So the story has ended in origins then
it ended in 3, they’ve been treading water ever since.
My interest died with Desmond.
yeah… for me I was willing to give black flag a chance to see if they would find a way to make a new series, maybe with a new current day plot, but nah. people seem to dislike the current day portion of those games but to me that was the main interest, along with the mythology…
black flag’s current day portion was so goddamn awful, they turned abstergo into a parody of ubisoft? I don’t even know what they were thinking… but it was so immersion breaking. completely killed my interest.
pirate stuff was fun, and it still had a nice plot twist near the beginning… but it was clear that the overall story was going nowhere so I just quit playing after that and decided that the series ended with 3.
Writing by committee doesn’t tend to produce anything worthwhile.
I already wasn’t going to pay for another Ubisoft game ever again but this is absolutely the final nail in the coffin for me. Fucking atrocious.
All it took for me to never buy Ubi again was their launcher
Shadows’ EULA also includes a provision that allows the game to monitor your PC’s RAM to ensure you’re not running any unauthorized programs like macros, cheats, or hacks, a well-intentioned clause that nonetheless feels a touch out of place in a single-player game
Why the fuck would I allow Ubisoft to monitor my RAM while playing a SINGLE-PLAYER GAME. They just want to datamine my PC or something?
Assassin’s Creed Shadows Will Feature Denuvo & Account Linking + EULA also requires you to allow Ubisoft to “monitor” your RAM
The game’s EULA also requires you to allow Ubisoft to “monitor” your RAM.
As Ubisoft prepares for the 2025 launch of Assassin’s Creed Shadows – a game some view as the developer’s last chance to break free from a year marked by financial setbacks and controversies – the game’s Steam page has finally gone live, revealing two major caveats about the Steam version of AC Shadows that will, unfortunately for Ubisoft, likely drive away some gamers.
If you’re in any way familiar with the PC gaming industry (or have read the title of this article), then you’ve most likely already guessed one of the caveats, and yes, the PC version of Assassin’s Creed Shadows will feature Denuvo, a controversial DRM software detested by the community for negatively affecting loading times and framerate in games, something Denuvo’s creator Irdeto categorically denies, blaming its low reputation on pirates and gamers.
While Denuvo’s presence in Shadows isn’t much of a surprise – considering it’s been used in Ubisoft’s previous games like Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Star Wars Outlaws, the Far Cry series, and others – the decision to keep the DRM could be seen as questionable given the growing trend of developers ditching Denuvo or choosing not to include it in the first place, as well as Ubisoft’s apparent need to steer clear of further controversies and reputational damage.
The second caveat relates to another requirement the community generally dislikes: the mandatory account linking to the studio’s Ubisoft Connect platform when buying Assassin’s Creed Shadows on Steam. Even though, much like Denuvo, this isn’t anything new for Ubisoft fans, it could still negatively impact the game financially and reputationally considering what happened with Helldivers 2 earlier this year when Sony’s now-retracted mandate to link Steam accounts to PSN caused an uproar, buried the game in negative reviews, and, as some believe, tanked the game’s player numbers, with many blaming this backlash as the sole reason we’ve heard so little about Helldivers 2 in the second half of 2024, despite it being universally acclaimed and considered a strong contender for Game of the Year when it first launched.
To top it all off, Shadows’ EULA also includes a provision that allows the game to monitor your PC’s RAM to ensure you’re not running any unauthorized programs like macros, cheats, or hacks, a well-intentioned clause that nonetheless feels a touch out of place in a single-player game and could potentially scare off some of the more suspicious players who aren’t comfortable with their hardware being monitored.
And what’s your take on those requirements? Would it be beneficial for Ubisoft to get rid of Denuvo and account linking while there’s still time?
Well intentionen my ass. If I want to cheat in my single player game it’s my damn right. They just want to make sure you buy their cheats (microtransaction time savers) instead of making your own for free.
Can we do something like reporting Denuvo or the kernel anticheats as malware in Windows defender?
A game with a built in system lever logger that could theoretically monitor even your bank transactions should be reported as spyware/malware and users installing it should have to expressly acknowledge / authorise this.
Normally I would say that Microsoft wouldn’t care and they would just make an exception, but after the CrowdStrike error, they might be just a little bit more careful. Or maybe I have too much faith in them
Yeah Susan, I’m sure Microsoft TOTALLY learned their lesson from the Crowdstrike incident. Y’know, since they’ve never had an anti-malware company cause worldwide outages because of a configuration error before.
Thankfully there is a very simple, no-effort solution to this: Don’t play their trash.
I already don’t play their excruciatingly mediocre games and this just reinforces my avoidance is justified.
Also good gods they’ve been milking this tired franchise for almost 2 decades now.
Pirating also allows you to play it without the BS if you’re interested in the game.
Thanks to denuvo and there currently not being any active group capable of cracking denuvo, it’s not a guarantee the game will be cracked. Assassin‘s creed mirage took until last month, over a year after release, for a pirated copy to be available and it uses a debug executable, which may not become available for any other games or at least not in a timely manner. It might not be possible to play those games without the BS. Or on Linux, if it doesn’t run without kernel access for RAM monitoring
What happened to Empress or whatever they were called?
I haven’t paid close attention but I think she started a cult or something.
On hiatus, apparently. Hasn’t cracked anything since July 2023. Not sure why.
From what I understand, she received flak for her anti trans views and decided to call it quits. She is Russian, so maybe she was drafted into the war effort as a hacker, or mosy likely she got paid off by these companies.
Most crackers are in countries where extradition for this would be difficult even with solid evidence. Companies have changed tactic to just paying them off so they just don’t do it, or so the rumor mill says. 200k a year to a handful of people is a drop in the bucket for the denuvo cartel.
Denuvo works on a subscription basis. Sooner or later, they’re going to decide it’s not worth paying for anymore and the game will be available to pirate. Waiting a year is nothing.
Well, they haven’t so far removed denuvo from a single game, even those that have been cracked already. Ubisoft is big enough, that they might have their very own deal with Denuvo
Denuvo is used by these companies because it’s shockingly effective. IIRC it has yet to be cracked on any game.
Games that end up being available on the high seas have generally stopped paying for the Denuvo license.
Didn’t Helldivers ditch the account linking idea before it even happened?
Yeah, only because we bullied them enough. I don’t care about account linking for all online games though. The minute you add that to single player games I get pissed off.
And just like that, I couldn’t be less interested in this game.
Already lost interest in Assassin’s Creed after they abandoned the Desmond timeline…
Played a tiny bit of the Black Flag one for the fun shanty stuff but that’s been it for me now for probably a decade… so all this has done has lowered my already completely evaporated interest of “apathy” down now to “actively avoid as if it were a virus.”
The original AC games were really great for their time, and to be honest I enjoyed the ones that came after the trilogy despite feeling like the same game with a new coat of paint over and over.
But they really knocked it out of the park when they overhauled all the controls and mechanics with Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla. Yes, there are issues with them like with every open world game, but it is really worth checking out. Valhalla is obviously beautiful and very refined but I favor Odyssey for the sheer fun factor.
Agreed on these new ones, though.
Why TF does it matter so much if you cheat in a single player game that they have to take such drastic measures to prevent it? In multiplayer, competitive games, I sort of get it, depending on context, but single player games, no way. I mod single player games all the time. It’s one of the main reasons I like PC gaming over console. I’d never buy a game that went this far to prevent something that has no effect on them or anyone else.
Can’t have you getting those cosmetics without paying for them!
is this not about pirating if it’s a single player game?
Lots of game developers started off as hobbyist modders when they were young. Maybe they’re trying to eliminate the future competition. More likely, Denuvo’s actual primary purpose is DRM and anti-cheat is just how it’s sold to players.
Something I often find myself explaining to my friends who I game with is just how much objectively terrible shit you can get gamers to not only tolerate, but support as long as you promise to “get rid of cheaters”… which is a hopeless goal. It took a lot of explaining to get them to accept my argument of “I would literally prefer cheaters over a new root kit for every game”
This game is already hard to want. Why make it hard to play too?
You know it’s bad when you don’t want to even pirate the game.
Not the version I download
Can’t they just… Make a “normal game”? One that you install, play and that’s it?. Why the fuck do they need to monitor Ram? What the hell?
Data mining, baby! It’s worth more than gold.
Honestly also curious why this is necessary.
Ah, it’s in the article.
To top it all off, Shadows’ EULA also includes a provision that allows the game to monitor your PC’s RAM to ensure you’re not running any unauthorized programs like macros, cheats, or hacks, a well-intentioned clause that nonetheless feels a touch out of place in a single-player game and could potentially scare off some of the more suspicious players who aren’t comfortable with their hardware being monitored.
WTF do they care if you’re modding your own single player game that you paid for? They sound like assholes!
Is there maybe an online multiplayer component to the game which might otherwise experience cheating? I dunno. 🤷♂️
They sell level boosters that you could otherwise circumvent with Cheat Engine.
Oh ffs 🤦♂️ If I bought the game and want to cheat myself out of the experience, just let me do so…!
If I’m understanding you correctly, level boosters are things you can activate to… skip levels? Reach character levels quicker?
Correct. They make games that are dozens of hours long and filled with repetitive content, and if you skip the content you don’t want to do, you tend to be under leveled for the stuff you do want to do, and they’ll sell you boosters to hit that level instead.
Yeah they let you skip the artificially inflated grind in your single player experience.
Buying them is not cheating yourself out of the experience, but instead it brings back the intended speed of progression.
…th…they are.
Ubisoft is usually exhibit A when it comes to asshole-ry.
Micro transactions
unauthorized programs
No one gets to authorize programs to run on my PC but me.
It’s honestly very odd that it needs to do this for a single-player game.
Anti cheat (it’s actually anti piracy which is not possible also they oops sell massive data dumps for cash oops)
Next up, they monitor your bank account to warn you that you don’t have enough money to purchase all the dlc to fully complete the game.
Or they just charge you for the DLC each time you enter the DLC areas without asking.
don’t give them any ideas
Hahaa… Keep it.
All you have to do to get my money is let me be a pirate, a jedi, a ninja, or a samurai. My inner child can’t help themselves.
So how can Ubisoft be so terrible that I have literally not wanted to play their Pirate game, their StarWars game, and now their Ninja/Samurai game!?
Hey now! Ubisoft is still enabling your desire to become a pirate! Just … In a different way than they wanted.
Arrr! 🏴☠️🫡
I think that’s really the issue with Ubisoft, they just don’t make “must play” games anymore. Seriously, what’s the last universally liked Ubisoft game that everyone wanted to play? Far Cry 3. Close second is probably AC: Black flag but that was already suffering from AC fatigue and its critical acclaim has come retroactively. Those games are over a decade old. Ubisoft hasn’t released anything in the last decade where the mainstream gaming goes “We must play that”. Ubisoft simply doesn’t make exciting games anymore. They make games that are for everyone which also means they’re for no-one.
Honestly I just read Ubisoft and pass on it. They’ve been too hostile to customers for too long for me to consider.
Its been a while since i played. Probably dead these days. Back in the day everyone memed they were gonna add ninjas one day.
