Ubisoft DRM Servers Under Attack, PC Players Unable To Access Games

LordPlural

I seriously doubt that hackers are killing their servers. The people who crack DRM do it for the challenge of breaking unbreakable codes. Every time someone has unveiled their new 'unbeatable' DRM, it has been a personal challenge to the hacking community to prove them wrong, usually ending with a crack available within a week.

It seems odd that their servers were 'attacked' the day that Assassin's Creed 2 was released in Europe. Anyone who has ever played an MMO release week can tell you how stable untested servers are under load.

More likely is that Ubisoft has implemented a buggy DRM scheme that relies on unrealistic demands. I have a dedicated (wired, so no intermittent wifi signal) internet connection, virus and spyware scan every night, clean install of windows every 6-12 months and I still get internet hangups and glitches every day. Just like everybody else.

I've read up on their DRM, and it seems they are lying about needing to be connected to download missions. They have since removed the forum post that detailed how the only thing keeping missions in SH5 from updating was a simple .cfg file line to *unlock* each mission. All the data is already on your PC. Edit them with a text editor and you can activate them yourself.

And as for the line that Ubisoft is using about only 5% of customers being affected?

I've heard a lot of complaining about failed savegame syncing, 15-30minute login times, login timeouts, getting booted from the game every 5 minutes, but I went to the one place I could think of with an active modding community. The Subsim.com forums are always full of people talking about what they want added in, modded out, fixed, altered or just chatting. There are many die-hard fans of the Silent Hunter series there; if anyone was going to pre-order and give them the benefit of the doubt, it would be these guys. If anyone was going to be chatting on the forums, even if their game is working 100%, it would be these guys.

Look at these two polls from the Subsim forums:

http://www.subsim.com/radior oom/poll.php?do=showresults&am p;pollid=1763
As of the time I write this, 18% can play the game reliably, 39% occasionally, 43% not at all.

http://www.subsim.com/radior oom/showthread.php?t=160783
61% refusing to purchase until the DRM is removed.

With the US release of Assassin's Creed 2 today, I expect the servers will be receiving a 'renewed attack' right around the time all those american customers get home and try to log in.

And to those people who want a refund for his defective product, too bad. Looking through the main DRM issue threads on Ubisoft's own website reveals that their customer service reps have been ignoring, or in cases where people have actually gotten through, hanging up on any SH5 owners asking about a refund. People have gotten so frustrated, they have started posting the main corporate office phone numbers for their country to get past this and get their money back.

I would like to see a *serious* investigation of Ubisoft, their customer service, and this abomination of a new DRM.

They can count me among the ranks of the people who will buy both games the day they apologize to their customers and remove this DRM. A word to any game developers/publishers: pirates wouldn't have given you any money anyway. Stop trying to get them to buy your game, and start working on games with either no DRM (Elder Scrolls 4 sold horribly, didn't it?) or nonrestrictive/transparent/wor king DRM (strange how steam lets you install on as many computers as you want *and* play while offline...whoever runs that company had better figure out a better business model!).

Get the people who buy your games happy and they will keep buying your games. Piss them off and the only people playing your game will be the people who wouldn't have given you a dime for it anyway.