Ubi DRM'd games to be inaccessible during server transition for indefinite period

That's why I support legitimate customers exerting whatever measures are necessary to ensure they can access their game of choice when shit like this happens. It's also why I vote with my wallet to not support games, game companies, and developers who decide to implement these ridiculous schemes.
 
Dion said:
Same would happen to steam if servers went down. Get over it.

You cant get into Steam offline mode w/o going online first.
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Yes you can and I have done so, apart from the fact that steam has never had to go down for an indefinite period.

Try again.
 
defiant007 said:
Yes you can and I have done so, apart from the fact that steam has never had to go down for an indefinite period.

Try again.
Click to expand...

Please do tell, because I could not find any possible work arounds to get into Steam after it's most recent down time. All the googled methods I have tried were patched up and rendered useless.

This is also without the need to save your login credentials.
 
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BETA. said:
Please do tell, because I could not find any possible work arounds to get into Steam after it's most recent down time. All the googled methods I have tried were patched up and rendered useless.
Click to expand...

Close steam.
Pull out network cable
Open steam
It will say connection failed, click on the big 'Start in offline mode' button
Play Steam games.

(You do have to have Steam remember your password for this to work. You do have to sign in to the Steam servers first if you don't have your credentials saved locally).

Ahh, posted before your edit.
Of course you have be able to authenticate yourself, it wouldn't be a very effective service if you didn't authenticate yourself somehow.
Having to check a 'remember me' box is hardly the same not being able to play your games.
 
FreiDOg said:
Close steam.
Pull out network cable
Open steam
It will say connection failed, click on the big 'Start in offline mode' button
Play Steam games.

(You do have to have Steam remember your password for this to work. You do have to sign in to the Steam servers first if you don't have your credentials saved locally).
Click to expand...

I'm gonna test this tonight and see if it works :)

Thanks for the info, FreiDOg!!!
 
FreiDOg said:
Close steam.
Pull out network cable
Open steam
It will say connection failed, click on the big 'Start in offline mode' button
Play Steam games.

(You do have to have Steam remember your password for this to work. You do have to sign in to the Steam servers first if you don't have your credentials saved locally).

Ahh, posted before your edit.
Of course you have be able to authenticate yourself, it wouldn't be a very effective service if you didn't authenticate yourself somehow.
Having to check a 'remember me' box is hardly the same not being able to play your games.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that way does indeed work. But I don't save my login info because I am not the only user on my PC and also because I am paranoid :p. So, I was basically SOL when steam was down for half a day earlier this year. There used to be way around this, but Valve patched it.

You should be able to authenticate in offline mode, without having to save your credentials. If Valve can encrypt pre-loaded games and have confidence nobody will crack them, I am sure they can lock the games unless you authenticate the account with the proper password. But, I guess the impracticality here is that files will constantly be decrypting and encrypting.
 
BETA. said:
Yeah, that way does indeed work. But I don't save my login info because I am not the only user on my PC and also because I am paranoid :p. So, I was basically SOL when steam was down for half a day earlier this year. There used to be way around this, but Valve patched it.
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Paranoia I understand. I haven't tried because nobody inside my house is out to get me (that I know of), but the Stream user credentials should be specific to the Windows user logged on. So unless the same people you don't want signing into your Steam account have your Windows logon, you're not adding anything to your security by typing in your password.

You should be able to authenticate in offline mode, without having to save your credentials. If Valve can encrypt pre-loaded games and have confidence nobody will crack them, I am sure they can lock the games unless you authenticate the account with the proper password. But, I guess the impracticality here is that files will constantly be decrypting and encrypting.
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The key is to have something to authenticate against. If you're not storing your password anywhere in Steam, you can't validate yourself in offline mode. I obviously don't know how Steam handles it, but it's probably using something along the lines of an encrypted authentication token when you store your password. The steam client wouldn't have the ability to generate those, but it can validate them. The Steam client might have the public side of the encryption key, but only the Valve authentication servers have the private key to create that token in the first place.
 
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FreiDOg said:
Close steam.
Pull out network cable
Open steam
It will say connection failed, click on the big 'Start in offline mode' button
Play Steam games.

(You do have to have Steam remember your password for this to work. You do have to sign in to the Steam servers first if you don't have your credentials saved locally).

Ahh, posted before your edit.
Of course you have be able to authenticate yourself, it wouldn't be a very effective service if you didn't authenticate yourself somehow.
Having to check a 'remember me' box is hardly the same not being able to play your games.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've had offline mode not work for me on more than one occasion.
 
I really have to thank Ubi for not releasing anything interesting in the past few years. It makes boycotting them for their boneheaded decisions that much easier.
 
I get cracks for my games when I buy them (aside from competitive multiplayer games, for obvious reasons). It's nice to actually own what I bought.
 
fattypants said:
I get cracks for my games when I buy them (aside from competitive multiplayer games, for obvious reasons). It's nice to actually own what I bought.
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I can't fault that line of reasoning, it's sad that it's necessary to do something like that in order to truly own a game that you bought and paid for with your money. What I mean is it's more of a reflection on how gaming companies think they can win the war against piracy and secondhand sales, but they don't realize or care that it costs their paying customers in terms of convenience and all the other good shit.
 
I've had offline mode in Steam fuck me over at times, even with the credentials saved. Sometimes it forgets, I don't know why it forgets, but sometimes it does. I always used to have my Steam credentials saved and on various occasions my internet went down and I was unable to start in offline mode. Other times I was able to get onto offline mode no worries... its one of those areas where Steam has always been fickle, like auto updating.

But yeah, this is shit, online DRM is shit, blah blah blah. I feel like we've had this conversation about 50 million times already.
 
All DRM is evil, no exceptions. Unfortunately the corporations run the govt so there's very litle we can do about it.

Does Ubisoft have an official statement on this? i.e. besides 'Fuck off we don't know how long it'll take, we already got your money!'. It's really very easy and cheap to put a proxy server in place that simply allows all requests, if they really cared about their customers.
 
drako said:
I really have to thank Ubi for not releasing anything interesting in the past few years. It makes boycotting them for their boneheaded decisions that much easier.
Click to expand...

This

and also

ubisoft%20drm.gif



anyone else get the impression that Ubisoft is just doing it for the lolz at this point?
 
Dion said:
Same would happen to steam if servers went down. Get over it.

You cant get into Steam offline mode w/o going online first.
Click to expand...

If you have your IC disco and start Steam it will ask you if you want to go into offline mode.
 
Tudz said:
I've had offline mode in Steam fuck me over at times, even with the credentials saved. Sometimes it forgets, I don't know why it forgets, but sometimes it does. I always used to have my Steam credentials saved and on various occasions my internet went down and I was unable to start in offline mode. Other times I was able to get onto offline mode no worries... its one of those areas where Steam has always been fickle, like auto updating.
Click to expand...

Same. I have NEVER had Steam offline mode work for me unless I was already logged in. Steam is always set to save my log-in info, but when trying to open it to go into offline mode it always asks for them anyway and refuses to log in. The only way I've ever had it work is when my internet goes down and I'm already logged in. My internet was down for four hours on Monday. I wasn't logged into Steam prior to that and well guess what? Steam refused to load into offline mode so I couldn't play my games. This has been a problem for years (since day one apparently) and Valve has never seemed to care enough to fix it.
 
They probably don't fix it by design. I have had your issue happen twice but that is all and I have had Steam installed since HL2 release. Deleting the clientregistryblob file so it generates a new one is a good all round fix so try that.
 
Derangel said:
Same. I have NEVER had Steam offline mode work for me unless I was already logged in. Steam is always set to save my log-in info, but when trying to open it to go into offline mode it always asks for them anyway and refuses to log in. The only way I've ever had it work is when my internet goes down and I'm already logged in. My internet was down for four hours on Monday. I wasn't logged into Steam prior to that and well guess what? Steam refused to load into offline mode so I couldn't play my games. This has been a problem for years (since day one apparently) and Valve has never seemed to care enough to fix it.
Click to expand...

I am glad this happens to someone else, because I always get frustrated when people blab about DRM and act like Steam would never have a problem. If I can't get into Steam for whatever reason, my success rate with offline mode has got to be close to 0%.
 
Dion said:
Same would happen to steam if servers went down. Get over it.

You cant get into Steam offline mode w/o going online first.
Click to expand...

uhm total fallacy there......once you have setup steam on your PC that you wish to game on you are good to go in offline mode provided that you have actually downloaded the content to that PC. You only need to reconnect if you want to get something new. I game on my laptop with steam in offline mode all the time even when there is NO network connectivity.

when network is not available Steam will come up and ask you if you want to

a retry connection

or

b start in offline mode


* goes back to playing Toki Tori in offline mode on Steam*
 
I love Steam's service. I own close to 300 games on it with my last purchase yesterday. I have used Steam since The Orange Box came out.

Offline mode has worked a total of one time since I have used Steam. No amount of voodoo magic can get it to work including the pull the Ethernet cable method. I live in NC a few hours from the coast and our internet dies every hurricane that dreams of hitting the East Coast.

Personally I have just learned to live without having access to my games library. Right now I'm on an Amazon buying kick as there isn't an authentication service involved. AAA+ rating for Amazon's service! Origin doesn't authenticate for the most part but EA is still on my do not fully trust list. Ubisoft will allow you to play some games if you save your login information, but I don't own many of their games to make a definitive statement about most of their games.
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
uhm total fallacy there......once you have setup steam on your PC that you wish to game on you are good to go in offline mode provided that you have actually downloaded the content to that PC. You only need to reconnect if you want to get something new. I game on my laptop with steam in offline mode all the time even when there is NO network connectivity.

when network is not available Steam will come up and ask you if you want to

a retry connection

or

b start in offline mode


* goes back to playing Toki Tori in offline mode on Steam*
Click to expand...


Out of the probable 50 times that my internet has been out for over 3 days since Steam has been in service, Offline Mode has worked one time. 100% of the time it asks me do I want to retry the connection or start in offline mode. 98% of the time it just tells me that I need to connect to the internet to start offline mode and to contact Steam Customer service if I have a problem.

Which seems to be a pretty oxymoron situation, but it is what it is. If I remember to put Steam into Offline Mode before the typical tornado or ice storm hits my area while I still have internet it works perfectly! Get surprised by Mother Nature and I'm dead in the water.

I have at least 6 family members that nightly put Steam into Offline Mode so they can play their games if something happens that night to our spotty internet. That should let you know how wonderful it is.

:)
 
ocellaris said:
I am glad this happens to someone else, because I always get frustrated when people blab about DRM and act like Steam would never have a problem. If I can't get into Steam for whatever reason, my success rate with offline mode has got to be close to 0%.
Click to expand...

The most irritating thing, is when you internet dies, you try offline mode after being logged in, doesn't work, then it tells you to "EMAIL SUPPORT". Which feels like a huge "Haha! You can't get online! Now you're screwed!" :p

So I just go off and play something on GOG/Origin/Etc. Or try a few direct launches (King Arthur works, as do a few others)!
 
Teenk9 said:
But... but ... but Steam is perfect!
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When you typed this you probably thought that it was a really clever remark .... except ... had you actually read previous responses you would have noticed that folks have already sufficiently demonstrated that Steam is actually vastly superior when it comes to playing without being online.

To those who say they can't get offline mode to work I can only say that it's user error, simple as that. It's never failed me once and I use it all the time while the wife is streaming Hulu/Netflix.
 
Thuleman said:
When you typed this you probably thought that it was a really clever remark .... except ... had you actually read previous responses you would have noticed that folks have already sufficiently demonstrated that Steam is actually vastly superior when it comes to playing without being online.

To those who say they can't get offline mode to work I can only say that it's user error, simple as that. It's never failed me once and I use it all the time while the wife is streaming Hulu/Netflix.
Click to expand...

"It doesn't happen to me so it shouldn't happen to anyone else" Get off your fucking high horse. It has been a known problem for YEARS. You can choose to stuff your head up your ass and ignore it, but it won't go away.
 
BETA. said:
Yeah, that way does indeed work. But I don't save my login info because I am not the only user on my PC and also because I am paranoid :p. So, I was basically SOL when steam was down for half a day earlier this year. There used to be way around this, but Valve patched it.
Click to expand...

You do realise that most modern OS's are multi-user right, if you share a PC with other people then just create multiple user accounts each with their own password.

Offline mode has always worked fine for me, and I've only encountered steam being down once in the 7-8 years I've used it, when the entire city where valves auth servers were located had an extended power outage.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Offline mode has always worked fine for me, and I've only encountered steam being down once in the 7-8 years I've used it, when the entire city where valves auth servers were located had an extended power outage.
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For me it always (or at least 90% of the time) seems to work if I'm already logged into Steam and switch to offline mode. Trying to load Steam into offline mode has yet to work. I don't think I've ever run into Steam itself being down, but ran into plenty of times where my internet was down for some reason and I felt like working on my backlog.
 
Teenk9 said:
But... but ... but Steam is perfect!
Click to expand...

No one is advocating that steam is perfect by any means, and its actually baffling that people defend Ubi's atrocious DRM by pointing to steam by way of analogy.

For one, despite people posting here of bad experiences with offline mode on steam, I have never had offline mode not work on two desktops and two laptops which are regularly used. This includes instances of when my internet has been down, I have outright turned off the router or where steam's servers have unexpectedly gone offline (which has only occurred once in recent memory). In theory, it should work as long as the account credentials are saved to the system. The fact that it does not work for some people is hardly reason enough to say its comparable to Ubi's draconian DRM.

Secondly, there is a massive difference between having a system such as steam which has a one time online authentication requirement versus Ubi's persistent online DRM which effectively prevents access to your games absolutely for an indefinite period of time if their servers become inaccessible.If anything, its utterly outrageous.

That's not to say that I am fan of steam's DRM. My preference is always for no DRM whatsoever and I was vehemently opposed to steam when it was first unveiled. To this day, my preference is still to buy physical medium over steam (except in the case of steam works games) unless the inconvenience of steam is compensated by way of exceptionally good discounts.

But if I have to choose between either steam's or Ubi's DRM implementation, I will choose steam every time.
 
Derangel said:
"It doesn't happen to me so it shouldn't happen to anyone else" Get off your fucking high horse. It has been a known problem for YEARS. You can choose to stuff your head up your ass and ignore it, but it won't go away.
Click to expand...
I agree with you, some users are just better than others at figuring out how to get things to work.
 
Thuleman said:
I agree with you, some users are just better than others at figuring out how to get things to work.
Click to expand...

No. Steam just likes to be a pain in the ass at times. It's not user error (well not ALL of it at least). It's a well known problem that Valve chooses to ignore for whatever reason.
 
defiant007 said:
No one is advocating that steam is perfect by any means, and its actually baffling that people defend Ubi's atrocious DRM by pointing to steam by way of analogy.

For one, despite people posting here of bad experiences with offline mode on steam, I have never had offline mode not work on two desktops and two laptops which are regularly used. This includes instances of when my internet has been down, I have outright turned off the router or where steam's servers have unexpectedly gone offline (which has only occurred once in recent memory). In theory, it should work as long as the account credentials are saved to the system. The fact that it does not work for some people is hardly reason enough to say its comparable to Ubi's draconian DRM.

Secondly, there is a massive difference between having a system such as steam which has a one time online authentication requirement versus Ubi's persistent online DRM which effectively prevents access to your games absolutely for an indefinite period of time if their servers become inaccessible.If anything, its utterly outrageous.

That's not to say that I am fan of steam's DRM. My preference is always for no DRM whatsoever and I was vehemently opposed to steam when it was first unveiled. To this day, my preference is still to buy physical medium over steam (except in the case of steam works games) unless the inconvenience of steam is compensated by way of exceptionally good discounts.

But if I have to choose between either steam's or Ubi's DRM implementation, I will choose steam every time.
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There isn't much to say on the Ubisoft situation other then curse Ubisoft and proclaim not to buy their games. There really isn't any discussion to be had here because no one in their right mind can defend it.
 
Derangel said:
For me it always (or at least 90% of the time) seems to work if I'm already logged into Steam and switch to offline mode. Trying to load Steam into offline mode has yet to work. I don't think I've ever run into Steam itself being down, but ran into plenty of times where my internet was down for some reason and I felt like working on my backlog.
Click to expand...

I believe it depends on a few things, like steam having saved and authed your username and password within a certain time frame, and having the "remember my password" tick box ticked.

I think it's also possible the first time you use offline mode you have to actually be online, so load up steam when you're online, select offline mode, that preps steam to run offline mode in the future. From then on offline mode works.

It doesn't seem particularly well developed to be perfectly honest but it's workable if you know what you're doing.

*edit*

It's worth noting the warning you get when you select go offline from the steam menu, it reads:

"Offline Mode is used when you're about to unplug your laptop or are otherwise expecting to not be connected to the internet"
 
PrincessFrosty said:
I believe it depends on a few things, like steam having saved and authed your username and password within a certain time frame, and having the "remember my password" tick box ticked.

I think it's also possible the first time you use offline mode you have to actually be online, so load up steam when you're online, select offline mode, that preps steam to run offline mode in the future. From then on offline mode works.

It doesn't seem particularly well developed to be perfectly honest but it's workable if you know what you're doing.
Click to expand...

I always have Steam remember my password. Hell I've put Steam into offline mode from online and then exited. When I try to open it back up into offline mode, it doesn't work. Since I set Steam to not load with my computer if I have to restart while the internet is out, well too bad. When the nic port on my motherboard when out I spent quite a bit of time trying to fix it and while being frustrated out of my mind I wanted to play a game. Well, too bad Steam wouldn't let me load into offline mode. Monday when my internet was down for four hours, same deal.
 
cageymaru said:
Out of the probable 50 times that my internet has been out for over 3 days since Steam has been in service, Offline Mode has worked one time. 100% of the time it asks me do I want to retry the connection or start in offline mode. 98% of the time it just tells me that I need to connect to the internet to start offline mode and to contact Steam Customer service if I have a problem.

Which seems to be a pretty oxymoron situation, but it is what it is. If I remember to put Steam into Offline Mode before the typical tornado or ice storm hits my area while I still have internet it works perfectly! Get surprised by Mother Nature and I'm dead in the water.

I have at least 6 family members that nightly put Steam into Offline Mode so they can play their games if something happens that night to our spotty internet. That should let you know how wonderful it is.

:)
Click to expand...

I guess I am one of the lucky ones where Steam just works as advertised along with GFWL..... both are set to auto login when the system starts and GFWL does not even bother to let me know if it has a problem, it just waits for the internet to come back.....
 
Well in that case all I can say is that it's probably a bug either in steam in general or with your specific install of steam, raise a ticket with steam support see what they recommend.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Well in that case all I can say is that it's probably a bug either in steam in general or with your specific install of steam, raise a ticket with steam support see what they recommend.
Click to expand...

Multiple systems, multiple installs over the past...However many years its been since Orange Box came out.
 
It's rediculous that people are trying to argue that Steam's offline mode is problem free. Sure it often works, but there are a handful of items that cause it to stop working.

Personally, I've had it fail when a game was in the middle of patching, when my credentials get lost due to system maintenence, failed because I'm not online while launching offline mode.

It simply DOES NOT work 100% of the time.
 
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