t DRM, it’s value-add for you, the beloved customer. Just like the Albertsons supermarket chain requires employees to plaster obnoxiously bright orange “Thank you for shopping with us!” stickers on your Coke and milk not because they think you’re stealing them but to express their sincere gratitude for your patronage.

    Maybe my memories of a time when consumers paid for a product and got the product, unadorned by FBI warnings and impossible to open wrappings and authentication servers that can vanish at any time without warning were planted by aliens. In the current cultural climate it’s certainly difficult to believe that time ever existed.

  • Meho

    But Steerpike makes a good point: business model, retail model is lagging behind the times. And developers, instead of researching ways to use the existing systems to sell more games rather research new ways to piss off their paying customers.

    Seriously, in my opinion, pirates pirate games because they are better value than retail games. Not just in the sense that they get to spend less money on them, but they get them faster, do not have to go through any hassle with DRM and have full control over the game. I think that Gabe Newell put it best saying that Valve sees pirates as customers who haven’t been served yet.

    I think UBI and their ilk should look for ways to make retail games more valuable to their customers than (free) warez copies. Yes, stuff like achievements/ trophies helps a little, sure. There are other ways too and one of them is resale value. But, oh, what a surprise, used games market pisses publishers off MORE than pirates do. In fact most of the current DRM schemes are only effective against resales. EA’s ten dollar project and all other free DLC on day one initiatives. So, honestly, I’m afraid that UBI’s online-all-the-time-or-no-service DRM is basically only going to affect sales of used games. The crackers are going to bring their games to pirates eventually. I believe that draconic DRM schemes such as this will only inspire people like GeoHot, Dark Alex and Yoshihiro to spend more of their time on circumvention. Their street cred is going to be huge after all…

    What Valve seem to understand is that playing games through Steam should make playing MORE valuable/ comfortable than not playing games through Steam (which is, at the end of the day a DRM system). Being able to instal a game on as many machines as you want and not having to have a disc in the drive is exactly what pirated games give us too, but with Steam you also retain all your stats, friends lists, achievements and everything. So it’s BETTER than playing pirated games. I only hope that UBI wake up and realise they have to ADD value, not just subtract freedoms.

  • Lewis B

    I’m not really sure I see their DRM as a huge problem.  If my PC is turned on, so is my internet.  I’m fully aware that my name is probably on a million data bases already, and although it might be annoying knowing that Ubisoft have implemented such a security feature, if you don’t physically notice it, I don’t particularly care.

    I’m currently playing Myst at the moment, having never before.  What an odd game…

  • Meho

    Well, you know, just from a philosophical standpoint: if the game is unplayable as soon as you don’t have Internet connection (which, I’m afraid, happens to me more regularly than I am comfortable with) for no other reason than making sure you have paid for it then to me this is pretty much unnacceptable. Requiring a connection for something that is a function of the game itself is OK, but enforcing it just for the sake of protection of the publisher, sorry, no sale.

  • Lewis B

    True Meho.  I had 40 minutes the other day before I went out and thought I would have a quick skirmish on Dawn of War II.  Steam (despite my love for it) wouldn’t launch the game because for some reason it kept freezing and refusing to connect or launch in offline mode.  I couldn’t actually locate the source directory either to boot the game up manually. So, I didn’t get to play and instead spent 40 minutes in a fit of rage cursing Valve and all who work under them. 

    Not exactly the same situation, but not hugely dissimilar.

  • Gregg B

    I’m really not concerned about the privacy issue simply because that illusion is just that, and doesn’t really comfort or unsettle me. My problem with this whole thing is that internet connections can be temperamental at the best of times and the idea that if the connection falters I will lose my progress (and thus my invested time which I’d argue is more valuable than my money) then quite frankly Ubi can fuck off. I’ve been pretty placid up to press with DRM simply because it’s not seemed that intrusive but this will affect the paying customers more than the pirates. It devalues the product and I fear it will push otherwise paying customers to download cracked versions that don’t suffer from this shit. Which, of course, will play into Ubi’s hands.

    Am I right in believing all this stems from the hideous retail model that just refuses to die? Physical retail creates pressuring deadlines, costs considerably more due to increased physical production (and overheads in staffing and floor space), it’s inflexible with stock limitations and shelf space dictating the range of titles available in any given store and by the sounds of things is the sole reason for this ‘tail’. If you look at Steam, it isn’t always the newest games that sell the most due in no small part to their sales and weekend deals.

    “I wonder if we’ll ever get to a point where a person would be just as likely to invest in a beloved classic as a hot new release.”

    From my experience there are a lot of people who simply can’t stomach old looking games, even some of my friends who’ve been playing games since they were young have turned into total graphics whores. Seriously you want to see the totally underwhelmed look on their faces when I show them XCOM for any period of time. We’re at a stage now where graphics are so advanced that for a lot of people going back so far to sample an allegedly classic title is simply too much. Thankfully GOG is doing a fantastic job of making these titles as accessible, and valuable, as possible.

    EDIT: Spot on Meho. My point exactly.
    See what I mean though Lew? Time. Valuable stuff. A quick skirmish on DoW turned into a 40 minute skirmish with Steam.

  • Mat

    This seems like an awful idea.. or at least one which sounds like a good idea to somebody somewhere, but in reality is unworkable.

    Since I’ve been a paying internet customer I have lived at 3 different addresses and used around 5 different ISP’s. I have ALWAYS had problems with my internet connection. With my current set up it tends to go down if a menacing looking cloud passes overhead..

  • xtal

    Some people may like to play a game offline now and then; this is especially easy with older ones before the dawn of activation codes and online authentication. While those aren’t that annoying, having to maintain a constant internet connection just to play a game that you paid for, which is not specifically a MMO, really bites.

    Gregg B said:
    “Am I right in believing all this stems from the hideous retail model that just refuses to die? Physical retail creates pressuring deadlines, costs considerably more due to increased physical production (and overheads in staffing and floor space), it’s inflexible with stock limitations and shelf space dictating the range of titles available in any given store and by the sounds of things is the sole reason for this ‘tail’. If you look at Steam, it isn’t always the newest games that sell the most due in no small part to their sales and weekend deals.”

    I agree with this. Just a few years ago I couldn’t see myself paying for intangible, digital goods. Fast forward to now and it’s really my preferred method of computer gaming, whether it’s GOG, Steam, or elsewhere, I find it’s the model that works best for the customer. If I’m not mistaken, I believe once upon a time that was who the industry was trying to serve, no? The customer?

  • Cesar

    You know, I’m from Brazil and there piracy is HUGE. Maybe for that reason I feel for the industry and understand the efforts to stop it. However, I suspect this crack delay would have a very minor impact in markets like Brazil. People can’t afford the games, so they wouldn’t pay full price anyway.

    It is a shame that we don’t have privacy anymore. The other day a friend of mine on XBox Live sent me a message to congratulate me on a goal I scored in Fifa 10. I didn’t know but apparently not only you can see I’m playing Fifa, but you also see when I score and my avatar cheers! While that sounds very cool, it is also very disturbing. But like Matt points very well, privacy is already gone. And since I don’t have it anymore, why not help stop piracy?

    On the other hand, the plurality of solutions is a different matter, it becomes a hassle. I think the solution should be platform dependent, not publisher dependent. In Brew phones, the control is embedded in the system and you cannot use an app if it cannot be verified, which means if you are not connected to the network you can’t play.

    Unfortunately that cannot be applied to consoles, there’s a considerable number of devices outside the internet umbrella. But if the game constantly checks if you are online and tries to authenticate the copy, online piracy will suffer a big hit and the technological move towards full connectivity will make the practice more and more efficient over time.

  • Andrew

    Not going to buy the game, long tail or not, it sucks to have that kind of persistent connection needed for offline play. Not even just startup authorisation either. I must admit any Game For Windows Live games can be similar (Dawn of War 2 being one of them necessitating it) although most of them allow offline profiles, and most of them allow the saves to be moved easily between any online or offline accounts.

    Oh, and if you’re disconnected it won’t kick you out of the game too, even Microsoft didn’t get that wrong.

    I don’t even understand how privacy comes into it, my main issue is twofold:
    – The above note about simple, offline play (and disconnects for blips in service)
    – The fact it isn’t just your connection that is necessary, it is THEIR connection and servers

    The second point as a partial game historian leads me to wonder how many years (not decades) the servers will be there. Publishers have removed much more necessary servers quickly if they are a cost liability (or they want to push people onto a newer game…). Downtime is also, considering some of the services require payment (Xbox Live for instance) devastatingly poor considering the user base sizes, especially on high load days (and I wonder if we’ll see “Assassins Creed 2 unplayable at launch due to server overload” at all, heh). Lucky it’s “just games” though, no worries if we only have 99% uptime right?! 😉

    (Also, frankly their Assassins Creed 1 port was poor until they patched it, where at least then it was playable (in full on 16:9…for some reason), which makes me wary of any PC release of a console game they do. I wonder also if they still have unskippable cutscenes, I’ve not checked it out on the consoles).

    The fact they’ll never have enough sales of this PC version due to the earlier console release to either say this is a roaring success or roaring failure. It’s the longest end of the tail in the first place. Or they’ll lie about whatever happens anyway. It’s utterly bizarre…I just don’t understand it.

  • Meho

    Cesar: I’m in Serbia and here piracy reigns supreme (much worse than Brazil, I imagine) but still, this is pure and simple bullshit. I purcahsed BioShock 2 today, for my PS3 even though I’d prefer to play it on my PC just because of the stupid DRM that won’t let me control the use of a game I pay for. They can fuck off with that. So, my purchase was influenced by DRM, depsite the game being more natural to play on a PC. Protection measures should not create this kind of bitterness in a human being.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    The issue of server overload on release days is significant. Think about it – a game like Modern Warfare 2? Or any other hotly anticipated release? Of course the servers would go down. It’s not cost-effective to install a server infrastructure capable of handling Day Zero traffic. That would royally piss people off.

    Ubi and others who use draconian DRM typically insist that if they ever go out of business or shut servers down, they’ll issue patches so the games can be played offline.

    Around the holidays here, big stores like Best Buy station a guy at the exit. His job is to go through your bag and consult your receipt to make sure you haven’t stolen anything. That’s a very similar ideology to this one: treat all consumers like thieves in hopes of catching the few who are.

  • Lewis B

    Considering most MMOG servers cannot cope on launch day, I see it as a gaurentee that when the next Modern Warfare is released, if they do follow through with this, would see many unhappy players.

  • lakerz1

    This new DRM policy will totally be screwing me over because I have a wireless internet setup, but my signal is a bit weak so here and there it drops out for a 10-15 second period before it reconnects.  Plus my wireless router is a bit wonky and will just stop working once in awhile until I cycle power to it.  So, until my setup changes, I will be forced to avoid all Ubi PC games that use this.

  • Igor Hardy

    I seriously doubt a person which would normally pirate a game, will pay money for it just because she has to wait a short while longer for the cracked version. This can work only for very cheap games – like 1$ cheap.

  • Meho

    Just for those keeping tabs: the Russian version of Assassin’s Creed II has apparently been successfully cracked, with a fix for the saves too. Of course, I don’t KNOW this for sure but that’s the word circulating through the grapewine.

  • Cesar

    Brazil is a strong competitor in the piracy rates. 95%-97% if I am not mistaken.

    Anyway, I don’t have a problem with the privacy issue. Not even with the assumption that we are all thieves. If you extrapolate that idea, you will conclude we shouldn’t have patrol cars on the streets. They assume people will commit crimes and have to keep watch. Homo homini lupus. Society isn’t perfect and even though losses are part of the model, no one is ready to lose out of good faith alone. I don’t mean to say DRM and police watch are the same thing, I’m just saying it’s not that simple to draw a line where it becomes offensive to monitor society.

    That being said, it is not acceptable to have a DRM impact gameplay at all. I don’t mind it authenticating my copy. But if I am offline it has to work. And if I loose connection during the game I shouldn’t be kicked out.

    And while the efficacy of the solution might be questionable under these circumstances, like I said in the previous comment, it only tends to increase.

  • Andrew

    “Ubi and others who use draconian DRM typically insist that if they ever go out of business or shut servers down, they’ll issue patches so the games can be played offline.”

    I have seen this happen to absolutely zero games ever. The fact that it is nearly impossible to sanction any work on IP if a company is in administration is the key. That and it is non-trivial to get around your own disk DRM by producing an installer that will work with your disk copy to install it.

    I’d love to be proved wrong…this is by far the most worrying thing of the deal, just installed Bioshock 2 and it has online activation (sigh)…worried I might need to download cracked versions to install it in the future!

    Oh, did you see the patch notes of the first patch? It makes the DRM very very very slightly “better” (I mean, better as in “still shit”):

    http://www.fileshack.com/file.x/17456/Assassin%27s+Creed+2+Patch+1.01+-+US

    “Game can now be continued from the exact same point when connection is restored”

    Ho ho ho. Ho.

  • Gregg B

    I like this bit:

    “Only those who purchased a copy of ACII or SHV legally appear to be affected. Pirates playing illegally downloaded cracked versions of the game are able to play without a problem.”

    Is it apparent pirates are having no problems yet? If they’ve properly cracked it then what I feared (above) is true. Last I heard was that the DRM apparently downloads levels or important files as you play. I don’t know whether this is true or not though.

  • Spike

    Meho beat me to it.  I just read a similar article on The Register.  I don’t suppose that the DDoS attack will make Ubi rethink its evil ways, but this might (I can dream, can’t I?):

    “Meanwhile Ubisoft’s much criticised controls have been broken by software hackers. A hacker group called Skid-Row managed to bypass DRM restrictions on Silent Hunter 5 less than 24 hours after the game was published. Skid Row has releasing a crack for the game based on this work, Zdnet reports. ®”

    Full article here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/08/ubisoft_anti_drm_hack_attack/

  • Littermate

    Spike.  RE: The Register article
    There is a comment to that article that claims the crack for SH5 is not a complete crack and would only allow an incomplete experience, because not only are save games stored online but some of the game data files are stored online too, implying that the boxed game you buy is incomplete.  This seems plausible and effective IMO, because if I was demanding an internet connection for my software this is how I would do it.  It demands not only that a games code be cracked but that missing data files be supplied too.

  • Spike

    Having just read this article – link below – I’m thinking that DRM will be fine and dandy AND hunky-dory with me as long as the packaging it comes in is “green”.  Yep.  That makes it more palatable.

    http://www.fastcompany.com/1620105/ubisoft-green-recycled-case-digital-manual-sustainable-packaging

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    I would kind of like to buy games in potato cases.

  • xtal

    I was thinking… and remembered one of the most creative instances of “DRM” if you can call it that: King’s Quest VI! I looked it up and sure enough it is mentioned on KQVI’s Wikipedia page:

    A booklet titled “Guidebook to the Land of the Green Isles” (written by Jane Jensen) is included in the KQVI package. Aside from providing additional background to the game’s setting, this booklet serves as part of the game’s copy-protection. The player will not be able to pass the puzzles on the Cliffs of Logic that guard the Isle of the Sacred Mountain without information from the booklet. The booklet also includes a poem encoding the solution to one of the puzzles in the labyrinth on the Isle of the Sacred Mountain.

    I guess that’s not very feasible today, what with widespread use of the internet around the world. I still think it’s more creative than the “thank you for your money, we intend to treat you like a criminal” method.

  • Bluebogle

    I played the KQVI game with the booklet. I was a kid at the time, and thought the booklet was so cool! It really added to the whole game’s experience.

    The quest for Glory games came with fun booklets as well, though I don’t remember if they had copy protection elements to ’em.

    Ahh, the good old days..

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