Ubisoft DRM Authentication Servers Go Down

[Weaver]

Who would have thought that a massive server bank could ever go offline? Who would have thought that when severs only exist to VERIFY you're talking to the game that an incredibly simple man in the middle attack with simple packet crafting would trick the game to thinking it's talking to the sever? A fucking high school student could fool this system.

 

[SavingPrincess]

We all knew this would happen. The same reason why thousands of fans tried to speak out against Ubisoft's plan with a simple message of "Use Steam instead, you idiots." Okay, so I added the "you idiots" part, but let's be honest, it's needed.

I believe Ubi was quoted saying that "Steam isn't effective enough in combatting piracy," which blew my mind. I can't remember the exact quote but it was a giant slap in the face of Steam in general.

 

[Pendragon9]

I say blame the shareholders and people who okayed this. It's their fault and they deserve to lose money to the pirates.

it's just like games made in the 80's and 90's. you had every right to blame the morons who made them because, oh I don't know, TESTING THEM before letting them come out wouldn't have cost too much.

Same applies here. You have to test the DRM before putting it in your products. Otherwise this happens.

 

[commasplice]

Ya I won't defend steam on the customer service issue, they aren't the easiest people to get ahold of at the best of times. But when things are working, its not too bad.

Hey man, like I said, this could all be a lot worse. At least Valve and Ubisoft aren't fucking Nexon. You want to talk about bad customer service, ask any Mabinogi vet about the handling of the duping fiasco last year. I don't know if things have changed since then, but they didn't have anyone moderating the Mabi servers over the weekends, so when information about the duping glitch hit the forums one Friday, the shit hit the fan hard. Nexon's response was to let people print money like they were Wall Street execs during the Rapture for a full two and a half days, then arbitrarily ban a couple thousand people after the fact. Best part is another glitch came to light a week later and they didn't even ban anyone for THAT.

And you know what? When it happened, people were more surprised at the fact that they banned anyone at all than the fact that they seemed to have just picked account names out of a hat. That's how bad Nexon's customer service had been up to that point.

 

[jubosu]

I wish i was surprised about this but i am not

 

[commasplice]

I say blame the shareholders and people who okayed this. It's their fault and they deserve to lose money to the pirates.

it's just like games made in the 80's and 90's. you had every right to blame the morons who made them because, oh I don't know, TESTING THEM before letting them come out wouldn't have cost too much.

Same applies here. You have to test the DRM before putting it in your products. Otherwise this happens.

You know what the sad bit is, though? If Ubisoft does lose a fuckton of money over this, it's not the rich guys up at the top that OK'd it that are going to suffer. It's poor John D. Veloper down at the bottom that spends his nights writing code that's going to get fired because of the resulting cutbacks.

 

[The Lost Big Boss]

Wow never saw this coming.

Also I TOLD YOU SO I TOLD YOU SO! NA NA NA NA

 

[Methos12]

I say blame the shareholders and people who okayed this. It's their fault and they deserve to lose money to the pirates.

Of course it's their fault. Problem lies in the fact that 99% of all these shareholders, CEOs and higher-ups are completely out of touch when it comes to gamers and only see things from a business point of view, THAT's why they don't understand that crap like this simply doesn't work... especially when it's arbitrarily imposed on paying customers.

 

[commasplice]

Edit: Cool doublepost, me. :/

 

[brunothepig]

There! You see Ubisoft? We were right. You guys are idiots. My god, I may have to pirate this game just so I can actually play it. I'd rather pirate than pay for a game I can only play when the servers are actually working. And there's just going to be more and more people on these servers.

 

[Snotnarok]

And that's why I don't buy games with shitty DRM

It's just a little bit embarassing at this point.

Meanwhile, pirates (I assume) get to play their cracked version without issue. Nice job Ubisoft, really.

Of course they do, they got to play their games before the game was released and with no install limits.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

There's a very simple fix, everyone who has paid for the game, go pirate it and play the unfettered version without the fuckery attached.

After all, are you not legally allowed to make one copy for your own backup needs?

I really can't see them actively hunting down their own customers for downloading their game after buying it.

Note I'm not advocating piracy (even tho I have done before), but once you've paid, I think you're entitled to do whatever you like to enjoy what you've paid for.

Breaking News, Assassin's 3 found to have anthrax inside the case of every retail copy, and the leaked version on torrent sites found to have a code for a free pizza at Dominos!

An Ubisoft rep made the statement 'The anthrax was to prevent shoplifters and the free pizza is to make those who would steal our product overweight and less attractive, hopefully leading to less pirates in the next generation.'

Industry leaders are unanimous in praising this form of DRM as an overwhelming success.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

Here's a new headline for you: "Ubisoft Now Officially A Bunch Of Braindead Cockmongers."

What gets me is that anyone actually BOUGHT the damn game in the first place. I think it would have been great if the game had shipped and sold NOT ONE SINGLE COPY. That would have got our point about how much we hate stupid DRM across.

 

[SergK]

AC2 HAS been craccked, and has been for a few days now.

That crack is beta, it does not allow to play missions, just walking around locations. When the game tries to connect to the server - it crashes. So Ubisoft actually does make pirates very upset. That's why servers are down: angry teens from different countries having troubles with money and patience DDOS servers while waiting for the proper crack.

I am not defending DRM or something, i just tell what i know. I live in Russia and in my town there will be no AC2 dvd until the end of next week. How can one wait for such time and not try to use any posibility to play the game even a little? Still, i will buy it anyway, will there be a proper crack or not.

 

[commasplice]

Breaking News, Assassin's 3 found to have anthrax inside the case of every retail copy, and the leaked version on torrent sites found to have a code for a free pizza at Dominos!

An Ubisoft rep made the statement 'The anthrax was to prevent shoplifters and the free pizza is to make those who would steal our product overweight and less attractive, hopefully leading to less pirates in the next generation.'

Industry leaders are unanimous in praising this form of DRM as an overwhelming success.

Oh god, don't give them ideas, man!

 

[Nitpicker of the Wastes]

Breaking News, Assassin's 3 found to have anthrax inside the case of every retail copy, and the leaked version on torrent sites found to have a code for a free pizza at Dominos!

An Ubisoft rep made the statement 'The anthrax was to prevent shoplifters and the free pizza is to make those who would steal our product overweight and less attractive, hopefully leading to less pirates in the next generation.'

Industry leaders are unanimous in praising this form of DRM as an overwhelming success.

Oh god, don't give them ideas, man!

Free pizza, man! C'mon, who's not going to pirate it now? Pizza!

OT:I hope it's sabotage. Maybe there's one angry employee who's breaking the server just as the other 1000 fix it.

 

[Weaver]

lol so now you HAVE to be a pirate to play the fucking game. Way to go Ubi, you showed them.

 

[commasplice]

Here's another thing to think about: How's this going to affect BG&E2? I'm already nervous enough as-is about the possibility of it being sucked into development hell. All we need is for Ubisoft to lose enough money that they decide to nix the project altogether.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

New point, new post...

I'm not actually anti DRM as such, I understand they need to protect their product from theft.

However, once you've installed the game, typed in the CD key, or digitally registered the game, or authenticated with the server, or whatever else they choose to do, that should be the end of it. I'm not seeing anti piracy ads half an hour into movies I buy, so why should it being interrupting the enjoyment of my paid for game? Again, every time they make the paid for version worse than the illegal but free version, they're just sending more and more loyal customers to the nearest torrent site.

People keep knocking Steam but once installed, you pretty much can set it to offline and it'll never connect again and you'll have full access to all your games.

On top of that, you get things like 'Defense Grid' the great tower defense game, recently self patched itself for me, in doing so adding support for future DLC. Oh great, another way to try to sell me stuff. Except in doing so they've added extra functions and 4 free levels, months after the game was done released and sold. Portal also has been getting upgraded and I think these stories might have taken longer to break if it hadn't been for the simplicity of upgrades Steam offers.

Ok, Portal can be called a simple marketing ploy that wasn't asked for, but I think Defense Grid and the still constant support of games like Team Fortress 2 are a fine example of good coming from Steam, and things many people would have missed if they are like me and have a few dozen games and had to visit nearly 50 sites a month to see if there was anything new that needed manually downloading and installing.

Also, Steam (from my viewpoint at least) is a great outlet for indie games, and as sales have shown, it's better to get 50,000 sales at $5 than maybe 2,000 at $20, especially when the overheads are so low, in terms of no production costs, shipping etc.

I don't know if I'm alone, but I'm a sucker for the bundle packs, when you see say 7 indie games for £10, it's almost too cheap to say no even if you haven't played any of them.

 

[Phenakist]

I have one thing to say to you Ubisoft...

Spoiler: FAIL