When confronted with the prospect of Ubisoft's horrific DRM system, which requires PC players to never ever be offline ever, a distressing amount of people shrugged and went "Eh, I have good internet anyway."
Well, it seems that Ubisoft itself didn't have very good internet - not in Europe, at least - as its authentication servers went down at around 8AM GMT, kicking some players off their Assassin's Creed 2 sessions and subjecting others trying to come online to lengthy log-in waits or frequent timeouts.
A Ubisoft UK representative, "Ubi.Vigil" responded to the immediate (and justified) forum conflagration by calling the outages "unacceptable, particularly as [I have] been told [that] these servers are constantly monitored."
A later status update stated:
Due to exceptional demand, we are currently experiencing difficulties with the Online Service Platform. This does not affect customers who are currently playing, but customers attempting to start a game may experience difficulty in accessing our servers. We are currently working to resolve this issue and apologize for any inconvenience.
"Exceptional demand"? Seriously? That's just great. And to think that every Ubisoft PC release, from now until they say otherwise, is going to be equipped with this schlock.
And, looking back to their panicked damage-control "response" interview with PC Gamer, they refused to make a 100% commitment to patch out the DRM should they decide to take down the authentication servers entirely, this all seems portentous.
Well, at least someone's going to fix this, right?
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
Ubisoft DRM Authentication Server is down, Assassin's Creed 2 Unplayable [Joystiq]
Contest:
8:47 PM on 03.07.2010
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This is honestly one of the reasons I don't worry much about DRM... if it ever bones me completely, I just crack it. I own a box copy, no one is going to sue me for playing a game I paid for, I don't care what the DMCA says.
It's important to support PC gaming right now... buy the games, then crack them if you need to. It sucks, but it's better than the alternative: Ubisoft giving up on the PC entirely.
STFU pirate, you're the root cause of all this.
{gasps for air}
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ha ha ha ha .. .. .. ..
"drm was a good thing youre internet is not good enuogh thats is why it fail. witout it pirates would invaede youre game and you would have bad time"
"I don't care what the DMCA says" makes you as much a pirate as brainderailment in the eyes of the law. Hell, buying/selling second-hand games makes you as much a pirate in the eyes of a lot of publishers.
Oh, I really enjoy mine! I encourage you to get one. Don't klet Ubisoft's failures make you look down on the idea.
Just be sure to know what you are doing.
More like...NOOBisoft.
Amirite?
Someone did fix this - they are called pirates.
If the ApocalyPS3 has taught us anything it's better to know and be safe than sorry.
How did they not anticipate a lot of people needing to log in at once, did they not know how many units they were producing??
Just goes to show that DRM only hurts the legit customers.
Delicious.
I should feel sorry for the people that bought the game, but I don't. Thats what you get for supporting draconian DRM schemes and making Ubisoft think it's OK to punish their customers for buying a game.
And no, piracy is not justified because you knowingly or unknowingly agreed to sit on an anal probe while playing it.
I am pretty sure they're not at all worried about people who crack games they bought. I mean, it might contribute to piracy stats if I had to do it often or anywhere near release, but I don't. I am talking about wanting to play Mass Effect again and being out of activations and EA support doesn't email back for a day or two so I say screw it and crack it.
It's not perfect customer behavior, but it's far from piracy. If they want to sue me for that I would welcome it, it would be a great way to finally challenge that silly DMCA provision which, read the right way, calls modding a crime.
:/
None?
Wait, it's worse if you buy them?
Cool way to persuade people not to pirate, Ubi.
A friend said:" what if you have a crappy wireless lan connection in your dormitory"
I said:" common they need only some data packets"
He said:" What if the servers suck ass?"
I said:" Common mate, I think they planned everything well, to show that DRM can really work"
Now I say:"DRM and Ubisoft....fuck you"
Good thing I had EA games' Bad Company 2 to play while I waited... Oh wait.....
*Facepalm*
But that would be such a twisted thing... right?
In a way, though, I'm kind of grateful to Ubisoft. For years, people have been saying that DRM software is a bad idea, and for years people like KrazyKraut (no offense) have written off the complaints because surely things couldn't be/get that bad. Now that things have come to a head like this, I imagine a lot more people will start seeing DRM as a bad thing. Perhaps sweeping changes in copyright protection policy are around the corner...