Ubisoft wants to improve relationship with PC community

[mindcycle]

This is from a few days ago but I didn't see it posted here.

Ubisoft has had a rocky history with PC gamers, but it wants to patch things up. Its about-face on the always-on DRM requirement was one sign that the company was seeking to improve, and it wasn't an isolated incident. Worldwide Uplay director Stephanie Perotti says they are actively listening to feedback from the PC community.

"Announcing all these partners for Uplay and a wider choice of PC games, it shows our commitment to PC, and we want to improve out relationship with the PC community," Perotti told MCV "We are always seeking to improve. We took a lot of that feedback on board. With every game on PC we are improving. Far Cry 3 and Assassin’s Creed 3 on PC were very high quality."

The mention of "partners" refers to Ubisoft's recent addition of third-party games to the Uplay store. Only 30 third-party titles are available in the store so far, but more are on the way in the "coming weeks and months."

http://www.shacknews.com/article/77945/ubisoft-wants-to-improve-relationship-with-pc-community

I have mixed feelings about this. To me, this reads like Ubi is finally noticing the current console gen has run it's course and people are looking to PC's again for the latest and greatest. At least for the next year or two until PS4 and Xbox 720 are out.

They want back on the game now.. but what happened to just simply treating us right for the sake of supporting the PC community? I don't buy it.

That or they just want some of Steam's profits.. probably the latter..

 

[AlexAL]

KILL kill kill uplay.

 

[cmdrdredd]

uplay isn't that bad. It's not resource hungry and doesn't crash on me. Good enough lol...

Honestly the best way for them to improve things is to not delay game releases on PC. Assassin's Creed coming out weeks after the console was BS. Then you simply make a real PC version with no ports using advanced features unavailable on console but available on PC. Give us some real AA options and we're set.

 

[jimrawr]

Seriously they say this after releasing Far Cry 3 that has peer-2-peer for multiplayer and expect PC gamers to be behind them?

 

[AlexAL]

uplay isn't that bad. It's not resource hungry and doesn't crash on me. Good enough lol...

Three days ago I had some time, got out my xbox controller and was gonna play Assassin's Creed 2. Could not get it to work for the life of me. Nor could I two other uplay games. Really pissed me off. Today I switched them from my external drive to internal (on a laptop) and AC2 loads with no snags. So I too thought uplay was pretty innocent till this happened.

 

[power_hour]

Well its a start I guess. The results will speak for themselves. knock knock EA, anybody home?

 

[TechBoyJK]

Seriously they say this after releasing Far Cry 3 that has peer-2-peer for multiplayer and expect PC gamers to be behind them?

I bought it for the single player campaign, and on that front, they 100% delivered. I would honestly pay $5,000 to have a weekend playing that game if there was no other option.

 

[Stringjam]

Uplay is something I really didn't notice that much. I set it to offline and enjoyed my 60 hours of FC3.

Sure, I would rather launch FC3 out of STEAM and not have another marketing app, but at least they provided the option to keep it off.

 

[jimrawr]

I bought it for the single player campaign, and on that front, they 100% delivered. I would honestly pay $5,000 to have a weekend playing that game if there was no other option.

As did I, and enjoyed it thoroughly. That doesnt excuse the fact that they made it P2P multiplayer though, especially when it comes to PC gamers. No one wants to go back to the 90's and play as a HPB with 150-250 pings

 

[AFurryReptile]

I've hated Ubisoft ever since they ruined my favorite game, Splinter Cell. Blacklist looks a little better than Conviction, but I'm pretty sure we'll never see Chaos Theory again (unless it's done by somebody else.)

And that makes me sad.

 

[Maximilian]

How about ditching uSuck and take the DRM out of their older games? That actually takes effort. Not using DRM in future games takes less effort than putting DRM in.

Ubisoft wants to help the PC community?

 

[mindcycle]

I've hated Ubisoft ever since they ruined my favorite game, Splinter Cell. Blacklist looks a little better than Conviction, but I'm pretty sure we'll never see Chaos Theory again (unless it's done by somebody else.)

And that makes me sad.

So is Conviction pretty bad? After I heard they dropped the always online DRM I picked up a physical copy for $5 (guess it didn't sell too well lol), but have yet to install it.

 

[BrightCandle]

I will never forgive UbiSoft for adding the DRM meta game to everything it did, not least because I lost it all too frequently. They have treated PC gamers like dirt, have laughed as their business burned and then realized they better say we want our customers back. If they honestly want their customers they are going to have to consistently deliver on what PC gamers are demanding from them. Their customers have been screaming at them for years about what you were doing wrong, they fix that and in 5 years maybe they will have most of them back.

But I don't see it happening. You don't court lost customers by asking for them back, you fix the reason they left to begin with. They need to go bankrupt so the rest of the industry can learn a valuable lesson in customer service and how not to treat ones once loyal customer base.

 

[Fallen Kell]

They have burned the PC bridges for the last 5-7 years and now want us to just accept them back? I'm sorry, but I am with the "skeptical cat" here. They can start by patching out the DRM in their older games that people may have been burned on already.

Step 2 would be to start having a UI that in games that is actually designed for a PC and not a control pad (i.e. actual mouse movements, not something that interprets the mouse moving in a direction and then converts that to moving the mouse at a set movement speed in the direction of motion). If you are going to have both a console and PC version, make the UI modular/replaceable so that you can have the console players get one UI designed for them to use a controller, and the PC players to be able to select to use the controller UI or the keyboard/mouse UI (which entails having an appropriate keyboard/mouse UI in the first place).

Step 3 allow the PC modding community to replace/update game textures to allow for even higher quality details for people that have hardware which can utilize it. Look at Oblivion, Fallout 3, FO3:New Vegas, Skyrim, and how the modding community has updated the graphics quality far beyond the original release quality as new hardware has come out which could handle the higher resolution textures, lighting effects, and 3D meshes.

 

[Dankk]

So is Conviction pretty bad? After I heard they dropped the always online DRM I picked up a physical copy for $5 (guess it didn't sell too well lol), but have yet to install it.

IMO, Conviction is a pretty cool action-stealth game. When you play it, just don't expect a traditional Splinter Cell game, and you'll be fine. It's a little less Sam Fischer and a little more Jack Bauer.

 

[AFurryReptile]

So is Conviction pretty bad? After I heard they dropped the always online DRM I picked up a physical copy for $5 (guess it didn't sell too well lol), but have yet to install it.

It depends on how you played earlier games. If you're into the stealth aspect, the completing an entire level without being detected and no kills, then you'll be sorely disappointed - because that aspect is gone. It's an action game with some stealth elements, but it's much faster-paced than previous titles. It's really easy even on harder difficulties, and the story line completely retcons four titles worth of history.

And you can't hide dead bodies. Seriously, Ubisoft Montreal was the shit. Ubisoft sucks.

 

[PowerYoga]

how about actually removing the DRM and not sound like a marketing mouthpiece? Anybody can say they're "listening to gamers" and then just giggle about it later.

 

[Dankk]

how about actually removing the DRM and not sound like a marketing mouthpiece?

They have. The "always-online" DRM that was in ACII and Splinter Cell has been officially removed.

 

[mindcycle]

IMO, Conviction is a pretty cool action-stealth game. When you play it, just don't expect a traditional Splinter Cell game, and you'll be fine. It's a little less Sam Fischer and a little more Jack Bauer.

It depends on how you played earlier games. If you're into the stealth aspect, the completing an entire level without being detected and no kills, then you'll be sorely disappointed - because that aspect is gone. It's an action game with some stealth elements, but it's much faster-paced than previous titles. It's really easy even on harder difficulties, and the story line completely retcons four titles worth of history.

And you can't hide dead bodies. Seriously, Ubisoft Montreal was the shit. Ubisoft sucks.

Thanks for the info guys, that's pretty much what I was expecting. I just hope I can disable all the uplay and DRM garbage pretty easily. If not, it'll prob be the last Ubi game i'll buy for a long while, but at least I only spent $5 on it..

 

[penske2298977]

Ubi can eff off. I have avoided buying anything from them for years due to their draconian drm. But after all the glowing reviews for FC3 and that they allowed uplay in offline mode I bought FC3 through Steam -- played for an hour. Now unable to get the game working again due to Uplay issues, having to reinstall the game, then Uplay doesn't recognize the serial # provided by Steam -- tried to enter it again and my Uplay account got banned. Get Uplay account unbanned and game won't start and pops up another error message about having some other Uplay game open (which is not the case) and keeps telling me to try and reinstall the game (which I have already done multiple times).
I give up...also kinda pissed at Steam as they should have worked this out with Ubi that getting the game through Steam was sufficient drm and should not require the Uplay client -- definitely last game I will ever by from Ubisoft.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

Ubi can eff off. I have avoided buying anything from them for years due to their draconian drm. But after all the glowing reviews for FC3 and that they allowed uplay in offline mode I bought FC3 through Steam -- played for an hour. Now unable to get the game working again due to Uplay issues, having to reinstall the game, then Uplay doesn't recognize the serial # provided by Steam -- tried to enter it again and my Uplay account got banned. Get Uplay account unbanned and game won't start and pops up another error message about having some other Uplay game open (which is not the case) and keeps telling me to try and reinstall the game (which I have already done multiple times).
I give up...also kinda pissed at Steam as they should have worked this out with Ubi that getting the game through Steam was sufficient drm and should not require the Uplay client -- definitely last game I will ever by from Ubisoft.

Wait what? You need both uplay and steam to play, even if you bought through steam? Steam should really start listing this bs in the description if they are gonna sell games like this.

 

[penske2298977]

Wait what? You need both uplay and steam to play, even if you bought through steam? Steam should really start listing this bs in the description if they are gonna sell games like this.

Yeah you need both. It was listed in the requirements so I knew -- I just assumed they had worked this stuff out. For most Uplay (for those who got the game through Steam) just pops up with little annoyance and you go right to your game.

But for those who run into problems you are left hanging between Steam and Uplay crappy customer support --- so I am pretty much SOL.

I wish Valve/Ubi had worked this out that the Uplay client was not needed at all...oh well. Lesson learned.

 

[Red Storm]

Ubisoft wants to improve relationship with PC community

Hahahahaha

Well, starting with a joke is a good start.

 

[mindcycle]

Yeah you need both. It was listed in the requirements so I knew -- I just assumed they had worked this stuff out. For most Uplay (for those who got the game through Steam) just pops up with little annoyance and you go right to your game.

But for those who run into problems you are left hanging between Steam and Uplay crappy customer support --- so I am pretty much SOL.

I wish Valve/Ubi had worked this out that the Uplay client was not needed at all...oh well. Lesson learned.

Time to crack it? I'd say you have every right to do so at this point..

 

[sigurros81]

KILL kill kill uplay.

My main beef with any of these is the fact I have to keep track of like 5 diferent online services just to play a fucking game. I have to log into Steam to play a game that also requires me to log into Uplay/Games For Windows/Whatever. So annoying, and on a personal security level, this is even more annoying when these services store my credit card information if I ever purchase any sort of DLCs.