Ubisoft DRM Authentication Servers Go Down

[SL33TBL1ND]

First it was hacked, fail, then it went down, double fail.

 

[Tiamat666]

Tragic. Friggin Hillarious. Epic Fail.

 

[Icehearted]

Devil's advocate:
Valve had a similar problem with their Steam service (which I hate beyond all human comprehension) and it's still extremely popular. Bioshock, I forget exactly what happened with it, but there was something going on that made the game unplayable for paying customers. Had to do with unlocking it or something.

XBLA, Steam, Ubisoft's authentication is nothing new. Yes, I realize that the former two are supposed to be more about digital distribution and not DRM, but I defer to that Bioshock incident as an example of how Ubisoft and Steam are not all that dissimilar in certain functions.

Frankly, I hate them all in ways I cannot possibly articulate, but if that's what people want, then who am I to argue?

From what I recall, Steam never actually went completely down. It was the download servers that had a huge amount of traffic, meaning it just took longer to download the games. Otherwise people were still able to play their games. I was lucky since I used the Steam beta and already had all my games transferred.

I also recall a feature to convert old HL1 games to Steam, anyways, don't compare a failure like this to Steam. Considering the fact that Steam started almost a decade ago, you can't say they didn't deal with their problems quickly. The only time Steam had problems afterwards was for Half-Life 2's release. Beyond that Steam has been perfectly stable during all major title releases.

I took the easy route and will paste from wikipedia because I'm not up to fishing for specific articles, but they were all over the internet when it happened. Juicier bits in bold.

The retail disk version of BioShock for Windows utilizes SecuROM copy protection software, and requires internet activation to complete installation. This was reportedly responsible for the cancellation of a midnight release in Australia on August 23, 2007, due to 2K Games servers being unavailable, as the game would be unplayable until they were back online. Through SecuROM, users were originally limited to two activations of the game. Users found that even if they uninstalled the game prior to reinstallation, they were still required to call SecuROM to re-activate the game. The issue was worsened by the fact that an incorrect telephone number had been included in the printed manual, as well as essentially forcing customers outside the United States to make expensive international calls to the U.S. In response, 2K Games and SecuROM increased the number of activations to five before requiring the user to call again. However, as no information had been provided by 2K on the existence of these measures prior to the game going on sale, or on the retail box of the game itself, many remain dissatisfied. Users also found that it was necessary to activate the game for each user on the same machine, which was criticized by some as an attempt to limit customers' fair use rights. 2K Games has denied that this was the intent of the limitation.

Two months after the initial release, 2K attempted to alleviate customer complaints by developing a special pre-uninstallation utility to refund activation slots to the user. This tool however does not address situations where the game has been installed on a PC which uses more than one user account as it only works once per PC (unlike activations which are counted per user-account), nor is it able to revoke an activation if the installation has become unusable, for example by hard disk failure, effectively rendering such activations permanently lost. 2K Games has specifically mentioned each of these issues in the revoke tool FAQ, and have stated that until software solutions are found for such situations they will handle any further requests for additional activations past the five-activation limit on a case-by-case basis."LOL" - Icehearted

As of June 19, 2008, 2K Games has removed the activation limit, allowing users to install the game an unlimited number of times. However online activation remains mandatory. The deactivation of the system was promised by Ken Levine in August, 2007, after retail sales of the PC version of the game were no longer an issue.

So at least it was mostly addressed, but it took a year. Again I make no bones about it, services like Steam, and this Ubisoft DRM aren't all too dissimilar to me. I hate them both, and want this "virtual ownership" crap to cease. Any system or console that resorts to these measures has not and will not see a dime from me when it's an exclusive part of their platform or DRM. As much as I hate XBLA and MS mojo-dollars, at least once I buy it I own it, no DRM jackass or anything of that sort. Still, I wish Castle Crashers and Braid came on a disc. I could physically own. I'm still playing Sega Genesis games for cying out loud, games made some 20 or so years ago. If anything happened to my HDD, I wonder if MS will still have their Xbox servers running with these games for re-download in 20 years.

I'm going to stop now, this post is obscenely long already.

 

[BonsaiK]

It's unclear whether this is a worldwide problem

Ubi's servers go down ALL THE TIME.

I used to play the Rainbow 6 games a lot, and it was a common occurence that for days at a time you couldn't play multiplayer games because the master server or ubi.com was down. When that happened I would just go "oh well, Ubi sucks as per usual" and play the game singleplayer. Now we don't have that option.

This problem will happen again, and again, and again. Ubi's servers have always been bad. They haven't the resources or brains to make a decent game without bugs anymore so you can sure as hell bet they can't fix a server issue either.

 

[Xanthious]

Well a scant 16 hours later and still no sign the problem is fixed. Good going Ubisoft on a most epic FAIL.

Slightly Off Topic: The tip I sent in got published in the news seciton! Go Me!

 

[Snotnarok]

You can find that pirates have already got it hacked and that means who's the DRM supposed to be stopping? Because they're playing it while people who actually bought the game are stuck with errors till they solve the problem.

Ubisoft I hope you learn from this, DRM is bad and customers are not happy with you using it.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

Ah, DRM locking paying customers out of the product they purchased, while doing nothing at all to so much as inconvenience pirates, because they have of course already removed the DRM. This is definitely a highly effective system you've implemented Ubisoft, way to go!

You know what would absolutely astonish me? If a game publisher realized and/or publicly acknowledged that they aren't losing any money due to piracy, because pirates aren't their customers and as such they were never going to give them any money in the first place. Massive piracy figures have no meaning at all in relation to sales figures, because those numbers are representing PIRATES, people who do not pay for your products (because they're pirates!).

The people who are happy to pay you for things? Those are your customers! The ones downloading your work illegally? Not your customers! Units pirated aren't sales you could have gained if you could only devise a 'better' (read: far far more intrusive and annoying to the people actually paying for your software now) DRM solution, because the people pirating them are non-customers, and non-customers do not ever give you any money!

It's so far past time to stop this pointless crusade against piracy that it's long since stopped being even relatively amusing - it isn't fair that a bunch of thieving freeloaders get to enjoy the fruits of your labors without paying you for it, but it's pretty clear you can't stop them and all the systems you've designed to do so end up accomplishing is annoying the people who do give you their money to play your games.

Pure old fashioned spite is the only reason to persist with DRM as a 'solution' to piracy, given that finally stopping it wouldn't improve sales at all (remember, pirates aren't customers), it would just keep the freeloaders out, and that's often motivation enough. But you run a business, and your attempts to spite the pirates A) Don't work and B) Cause problems for your paying customers. Any way you look at it, spending money on 'solutions' that don't actually work, cost you sales from irate customers, and result in a ton of bad PR... well it's a pretty stupid business decision to make.

If shareholders are really clamoring for 'better DRM', publishers need to be frank and explain exactly why that's a terrible idea and a total waste of money that could be much better spent on actual development/advertising/what have you, all of which might actually have a positive impact on sales. Or just admit stopping pirates has nothing to do with DRM in the first place.

 

[7ru7h]

Spoiler: long post snip

Devil's advocate:
Valve had a similar problem with their Steam service (which I hate beyond all human comprehension) and it's still extremely popular. Bioshock, I forget exactly what happened with it, but there was something going on that made the game unplayable for paying customers. Had to do with unlocking it or something.

XBLA, Steam, Ubisoft's authentication is nothing new. Yes, I realize that the former two are supposed to be more about digital distribution and not DRM, but I defer to that Bioshock incident as an example of how Ubisoft and Steam are not all that dissimilar in certain functions.

Frankly, I hate them all in ways I cannot possibly articulate, but if that's what people want, then who am I to argue?

From what I recall, Steam never actually went completely down. It was the download servers that had a huge amount of traffic, meaning it just took longer to download the games. Otherwise people were still able to play their games. I was lucky since I used the Steam beta and already had all my games transferred.

I also recall a feature to convert old HL1 games to Steam, anyways, don't compare a failure like this to Steam. Considering the fact that Steam started almost a decade ago, you can't say they didn't deal with their problems quickly. The only time Steam had problems afterwards was for Half-Life 2's release. Beyond that Steam has been perfectly stable during all major title releases.

I took the easy route and will paste from wikipedia because I'm not up to fishing for specific articles, but they were all over the internet when it happened. Juicier bits in bold.

The retail disk version of BioShock for Windows utilizes SecuROM copy protection software, and requires internet activation to complete installation. This was reportedly responsible for the cancellation of a midnight release in Australia on August 23, 2007, due to 2K Games servers being unavailable, as the game would be unplayable until they were back online. Through SecuROM, users were originally limited to two activations of the game. Users found that even if they uninstalled the game prior to reinstallation, they were still required to call SecuROM to re-activate the game. The issue was worsened by the fact that an incorrect telephone number had been included in the printed manual, as well as essentially forcing customers outside the United States to make expensive international calls to the U.S. In response, 2K Games and SecuROM increased the number of activations to five before requiring the user to call again. However, as no information had been provided by 2K on the existence of these measures prior to the game going on sale, or on the retail box of the game itself, many remain dissatisfied. Users also found that it was necessary to activate the game for each user on the same machine, which was criticized by some as an attempt to limit customers' fair use rights. 2K Games has denied that this was the intent of the limitation.

Two months after the initial release, 2K attempted to alleviate customer complaints by developing a special pre-uninstallation utility to refund activation slots to the user. This tool however does not address situations where the game has been installed on a PC which uses more than one user account as it only works once per PC (unlike activations which are counted per user-account), nor is it able to revoke an activation if the installation has become unusable, for example by hard disk failure, effectively rendering such activations permanently lost. 2K Games has specifically mentioned each of these issues in the revoke tool FAQ, and have stated that until software solutions are found for such situations they will handle any further requests for additional activations past the five-activation limit on a case-by-case basis."LOL" - Icehearted

As of June 19, 2008, 2K Games has removed the activation limit, allowing users to install the game an unlimited number of times. However online activation remains mandatory. The deactivation of the system was promised by Ken Levine in August, 2007, after retail sales of the PC version of the game were no longer an issue.

So at least it was mostly addressed, but it took a year. Again I make no bones about it, services like Steam, and this Ubisoft DRM aren't all too dissimilar to me. I hate them both, and want this "virtual ownership" crap to cease. Any system or console that resorts to these measures has not and will not see a dime from me when it's an exclusive part of their platform or DRM. As much as I hate XBLA and MS mojo-dollars, at least once I buy it I own it, no DRM jackass or anything of that sort. Still, I wish Castle Crashers and Braid came on a disc. I could physically own. I'm still playing Sega Genesis games for cying out loud, games made some 20 or so years ago. If anything happened to my HDD, I wonder if MS will still have their Xbox servers running with these games for re-download in 20 years.

I'm going to stop now, this post is obscenely long already.

Maybe it's because I'm thick or I'm somewhat sleep deprived (I'm betting that last one), but I don't see how any of that Bioshock stuff related to Steam.

As for Steam's "DRM" being similar to Ubi's, I really have to call shenanigans. First, because Steam's "DRM" is quite nice to the customer: you pay for the game, download it, then it phones home once, and you are done. Anything above that is the game's fault, not Steam's. Second, you can play offline, you just have to make sure you let the game phone home that first time, then restart in offline mode. Finally, the "virtual ownership crap" as you put it, really is not all that different with Steam than with a physical copy, the only difference is that for Steam you have to make the backup for yourself (and if you think you really OWN any game you've bought in the last 5+ years, you are fooling yourself).

 

[Zer_]

Devil's advocate:
Valve had a similar problem with their Steam service (which I hate beyond all human comprehension) and it's still extremely popular. Bioshock, I forget exactly what happened with it, but there was something going on that made the game unplayable for paying customers. Had to do with unlocking it or something.

XBLA, Steam, Ubisoft's authentication is nothing new. Yes, I realize that the former two are supposed to be more about digital distribution and not DRM, but I defer to that Bioshock incident as an example of how Ubisoft and Steam are not all that dissimilar in certain functions.

Frankly, I hate them all in ways I cannot possibly articulate, but if that's what people want, then who am I to argue?

From what I recall, Steam never actually went completely down. It was the download servers that had a huge amount of traffic, meaning it just took longer to download the games. Otherwise people were still able to play their games. I was lucky since I used the Steam beta and already had all my games transferred.

I also recall a feature to convert old HL1 games to Steam, anyways, don't compare a failure like this to Steam. Considering the fact that Steam started almost a decade ago, you can't say they didn't deal with their problems quickly. The only time Steam had problems afterwards was for Half-Life 2's release. Beyond that Steam has been perfectly stable during all major title releases.

I took the easy route and will paste from wikipedia because I'm not up to fishing for specific articles, but they were all over the internet when it happened. Juicier bits in bold.

The retail disk version of BioShock for Windows utilizes SecuROM copy protection software, and requires internet activation to complete installation. This was reportedly responsible for the cancellation of a midnight release in Australia on August 23, 2007, due to 2K Games servers being unavailable, as the game would be unplayable until they were back online. Through SecuROM, users were originally limited to two activations of the game. Users found that even if they uninstalled the game prior to reinstallation, they were still required to call SecuROM to re-activate the game. The issue was worsened by the fact that an incorrect telephone number had been included in the printed manual, as well as essentially forcing customers outside the United States to make expensive international calls to the U.S. In response, 2K Games and SecuROM increased the number of activations to five before requiring the user to call again. However, as no information had been provided by 2K on the existence of these measures prior to the game going on sale, or on the retail box of the game itself, many remain dissatisfied. Users also found that it was necessary to activate the game for each user on the same machine, which was criticized by some as an attempt to limit customers' fair use rights. 2K Games has denied that this was the intent of the limitation.

Two months after the initial release, 2K attempted to alleviate customer complaints by developing a special pre-uninstallation utility to refund activation slots to the user. This tool however does not address situations where the game has been installed on a PC which uses more than one user account as it only works once per PC (unlike activations which are counted per user-account), nor is it able to revoke an activation if the installation has become unusable, for example by hard disk failure, effectively rendering such activations permanently lost. 2K Games has specifically mentioned each of these issues in the revoke tool FAQ, and have stated that until software solutions are found for such situations they will handle any further requests for additional activations past the five-activation limit on a case-by-case basis."LOL" - Icehearted

As of June 19, 2008, 2K Games has removed the activation limit, allowing users to install the game an unlimited number of times. However online activation remains mandatory. The deactivation of the system was promised by Ken Levine in August, 2007, after retail sales of the PC version of the game were no longer an issue.

So at least it was mostly addressed, but it took a year. Again I make no bones about it, services like Steam, and this Ubisoft DRM aren't all too dissimilar to me. I hate them both, and want this "virtual ownership" crap to cease. Any system or console that resorts to these measures has not and will not see a dime from me when it's an exclusive part of their platform or DRM. As much as I hate XBLA and MS mojo-dollars, at least once I buy it I own it, no DRM jackass or anything of that sort. Still, I wish Castle Crashers and Braid came on a disc. I could physically own. I'm still playing Sega Genesis games for cying out loud, games made some 20 or so years ago. If anything happened to my HDD, I wonder if MS will still have their Xbox servers running with these games for re-download in 20 years.

I'm going to stop now, this post is obscenely long already.

You realize that I haven't spoken a word about Bioshock in my reply. That's a problem with SecuROM and not Steam.

 

[Icehearted]

You realize that I haven't spoken a word about Bioshock in my reply. That's a problem with SecuROM and not Steam.

Now that you mention it, yes. I did, however, mention them as a rudimentary example of what I am saying I feel is basely wrong with such systems of copy-protection. Bioshock actually exemplifies this more than this recent Ubisoft guff, as Bioshock was already a huge hit, it was already selling insanely well, and still they felt a need to cripple it with needless DRM.

The choice to bring it up was mine, and only as a good benchmark for why despite how wrong I feel all of this is, it is still widely accepted by the consumers. Ergo Ubisoft and Steam are not really all that different.

 

[Icehearted]

Spoiler: long post snip

Devil's advocate:
Valve had a similar problem with their Steam service (which I hate beyond all human comprehension) and it's still extremely popular. Bioshock, I forget exactly what happened with it, but there was something going on that made the game unplayable for paying customers. Had to do with unlocking it or something.

XBLA, Steam, Ubisoft's authentication is nothing new. Yes, I realize that the former two are supposed to be more about digital distribution and not DRM, but I defer to that Bioshock incident as an example of how Ubisoft and Steam are not all that dissimilar in certain functions.

Frankly, I hate them all in ways I cannot possibly articulate, but if that's what people want, then who am I to argue?

From what I recall, Steam never actually went completely down. It was the download servers that had a huge amount of traffic, meaning it just took longer to download the games. Otherwise people were still able to play their games. I was lucky since I used the Steam beta and already had all my games transferred.

I also recall a feature to convert old HL1 games to Steam, anyways, don't compare a failure like this to Steam. Considering the fact that Steam started almost a decade ago, you can't say they didn't deal with their problems quickly. The only time Steam had problems afterwards was for Half-Life 2's release. Beyond that Steam has been perfectly stable during all major title releases.

I took the easy route and will paste from wikipedia because I'm not up to fishing for specific articles, but they were all over the internet when it happened. Juicier bits in bold.

The retail disk version of BioShock for Windows utilizes SecuROM copy protection software, and requires internet activation to complete installation. This was reportedly responsible for the cancellation of a midnight release in Australia on August 23, 2007, due to 2K Games servers being unavailable, as the game would be unplayable until they were back online. Through SecuROM, users were originally limited to two activations of the game. Users found that even if they uninstalled the game prior to reinstallation, they were still required to call SecuROM to re-activate the game. The issue was worsened by the fact that an incorrect telephone number had been included in the printed manual, as well as essentially forcing customers outside the United States to make expensive international calls to the U.S. In response, 2K Games and SecuROM increased the number of activations to five before requiring the user to call again. However, as no information had been provided by 2K on the existence of these measures prior to the game going on sale, or on the retail box of the game itself, many remain dissatisfied. Users also found that it was necessary to activate the game for each user on the same machine, which was criticized by some as an attempt to limit customers' fair use rights. 2K Games has denied that this was the intent of the limitation.

Two months after the initial release, 2K attempted to alleviate customer complaints by developing a special pre-uninstallation utility to refund activation slots to the user. This tool however does not address situations where the game has been installed on a PC which uses more than one user account as it only works once per PC (unlike activations which are counted per user-account), nor is it able to revoke an activation if the installation has become unusable, for example by hard disk failure, effectively rendering such activations permanently lost. 2K Games has specifically mentioned each of these issues in the revoke tool FAQ, and have stated that until software solutions are found for such situations they will handle any further requests for additional activations past the five-activation limit on a case-by-case basis."LOL" - Icehearted

As of June 19, 2008, 2K Games has removed the activation limit, allowing users to install the game an unlimited number of times. However online activation remains mandatory. The deactivation of the system was promised by Ken Levine in August, 2007, after retail sales of the PC version of the game were no longer an issue.

So at least it was mostly addressed, but it took a year. Again I make no bones about it, services like Steam, and this Ubisoft DRM aren't all too dissimilar to me. I hate them both, and want this "virtual ownership" crap to cease. Any system or console that resorts to these measures has not and will not see a dime from me when it's an exclusive part of their platform or DRM. As much as I hate XBLA and MS mojo-dollars, at least once I buy it I own it, no DRM jackass or anything of that sort. Still, I wish Castle Crashers and Braid came on a disc. I could physically own. I'm still playing Sega Genesis games for cying out loud, games made some 20 or so years ago. If anything happened to my HDD, I wonder if MS will still have their Xbox servers running with these games for re-download in 20 years.

I'm going to stop now, this post is obscenely long already.

Maybe it's because I'm thick or I'm somewhat sleep deprived (I'm betting that last one), but I don't see how any of that Bioshock stuff related to Steam.

As for Steam's "DRM" being similar to Ubi's, I really have to call shenanigans. First, because Steam's "DRM" is quite nice to the customer: you pay for the game, download it, then it phones home once, and you are done. Anything above that is the game's fault, not Steam's. Second, you can play offline, you just have to make sure you let the game phone home that first time, then restart in offline mode. Finally, the "virtual ownership crap" as you put it, really is not all that different with Steam than with a physical copy, the only difference is that for Steam you have to make the backup for yourself (and if you think you really OWN any game you've bought in the last 5+ years, you are fooling yourself).

I like that long post snip trick... gotta remember that

I have, in my hands, a copy of Mirror's edge for the PC, I also have Mass Effect 2, GTA4, hoo boy I have a lot of games, and they're on a physical disc, of which I actually own and can maintain of my own accord, without having to dial in anything, without having to get connected to a server, I just input a key, or put a disc in my console, and off I go. That's ownership of a tangible property.

Digital distro means you own squat. You pay for it, but they can deny you play at their leisure. I'm going to reach a bit (because it's late, and I'm way too tired to think good and hard of an example in gaming even if I know they're out there) and point to that Kindle fiasco where Amazon basically decided to reach out and delete a book people had paid for. Again, I know it's a reach, but the principal is the same. The complacency of 'you don't actually own the games you buy' is what permits this kind of thing Ubisoft and Steam have created to permeate the market much deeper than they should have.

I own a copy of God of War 2. No activation required, no negotiations, the game is mine to play and enjoy. The intellectual property may not be, but the game is. That's the line they're blurring, and I mean no offense when I say this, but statements like the one you've made prove they've been succeeding at blurring this line with their customers.


Again with the long post... sorry I'm verbose (though this is a topic that bothers me quite a bit), but the sleepier I get, the more long-winded I can become.

 

[ffs-dontcare]

This is really just amusing for me.

 

[Zer_]

You realize that I haven't spoken a word about Bioshock in my reply. That's a problem with SecuROM and not Steam.

Now that you mention it, yes. I did, however, mention them as a rudimentary example of what I am saying I feel is basely wrong with such systems of copy-protection. Bioshock actually exemplifies this more than this recent Ubisoft guff, as Bioshock was already a huge hit, it was already selling insanely well, and still they felt a need to cripple it with needless DRM.

The choice to bring it up was mine, and only as a good benchmark for why despite how wrong I feel all of this is, it is still widely accepted by the consumers. Ergo Ubisoft and Steam are not really all that different.

Steam does not limit your installations, on the contrary in fact. You can go onto any computer and download all your Steam games at any time. Already that's a huge plus for Steam. The only gripe you seem to have with Steam is the lack of Physical copy but I digress. My physical copy of HL1 is probably not even working as it has been collecting dust for the past 6 years. My Steam copy recently went to letting me play some nostalgic games of Natural Selection.

Try as you might to stop the digital revolution, it's going to happen one way or another. If I was to pick any digital distribution platform, it'd be Steam by a long shot. Steam may contain some DRM, but it's hardly what you'd call restrictive.

Also, pertaining to Steam's performance. I've run TF2 on a single core, Radeon X1950 pro machine with very acceptable performance. Steam can sometimes take some time to load, but once it has loaded it keeps a reasonable memory footprint. It uses barely any CPU cycles either.

 

[HuntrRose]

And now Ubisoft, you have tried the whip hitting your paying customers aproach with an epic failure as a result. Maybe you should try the carrot approach instead? Who knows, maybe it works better?

 

[Vern]

The only option they have is switching solely to console development, or making a team with the sole purpose of monitoring cracks. Checking each and every google link related to *game* + crack to see if something bypassed their system. If it did, they'll have to fix it. It's sad, and speaking as a PC gamer who has spent over $160 on games this year, I think it's dead. The PC is a far superior gaming console, but all you asshole pirates killed it. The thought that "Well they rammed the game with DRM, so I'll pirate it!" will only lead to more severe DRM, which will only lead to more pirates. Pay the people for the fucking game, they spent years of their life making it, pay for it if you want to play it. Stop using the argument that if they put DRM in it, I'll just pirate it. It'll only make things worse down the line, and I think we might be past the point of no return. Pay for the game and enjoy it. Maybe if enough people buy it, they'll stop seeing us all as pirates. Christ.

 

[Playbahnosh]

Who didn't see this coming, seriously...

The biggest blunder in modern video gaming, nice. At first I was gonna make a wall-o-text post, but I reconsidered. Ubisoft does not deserve my ramblings. Fucking idiots, that's what they are...

 

[sueyed]

I love how people that bought it despite being warned have the balls to complain on the forums.

 

[Sjakie]

thats the interwebs flipping you the finger, Ubisoft.

fuck your customers with DRM, some raged-out hacker-gamer probably fecked em too.

Buyer beware n stuff. Buy crap, you get crap. Enjoy AC2 (suckers)