This is idiotic. For those who don’t want to read the link, Ubisoft patched Rainbow Six 3, and with it, put in a new anti-piracy measure. If you have several of the more well known CD cloning programs on your computer, it will not start. They don’t have to be running, they just have to be on the hard drive.
I know many people use these programs to pirate games. Many people also use them to not have to keep several dozen CDs on hand, depending on what game they want to play. This punishes the guilty and the innocent.
Even more fun in the comments:
Ubisoft technical support did confirm that they will be doing this in all future Ubisoft titles.
Won’t someone just crack this anti-piracy scheme, too? I think it’s a poor idea, of course, but it seems likely that it won’t take long for someone to come out with a workaround for it.
I hate it when this sort of thing is done, too. Raven Shield has been out since March and now is not the time to be patching in new levels of copy protection. It reminds me of the “stealth” inclusion of the updated SecuROM code in one of NWN’s patches…and we all know how smoothly that went.
I use clone programs because, surprise surprise, not all installers work with my cd drive. Most recently I had to clone Black Mirror (which I do legally own) just to get it installed.
Someone on the FS news comments made the joke “UbiSoft uber Alles”, and I couldn’t help but feel the need to explain that to everyone who might have read it…
As she said, we’ve had to install several games this way (Black Mirror, NOLF 2, KOTOR) because CloneCD can make an image of the disc which the installer can cope with. Installing from the game discs will cause the installer to choke. So now I’m going to have to find a crack for UbiSoft games.
If you think about it, it’s even worse than that. People who want to pay for Ubisoft’s stuff, and yet don’t want to pay for other software, will be punished by this copy-protection scheme, despite the fact that Ubisoft was not even harmed. These users will now have large incentives to pirate Ubisoft’s games in preference to the competition.
Kind of amusing to think of a copy-protection scheme that doesn’t just screw with the incentives, but actively turns them completely in the wrong direction.
Actually, I can’t see how this could be legal, EULA or no EULA. It’s like a car manufacturer rendering your car inoperable if a welder and sheet metal are ever found in your garage. I have a feeling Ubisoft will ultimately be forced to abandon this particular line of attack against their customers.
I can’t see it being too legal either. Wouldn’t the company behind clone cd have a case against ubisoft for doing this. There are people who buy these programs. If microsoft updated Office so it won’t run if netscape is installed on the users computer there would be slight unrest.
I know the two scenerios aren’t quite the same but it’s not ubisoft’s place to dictate what programs can be on my computer.
