Free in-game ad supported PC games from Ubisoft available in the US
Tuesday 04th September 2007, 10:10:00 PM, written by Farid
Ubisoft, French publisher of Rayman, Tom Clancy’s game series' and Far Cry amongst other titles, has decided -- without any form of publicity on its website -- to make available ad-supported versions of three games from its portfolio, at no cost to the user other than the download.
The free games trio is comprised of the IHV favourite and tropical shooter from Crytek, Far Cry; the modern day rendition of Jordan Mechner’s Apple II hit, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time; and finally the philosophically-engaged mini-games compilation, featuring scholarly allegories with rabbits, Rayman: Raving Rabbits. It's unclear whether the ad-supported version of Far Cry is compatible with user modifications or not.
As with every too-good-to-be-true deal, there is a catch. The offer is only available for U.S. residents with a valid Ubi.com account (it is undisclosed whether the games check the computer IP or not), the games installers are only available at FilePlanet (update: not anymore), a service known for its slow free servers which require intrusive and proprietary download manager software to be installed in order to download files. Finally, the in-game advertisement for these games are of the unsubtle kind. However, for this last contention point, one could argue that you are getting what you paid for.
The ads are akin to web ads and display at various places in-game, from menus to pop-ups during saves/checkpoints. According to the first users, the severity of the in-game ad population varies from one title to another, with Prince of Persia faring the best, Far Cry in the middle and Rayman being the worst offender with ads appearing every five minutes or so.
Update: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon has been added to the list of available games and the installers are now available from sources other than Fileplanet.
The free games trio is comprised of the IHV favourite and tropical shooter from Crytek, Far Cry; the modern day rendition of Jordan Mechner’s Apple II hit, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time; and finally the philosophically-engaged mini-games compilation, featuring scholarly allegories with rabbits, Rayman: Raving Rabbits. It's unclear whether the ad-supported version of Far Cry is compatible with user modifications or not.
As with every too-good-to-be-true deal, there is a catch. The offer is only available for U.S. residents with a valid Ubi.com account (it is undisclosed whether the games check the computer IP or not), the games installers are only available at FilePlanet (update: not anymore), a service known for its slow free servers which require intrusive and proprietary download manager software to be installed in order to download files. Finally, the in-game advertisement for these games are of the unsubtle kind. However, for this last contention point, one could argue that you are getting what you paid for.
The ads are akin to web ads and display at various places in-game, from menus to pop-ups during saves/checkpoints. According to the first users, the severity of the in-game ad population varies from one title to another, with Prince of Persia faring the best, Far Cry in the middle and Rayman being the worst offender with ads appearing every five minutes or so.
Update: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon has been added to the list of available games and the installers are now available from sources other than Fileplanet.
 Links to download these games: |
| Far Cry (Crytek) @ Fileplanet - Size: 2,743.5 MB Far Cry (Crytek) @ GamerHell - Size: 2,743.5 MB Far Cry (Crytek) Torrent @ Gameupdates - Size: 2,743.5 MB Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (Ubisoft Montréal) @ Fileplanet - Size: 1,154.1 MB Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (Ubisoft Montréal) @ GamersHell - Size: 1,154.1 MB Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (Ubisoft Montréal) Torrent @Gameupdates - Size: 1,154.1 MB Rayman: Raving Rabbits (Ubisoft Montpellier) @ Fileplanet - Size: 1,282.6 MB Rayman: Raving Rabbits (Ubisoft Montpellier) @ GamersHell - Size: 1,282.6 MB Rayman: Raving Rabbits (Ubisoft Montpellier) Torrent @ Gameupdates - Size: 1,282.6 MB Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon (Red Storm) @ GamerHell - Size: 542.7MB Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon (Red Storm) Torrent @ Gameupdates - Size: 542.7MB Reminder: these games are only available to U.S. residents with a U.S. Ubi.com account. |
Tagging
graphics ± ubisoft
Related graphics News
Diving into Anti-Aliasing
Travelling in Style: Beyond3D's C++ AMP contest
Beyond Programmable Shading CS448s first slides available
Khronos release OpenGL 3.3 and 4.0
Mazatech release AmanithVG 4.0, supporting OpenVG 1.1
OpenGL 3.0 is here (finally)
[Analysis] TSMC 40G to deliver up to 3.76x the perf/mm^2 of 65G & Power Implications
Old News: AMD CTO resigns, NVIDIA CFO retires, DDR3 for MCP7A, S3, etc.
SwiftShader 2.0: A DX9 Software Rasterizer that runs Crysis
S3 launches DirectX 10.1 Chrome 400 GPUs
Travelling in Style: Beyond3D's C++ AMP contest
Beyond Programmable Shading CS448s first slides available
Khronos release OpenGL 3.3 and 4.0
Mazatech release AmanithVG 4.0, supporting OpenVG 1.1
OpenGL 3.0 is here (finally)
[Analysis] TSMC 40G to deliver up to 3.76x the perf/mm^2 of 65G & Power Implications
Old News: AMD CTO resigns, NVIDIA CFO retires, DDR3 for MCP7A, S3, etc.
SwiftShader 2.0: A DX9 Software Rasterizer that runs Crysis
S3 launches DirectX 10.1 Chrome 400 GPUs
