I'm not Weak Atheism ftw.

Unless I'm helping them pirate it.

Theft:

As was said, but I believe not as clear, piracy does not deprive the Intellectual Property holders of their Intellectual Property, which is the only thing at stake here.

If you go into a store, grab a game off the shelf, and leave the store without paying, you've stolen material goods; "personal goods or property of another."

If you download a game off the internet, you've copied a game which is protected by copyrights and IP laws.

So, unless you want to rewrite the English language, please stop saying piracy is theft. It isn't. Use a different word, maybe, like piracy.

While this does not hold true for all countries, in the United States of America we are all above the law, including immigrants (illegal or otherwise)! Why?

Abraham Lincoln

Every man, woman, and child in this nation has the right to challenge our laws in a courtroom, all the way to the Supreme Court.

Obviously that doesn't mean you should go around breaking laws because you think you're better than them. I am just saying that it is dangerous to assume laws control people, and that you cannot disobey them without punishment. If a law is truly unjust, it is the American duty to challenge it.

Havent we been through this like 9000 times? We are not going to reach a consensus.

And the idea of reselling (like a book) bites the dust. Sony wants each secondhand buyer of the game to cough up an extra $20. What would people do if Ford did this to used car buyers? What would Congress do?

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/37605/Now-Sony-joins-pre-owned-offensive

[EDIT]

This is rather like Obama

<paraphrase>
"I'm sure the American people are 100% behind me that we need to waste billions of dollars against stuff that probably won't happen anyway"
</paraphrase>

[EDIT2]
And Valve wants to root your computer to "prevent cheating" (Well, that's probably true enough now)

http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/gaming/steamed-valve-software-battles-videogame-cheaters

[EDIT3]
And an hour and a half ago I was adding to this when the ISP shut off the internet. I thought it was because in spite of hearing the words "5GB cap" when getting installed, but the main web site now says minimum cap is 100GB per month, I indulged in a half-hour of YouTube a couple hours earlier. But it turns out that the monthly payment had gotten lost in the shuffle during the Presidents Day holiday Now I'm too pissed off to remember what I was gonna write here.

[EDIT4]
AND NOW THE DAMNED POWER WENT OUT FOR SEVERAL SECONDS! (furtively looking out the window for black vans)

Well of course I don't think that... no sane person thinks that piracy is decreasing sales . They however think that, so I pirate ironically, or perhaps to spite them. Sure you might say, "They don't care about you spiting them, they don't know who you are"... well, that's my entire point.

I don't even play new games... heh.

I know next to nothing about DRM, I know especially little about what good DRM would be like. That's why I didn't say anything. It just bothers me when people try to justify immorality.

Speaking of DRM, Silent Hunter 5 will be released as well with online only playing. So what happens to UBIsoft? such as the company going broke and not having servers in the future? Will it mean this game will no longer play?
I can't imagine this game being playable 20 years from now even though the graphics look good enough even 100 years from now (judging by how companies in the computer industry go broke and don't support any game after wards, no profit) . Not that games will not be that much better; but still, its like chess with better graphics and people play that game a 1000 years later.
Heres a screen shot:

{"name":"800px-SH5_Screenshot.jpg","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/2\/d\/2d1cdde8b873b74bc1f6f528cd5ff990.jpg","w":800,"h":500,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/2\/d\/2d1cdde8b873b74bc1f6f528cd5ff990"}

What are you, women?! If you want to tell them you think DRM is bullshit then TELL THEM. Your bullshit games accomplish nothing. Honestly, sales need to improve for DRM to go away. That's fact. Keep pirating and say goodbye to PC gaming. That's just inevitable.

Its a bit late, but here it goes.

At least pirating doesn't threaten anyones lives. You cant say the same about speeding now can you? What is more immoral?

I wonder how difficult it could be to crack that system and also whether it would suffice to just remove the check calls from the code or whether it would be necessary to sniff the outgoing and incoming packets, write an emulator based on that and redirect the games phone home feature to connect to that.

Disclaimer: I'm not encouraging anyone to crack that system or to pirate that game. Just thinking about the technical side of this, because it hasn't been brought up yet.

More thoughts: If I were to develop a "constant connection needed" system like that I'd probably somehow personalize and encrypt the information that would get sent to my DRM servers, so that if anyone would get the silly idea of doing what I suggested above(packet emulator) I could at least tell by the data in the cracked copy with the emulator that is sure to surface on the web sooner or later, who I'd have to contact for legal countermeasures.

Hm, something like this is probably just going to be the next step: Personalized DRM, requirement to register with ID card, home address, fingerprint, DNA sample and you have to agree to have a webcam installed behind your back, which is on 24/7 and it will monitor everything you do on your computer just to make sure you're not doing anything silly with the game.

Why no, I'm not paranoid at all.

P.S.: Not going to buy that or any other game with that kind of intrusive copy protection.

There have been two addendums to the original article in the OP, one which says that games are saved locally and uploading them is optional, the other links to an interview with Ubi, which says they have a way to patch the DRM out of the games in case of emergency (servers taken down forever, company failure, etc.).

If they had some of the games logic online, there couldn't be a single patch programme to patch all of the games (and all future games to use the DRM system), unless there was a copy of the logic already included in the offline files. If there is some of the game logic online and a copy of that logic exists in the offline files though, it would be easy for an experienced cracker to find those bits and pieces and patch the system out of the games himself.

So I don't think there is currently any logic needed for the game, which is running only on their servers and it doesn't seem be an option (unless their patch programme needs additional files for each game).

However, the fact they say there is a patch means it has already been "cracked". Heh. It's just that it's theirs and pirates will either have to write their own or wait until it leaks.

What? The whole point of a patch is to add and/or remove data. In the case of patching a program, the data is code. The remote checks can be removed and the online-only code added. If there are multiple binary releases, use SHA1SUMs or something to determine which version you're patching so you know which patches to apply. Simple.

Of course they'd patch each game separately...