Ubisoft DRM Authentication Servers Go Down

smells like a hack or at least an inside job. . .of course:

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

There are many regulations which cause as many problems as they solve but some well-conceived ground rules about internet connection requirements and licencing/owning software (maybe other media, too) seem to be a good idea.

Of course, if the publicity becomes bad enough it might keep companies away.
 
Yep, transitioned to a new hobby away from PC gaming. Mostly game on the xbox now, and a little still on the PC. My PC is now 5 years old!! I can't rightly call myself a technologist with a 5 year old PC! It's still AGP! And to think I even had an SLI'd Monster 2 setup (12Mb version) back in the day.

I just don't have the same fervor for PC gaming like I used to. Console gaming is "good enough" and many of the features that PC gaming used to have (like chatting with friends while playing and on-line multi) are now standard. Obviously, the quality available in PC games crushes what is available on consoles, but at this point I do favor buying games on the xbox over PC for the most part.
 
Wait? Pirates are the good guys?

In cases like these (and NO CD patches) I'd have to say "Yes".

"Pirates. Liberating us from DRM oppression"
 
Damn, I just ordered Assassin's Creed 2. Has the server online yet? If not, thank god for the NO-CD patch, tho it's not exactly cd checks but you get the idea ;)
 
Yet again, Pirates win and paying customers get screwed over.

So glad I bought AC2 for PS3. :D

Forgot that, I wont even buy a Ubisoft game now due to this (and past issues), for ANY platform. Why support them at all if they want to act like this?

"Fuck you" is all I gota say to Ubisoft!
 
YUP software companies really have to figure out where dimished return is.... They are spending money on maintaining servers for years just to stop pirates which most will pirate anyways no matter what they do.

You would think they would just target the less technical crowd to acheive 90% of what they need to do.

Heck getting cracks these days in a pain in the arse and full of malware and spyware. Let others greed help protect their software.

Online CD keys I think are one decent measure to use. For single player something else needs be done just to limit not the hard core crackers but the % of people that would otherwise just go buy the game if cracking wasn't easy.

Why not just drop the price of the game so that people feel like it's a worthy investment. Of course there will still be people out there pirating, but they will see far fewer purchasers since more people will WANT to buy a legit copy if its at a more aggressive price.
 
In america, game owns you, but In soviet Russia, you own game!

Wonder how long till they contact skidrow for help. lol
 
Forgot that, I wont even buy a Ubisoft game now due to this (and past issues), for ANY platform. Why support them at all if they want to act like this?

"Fuck you" is all I gota say to Ubisoft!

Because every single major game publisher has pulled at least 1 stupid drm stunt and I have no intention of quitting gaming entirely. Sorry if you plan on remaining a gamer, that is an illogical and potentially hypocritical stance to have.
 
I would not support Ubisoft not just because of their DRM

but charging $60 for a PC game . . . .

not acceptable!!

plus, they never patch their games
 
Sheet, I was going to buy AC2 today! Just finished DAO. I guess I'll find something else to play instead. Looks like I can get Napoleon: Total War from Steam... and it doesn't have any ridiculous ways to punish me because I dared to pay for their game.
 
And what is great is since you cant returned opened software, what can you do?

i think someone needs to start a class action lawsuit, they are depriving your of a paid product.... sure there has to be some legal grounds to stand on for this.

Maybe the people who bought this game will learn, dont buy this crap, pay with your wallet, but what scares me most is that most people who did buy this game probably had no idea about the required connection needed to play.
 
That said though, I have just come to the conclusion that outside mmo's that PC gaming is quickly becoming a lost cause.

Are you serious? Have you seen how many people are playing CS 1.6 / CS:S / TF2 /L4D/L4D2 BC2 alone? PC gaming is still going strong my friend, very strong.
 
x2

it's just as strong as it ever was.

I'm not sure where the source is but I saw folks in the PC Bad Company 2 thread say that sales on that game on the PC were better than 360 and PS3 sales on that game combined.

Take it FWIW.
 
Are you serious? Have you seen how many people are playing CS 1.6 / CS:S / TF2 /L4D/L4D2 BC2 alone? PC gaming is still going strong my friend, very strong.

I am talking about the number of new exclusives for PC. Only a couple out of that list are newer (less then 2 years old) and only one is exclusive. Compared to what it used to be, PC gaming has fallen badly. Don't get me wrong, I am in no way happy about the current state of PC gaming, but to say it is going strong is laughable. I have watched more PC gaming communities die off in the past 3 years then I can count.

x2

it's just as strong as it ever was.

No it isn't, that is an absurd statement.
 
But but some people can play their game everything must be alright. :p
but some people can't play their game so everything must be wrong. :/

Why not just drop the price of the game so that people feel like it's a worthy investment. Of course there will still be people out there pirating, but they will see far fewer purchasers since more people will WANT to buy a legit copy if its at a more aggressive price.
that doesn't work well in business 101. If you sell 2mil copies at full price with 1mil pirAting it, you stll make 120mil off $60 a game. If sold it at $20 and sold 3mil with no pirating they only make 60mil. Don't worry most people hate math when argung on the Internet.

I am talking about the number of new exclusives for PC. Only a couple out of that list are newer (less then 2 years old) and only one is exclusive. Compared to what it used to be, PC gaming has fallen badly.
you know you need to stop hangin around your friend, Chicken Little. The won't be falling anytime soon there buddy.
 
No it isn't, that is an absurd statement.
How? I've been gaming on PC's since the late 80's and the sheer number of games constantly released for this platform (especially in the last 10 years) is stronger than it ever was. Just because it doesn't get as many exclusives as it used to isn't a sign of it going by the way side, its just simple economics.
 
What a clusterfuck. I'm so glad I parked pc gaming for good when I got my latest laptop...shit like this just validates that thought process.

Yeah, because all PC gaming is suddenly awful because of this.

:rolleyes:

On topic, glad to see some epic Ubi fail.
 
How? I've been gaming on PC's since the late 80's and the sheer number of games constantly released for this platform (especially in the last 10 years) is stronger than it ever was. Just because it doesn't get as many exclusives as it used to isn't a sign of it going by the way side, its just simple economics.

The overwhelming majority of multi-platform titles come out on PC months later then any console. It used to be the opposite of this, if you had been gaming as long as you claim you should know this. Given how much longer PC gamers are having to wait on average vs what it used to be, I stand by my claim that PC gaming is no where near as strong as it used to be. Have you walked down the PC games isle lately? It is pretty barren compared to consoles. The overwhelming majority of the titles are either mmo's or things that came out on a console months previous.
 
that doesn't work well in business 101. If you sell 2mil copies at full price with 1mil pirAting it, you stll make 120mil off $60 a game. If sold it at $20 and sold 3mil with no pirating they only make 60mil. Don't worry most people hate math when argung on the Internet.

I don't think it would require a 66% price decrease to make it more worthwhile for the everyday gamer so I think your example stinks. additionally, just because you know how to multiply doesn't imply you know anything about business
 
The overwhelming majority of multi-platform titles come out on PC months later then any console.


crappy console ports, yes... But on the flip side of that, way back in the "golden days" of PC gaming, you'd rarely, if ever, see a console game ported over to the PC... and when they did, they were always released several months, if not years, later (mortal kombat, street fighter, the lion king and comix zone all come to mind)

As for the games isle, none of the local stores around here ever carried them in the first place, so I can't really comment on that. When I got my first copy of Doom, it wasn't through a store, but through a mail-in software catalog :)
 
crappy console ports, yes... But on the flip side of that, way back in the "golden days" of PC gaming, you'd rarely, if ever, see a console game ported over to the PC... and when they did, they were always released several months, if not years, later (mortal kombat, street fighter, the lion king and comix zone all come to mind)

As for the games isle, none of the local stores around here ever carried them in the first place, so I can't really comment on that. When I got my first copy of Doom, it wasn't through a store, but through a mail-in software catalog :)

Correct, but also consider in those days the overwhelming majority of quality games came out on PC. Which is why I dare say most of us around here are PC gamers first. My entire point was not to indicate that PC gaming is dead, but merely to point out it doesn't get treated with the esteem that it used too. I remember a point where the only time my console got turned on was to play a new Final Fantasy, otherwise it collected dust.
 
I hate when ppl make up numbers to quantify pirates and their potential costs because the numbers don't make sense when it comes to pirating.

For ex, recently its been released that the film District 9 had been torrented over 12 million times which would lead one to assume the film was very popular yet *probably* made little profit due to "business 101" however my run on sentence will end here because District 9 made 6 times its production costs in profit. In reality pirates are hard to quantify...
 
The overwhelming majority of multi-platform titles come out on PC months later then any console. It used to be the opposite of this, if you had been gaming as long as you claim you should know this. Given how much longer PC gamers are having to wait on average vs what it used to be, I stand by my claim that PC gaming is no where near as strong as it used to be. Have you walked down the PC games isle lately? It is pretty barren compared to consoles. The overwhelming majority of the titles are either mmo's or things that came out on a console months previous.


Now if only steam would show their sales numbers.... PC games have long gotten smaller in stores, since most people couldn't download console games until recent (360/ps3), i would say most people download their games from steam, D2D, you cant compare in store stock how strong gaming is, look at how many people are playing the games online in the PC community is huge.

Console have also dropped in unique game releases, most all games are released for each platform, eventually., we all know why publishers claim to not release on PC, piracy, we also all know it is BS. Sure we don't get the games when consoles do, that is marketing, sell to nuttered consoles first, then when sales drop, sell to the PC market , offer better options, more graphics, DLC or something, watch sales jump again, it would be silly to do it otherwise.

Right now steam has 2.2 million people connected

http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

toss in WoW and i am going to guess that online PC games right now, makes online console users look like a needle in a hay stack.

We may not get hot new titles every other week, but i am glad, cause even back in the day, when hot new titles came out, most of them sucked anyways.
 
What we have here is clearly a case of reverse piracy.The customer getting ripped-off and no product,not even a reach around.
 
The overwhelming majority of multi-platform titles come out on PC months later then any console. Have you walked down the PC games isle lately? It is pretty barren compared to consoles. The overwhelming majority of the titles are either mmo's or things that came out on a console months previous.
Your first mistake, not remembering that huge digital world out there. Steam itself holds about 2300 titles alone. So maybe waking down the aisle in yoru favorite store is a correct sample size to represent the population. That is a simple mistake in statistics.

Ha two in one day, you might onto something there! :D

I could have been nicer there, sorry
Yea true, but I didn't make it easy either. I am just saying that when everyone talks about "make our games cheaper! That'll stop piracy!" They get shortsighted into the simple business model of making money. Business are here to make money and it would be stupid of them to lower their prices to attract pirates that may or may not still buy it. They will always have customers that will buy it regardless. That's about as smart as Sony dropping the price on a console they are still losing money on, instead of making better software improvements in order to sell more games.
 
Correct, but also consider in those days the overwhelming majority of quality games came out on PC. Which is why I dare say most of us around here are PC gamers first. My entire point was not to indicate that PC gaming is dead, but merely to point out it doesn't get treated with the esteem that it used too. I remember a point where the only time my console got turned on was to play a new Final Fantasy, otherwise it collected dust.

In saying that then yes i can agree, we used to look forward to a game being only on PC, or coming to PC first, i was the same, i had my SNES fav's and N64, but for the most part i was on my PC gaming all night long.
 
"...is NOT the correct sample size..." damn edit button, or lack thereof...
 
And this is why I buy games on Steam. Compared to this, Steam DRM is completely transparent, doesn't care how many computers I install things on so long as I only log in one of them and most importantly of all, doesn't do anything to lock me out of what I purchased for some arbitrary reason (five activations, must be online all the time, etc).
 
Be careful, the newest Ubi games have this DRM even when downloaded on Steam.
 
the problem i have with that kind of drm is not so much that i can't play for a day (which doesn't mean i'm a fanboi) it's the fact that i can't play a game anymore AT ALL if ubisoft shuts down the servers for whatever reason (bankruptcy etc). who says they will bother with providing some means to unlock the games in case the company is in trouble? and this is why drm is unacceptable for me. i will never buy an overpriced ebook reader until most books are drm free. music ist now mostly drm free, but the quality sucks, sigh. will the entertainment industry never learn? is their management or are their consultants really that retarded to think it's just piracy? like someone said above, yea, it ruins pc gaming even further.
 
Hold on a minute. Isnt' this the most stupid way ever to lose money.They dont want their gtames to be pirated so they pay to run servers to save money. It doesnt make any sense to me.
 
Hold on a minute. Isnt' this the most stupid way ever to lose money.They dont want their gtames to be pirated so they pay to run servers to save money. It doesnt make any sense to me.

Actually Ubisoft is a genius! It cost money to maintain servers and bandwidth, right? So they sell the game, make record millions in AC2 sales, then run away with the money with a non-existent server, leaving us with coasters.

They didn't lose any money at all! :D
 
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