Ubisoft has disgustingly bad tech support and does not care about its customers.

S

sear

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 1, 2009
Messages
228
I'd like to share an experience that I've had over the last couple of weeks regarding Ubisoft's online tech support and Prince of Persia for the PC. I posted the following message on their official forums a few minutes ago, which I think sums things up nicely.

I recently requested support regarding a recurring stuttering problem in Prince of Persia for PC, that coincides with the game attempting to access Ubisoft's servers - despite it supposedly being a DRM-free single-player-only game. I should note that this is a common issue that has been well-documented on that game's specific forum; no explanation or consistent fix has been found.

In my original query I stated that I have gone through all the typical tech support troubleshooting steps - disabling unnecessary programs and services, cleaning temporary files, making sure drivers are updated and installed correctly, etc. Despite this, I had the usual bunch of suggestions thrown at me anyway. Fair enough, that's expected, so I decided to reiterate my question: why is the game talking to Ubisoft, what is it telling them, and why is it causing the game to stutter?

Instead of an answer, I had more suggestions thrown at me on how to stop the stuttering, by way of a clean boot. Again, fair enough, he's trying to help. However, he did not even acknowledge the question I reiterated, and instead of attempting to provide more help, he closed the issue, marking it as "solved".

Now, I don't know what kind of arrogant garbage this is, but you do not mark a tech support issue as solved until it is actually solved. I asked a technical question and did not even get a modicum of help beyond standard troubleshooting procedure, which I had performed before contacting tech support to begin with. Furthermore, upon reopening the query, I did not receive any more replies.

In other words, Ubisoft abandoned a paying customer in an insulting and inconsiderate manner, without even bothering to attempt to address that customer's problem in the first place.

I'm simply here to relate my experience to anyone who wants to read it, and to advise that you should not buy Ubisoft products, if this is the kind of pathetic attitude they are going to display towards the people who are keeping them afloat. What concerns me even more is that my question regarded the game attempting to send information to Ubisoft. What was it sending? My Internet search history? My system details? My credit card information? I have no idea, but apparently it is important enough to Ubisoft that I not know about it, and that it occur approximately every two minutes.
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I would like to ask that everyone here not give Ubisoft their hard-earned money. I'm not advocating pirating or stealing games or anything of the sort, but frankly I don't think they deserve anyone's support if they have no regard for the people keeping them in business. This kind of attitude is disgusting and should not be rewarded.
 
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You had one bad experience and you want to cry foul already? Not every tech is going to be good or helpful. I don't care what company you are dealing with you will run into bad techs. One bad experience shouldn't color your opinion. If you remember the name of the tech, try to contact their supervisor and report them. These techs are humans and humans can be ass holes or have bad days.
 
DOn't forget that most Customer Support Guys pretty much hired off the street and are basivally copying and pasting text off of scripts in a database.. that is why CS sucks over all..


probably the best experience I have had and still have is Gameservers.com Most of the reps I have spoken with seem very knowledgeble and they are not typing from Professional sounding scripts... And our servers rarely experience any lag.
 
iGamer said:
DOn't forget that most Customer Support Guys pretty much hired off the street and are basivally copying and pasting text off of scripts in a database.. that is why CS sucks over all..


probably the best experience I have had and still have is Gameservers.com Most of the reps I have spoken with seem very knowledgeble and they are not typing from Professional sounding scripts... And our servers rarely experience any lag.
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yeah running into companies which don't out source is always nice. EVGA and Corsair are two actually.
 
It's not so much a case of "one bad experience", because I have had multiple bad experiences with Ubisoft in the past, when it comes to support of their games post-release. The major issue here is that not only are they not serving me as a customer in an adequate manner, but they are not revealing what information is being sent from my computer to their servers, or why it is happening in the first place. This wasn't a simple misinterpretation on the part of the tech support guy, it was a deliberate ignoring of the question asked. I think that should be cause for concern. What information are they taking from me, and why must this happen every two minutes, without fail, while playing the game? Search histories? Saved passwords? System information? I don't know, and Ubisoft does not seem willing to tell me. That is cause for concern.
 
sear said:
It's not so much a case of "one bad experience", because I have had multiple bad experiences with Ubisoft in the past, when it comes to support of their games post-release. The major issue here is that not only are they not serving me as a customer in an adequate manner, but they are not revealing what information is being sent from my computer to their servers, or why it is happening in the first place. This wasn't a simple misinterpretation on the part of the tech support guy, it was a deliberate ignoring of the question asked. I think that should be cause for concern. What information are they taking from me, and why must this happen every two minutes, without fail, while playing the game? Search histories? Saved passwords? System information? I don't know, and Ubisoft does not seem willing to tell me. That is cause for concern.
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Again, its one tech. You can't base an entire companies tech support off of one tech, good or bad.
 
iGamer said:
DOn't forget that most Customer Support Guys pretty much hired off the street and are basivally copying and pasting text off of scripts in a database.. that is why CS sucks over all..


probably the best experience I have had and still have is Gameservers.com Most of the reps I have spoken with seem very knowledgeble and they are not typing from Professional sounding scripts... And our servers rarely experience any lag.
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NCSoft was a company I had a good experience with for tech support. I e-mailed them and got a response 40 minutes later -- quickest response ever for me. The answer was probably canned, but the back-and-forth replies came back pretty quickly as well.
 
You bought the game so I know it should not have to be this way, and that it kind of sucks to have to do this but, just download the no cd fix. It does not have that issue.

That the cracked version is often superior to the legit version is my biggest gripes against some forms of DRM. A little non intrusive DRM is needed to keep the honest, honest. However, it should never cause your legit customers grief. If it does, your legit customers may go elsewhere.
 
its a fact ubisoft doesnt care about its customers its proven every time they release a crappy game and stop supporting it 3 weeks after it releases
 
GORANKAR said:
You bought the game so I know it should not have to be this way, and that it kind of sucks to have to do this but, just download the no cd fix. It does not have that issue.

That the cracked version is often superior to the legit version is my biggest gripes against some forms of DRM. A little non intrusive DRM is needed to keep the honest, honest. However, it should never cause your legit customers grief. If it does, your legit customers may go elsewhere.
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PoP doesn't have DRM, so what are you talking about? It connects to Ubi's servers to check for updates that is what is causing his problem.
 
Derangel said:
PoP doesn't have DRM, so what are you talking about? It connects to Ubi's servers to check for updates that is what is causing his problem.
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No, it does that on the game's startup using their update utility. I have no idea what it does the rest of the time. The fact that I couldn't get any straight answer seems to be evidence that it's something fishy.

The point remains: they don't give a shit and neither should you.
 
The economy is terrible and support costs are high... You are shocked that you aren't receiving premium support? It's not only Ubisoft that suffers this problem.
 
friedchicken said:
The economy is terrible and support costs are high... You are shocked that you aren't receiving premium support? It's not only Ubisoft that suffers this problem.
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Valve's developers will oftentimes personally respond to emails they find relevant.
 
Derangel said:
PoP doesn't have DRM, so what are you talking about? It connects to Ubi's servers to check for updates that is what is causing his problem.
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Why would it check for updates besides at startup? And for games that historically recieved almost nothing in the way of patches anyway? Some games do automatically check for updates, but every one I have seen only does it at game start up, or in MP games, when you attempt to join a server with a newer version, or games bought off of steam that update when steam starts up.
Are we not talking about the same PoP? SOT, TWW, and TTT all initially shipped with with various forms of DRM, later releases of those same games may not have.

edit: Ahh, I forgot a new PoP had come out recently, my bad, never mind.
 
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sear said:
No, it does that on the game's startup using their update utility. I have no idea what it does the rest of the time. The fact that I couldn't get any straight answer seems to be evidence that it's something fishy.

The point remains: they don't give a shit and neither should you.
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every one of ubisoft's titles stays in constant contact with data mining servers, I thought this was common knowledge by now.
 
Wildace said:
its a fact ubisoft doesnt care about its customers its proven every time they release a crappy game and stop supporting it 3 weeks after it releases
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This, pretty much. Dark Messiah was a sad story, what with the developers wanting to continue releasing patches and an SDK, but Ubisoft forced them to discontinue support.
 
GORANKAR said:
Why would it check for updates besides at startup? And for games that historically recieved almost nothing in the way of patches anyway? Some games do automatically check for updates, but every one I have seen only does it at game start up, or in MP games, when you attempt to join a server with a newer version, or games bought off of steam that update when steam starts up.
Are we not talking about the same PoP? SOT, TWW, and TTT all initially shipped with with various forms of DRM, later releases of those same games may not have.

edit: Ahh, I forgot a new PoP had come out recently, my bad, never mind.
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Every Ubi games I've bought since uhh..Assassin's Creed I believe has checked updates. The problem with PoP I think is that its constantly contacting to the server for some reason or another. Bug in their net code or intentional DRM, you can decide.
 
sear said:
The major issue here is that not only are they not serving me as a customer in an adequate manner, but they are not revealing what information is being sent from my computer to their servers, or why it is happening in the first place.
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Regardless of the content of the data, I'd be very suprised if any company gave you that information. In fact, I'd be very surpised if the phone jockies you were talking to even knew what the answer was.


The economy is terrible and support costs are high... You are shocked that you aren't receiving premium support? It's not only Ubisoft that suffers this problem.
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On top of that -- did you by chance pick this game up on the recent sale? I'm sure they've been swampped as the was going for like $5 and their customer base most likely doubled.

I'll still buy Ubi games. Everyone has a bad experience at even the best establishments.
 
Kiggles said:
Given we practically buy games as a service these days, I do not see anything wrong with this.
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I dont think people use that as a go no reason to buy a game, bu tI know I did stop buying Ubisoft games based on a prior comment another post put. I brought two games of thiers and before the bugs were close to being fixed (less than two months) They stopped producint fixes and had announced a new game that is in teh pipeline all the mean while I have a crap netcode game. So I stopped "leasing" their games.
 
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