UbiSoft servers down today = No single player gaming

Really bad form this new DRM, cant even play a single player game without it breaking, my advice for people would be to read through all the small print and find a way of legally getting it boycotted (may not work or not viable but thats my opinion only)
 
I was on play.co.uk about buy assasins creed two and the other one a few days ago but then saw it required activation by registration, put me right off
 
VaderDSL said:
Steam tried and have the best DRM to date in my opinion. These guys are not trying, they are being idiots. They are pushing away real customers to stop a few pirate copiess. Cutting off ones nose to spite ones face comes to mind.
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very true, steam offers the user something in addition to any purchased games where as ubisoft are acting as the game police. the are the absolut worst publisher even the pregame logos are annoying
 
Goldfingers said:
Why does everyone find it so funny that they still can't find a way to stop pc piracy? At least they are trying.
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A lot people belive all this DRM/CD-keys etc type stuff is to put a stop to the secondhand game market and have very little to do with stopping piracy ;)


They know they can't stop piracy..But they also know they can stop there being a secondhand PC game market..
 
So are their servers still down? Had a gander over on the Ubi forums but didn't notice anything obvious other than the announcement that they are working on it, from yesterday.

Its a good thing that this DRM has failed and failed hard. Can you imagine if it had spread to DvD's etc? An extreme scenario i know, but the corps will eventually do anything to claw back some of the excess profits they're losing out on.
 
chaparral said:
A lot people belive all this DRM/CD-keys etc type stuff is to put a stop to the secondhand game market and have very little to do with stopping piracy ;)


They know they can't stop piracy..But they also know they can stop there being a secondhand PC game market..
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That's what I said in another thread.

This is the real reason, second hand game sales are real lost sales. Pirated games are rarely a lost sale.
 
Goldfingers said:
Why does everyone find it so funny that they still can't find a way to stop pc piracy? At least they are trying.
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I guess you don't own the game, and I guess you didn't want an AC2 session yesterday. There's no point in trying something that's obviously only going to hurt legitimate customers.

If they came up with a decent idea that actually stopped piracy, then I wouldn't mind as much, but I've been burnt too many times as a real customer by shoddy DRM methods (having to ring premium rate numbers to get it sorted is a stab in the face too).
 
Surely Ubisoft will banish this crazy DRM now.

Personally I would have bought AC2 on release were it not for the DRM,my phoneline is incapable of broadband due to a 10K+ reach to the exchange so I use a one way satellite broadband service which has very good download speeds but still requires a dial up modem for upload to the transponder. As you can imagine loss of connection is regular so playing AC2 with the current DRM would be a frigging nightmare!:eek:

I wonder how sales of the game have been affected? it really seems that people are avoiding it like the plague at the moment,lets hope we can all resist purchasing until Ubisofts hand is forced into lifting the current DRM.
 
Personally I'd say thank Ubisoft, a lot.

If someone slightly more competant had been the first to do it, and didn't have a server meltdown and it always worked for 99.9% of users, only those whose on connections go down have problems well, it could have become standard.

The fact they screwed it up rather badly means its fairly likely they, and everyone else who had been considering it, won't try it again any time soon.

As for Steam being decent DRM, eh? Every game thats come out on steam has been cracked, theres always cracks for steam versions of games floating around.

Piracy will always be very hard to combat on an open system like a PC where people can load programs to combat it before or during a game opening.

One thing is though, do you need to, its not hard to sell a decent game in huge numbers. These publishers are looking at it wrong, they constantly see some stupid numbers of stolen games and think, "damn, we've lost £300million" in lost sales and so go around thinking about what they can do.

What they don't realise or think about is most people can't buy every single game out every year, if they didn't steal it, its as simple as they'd never play the game.

Its a failed experiment, that by failing helps us all long term, I'm happy with the outcome.

Of course, afaik, Assassins Creed 2 is still yet to be cracked, so it is working.

If we're honest, most of us don't have a problem with internet connection being active and one down day isn't a huge issue. What they should maybe do is have the game encrypt minor parts after a countdown of 24 or 48 hours, and if it can't get online you can't play, but a short downtime wouldn't kill it. Though again, I guess that opens it up to easy cracking.
 
I didnt have any issues logging in yesterday with my £15 grey import cd key. :D

From a user perspective the DRM is not that intrusive - no worse than logging into steam. Also the online saving is great.

They just need to ensure they have a redundant server to cover any down time - my BB is never down so a constant connection is not a problem.
 
If someone slightly more competant had been the first to do it, and didn't have a server meltdown and it always worked for 99.9% of users, only those whose on connections go down have problems well, it could have become standard.
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It's (or rather a similar system) been in use by a company called Neoqb for their Rise of Flight sim for the better part of a year now and has suffered no significant issues that I am aware of, however as of last week they added an offline mode so single player games do not have to connect to the net.
 
look at the BC2 threads - they have server issues too (both games released on same day) and people still rate DICE highly

use the word DRM and everyone gets mad

saying that if I had bought either on friday id be ****ed that I couldnt play them all weekend
 
Quote from the "press":

Ubisoft customers have complained that the publisher's controversial DRM measures have frozen them out of two major games.

The firm's forum was littered with complaints from gamers who couldn't play legally purchased versions of Assassin's Creed 2 and Silent Hunter V over the weekend - as Ubi's DRM servers went down.

However, it appears those who had obtained a cracked, pirated version of at least one of the games were able to continue playing - causing huge frustration amongst legitimate customers.

Summing up the thoughts of many of his fellow forumites - who posted hundreds of complaints - Sting_09 wrote:

'Yep, only a couple of days into this new DRM, and already, PAYING CUSTOMERS ARE UNABLE TO USE THEIR SOFTWARE.

'I know that there is isn't a cracked version of AC2 right now, but there is for SH5 so please take note Ubi, your loyal customers are now unable to play your game whilst those who have obtained it for FREE are perfectly fine.

'I hope this is what you intended. Way to go!i

Ubisoft community manager 'Ubi Vigil' eventually posted a reply:

'I don't have any clear information on what the issue is since I'm not in the office, but clearly the extended downtime and lengthy login issues are unacceptable, particularly as I've been told these servers are constantly monitored.

'I'll do what I can to get more information on what the issue is here first thing tomorrow and push for a resolution and assurance this won't happen in the future. I realise that's not ideal but there's only so much I can do on a weekend as I'm not directly involved with the server side of this system.'


Source:

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=238005
 
welshdragon said:
'I don't have any clear information on what the issue is since I'm not in the office.....I realise that's not ideal but there's only so much I can do on a weekend as I'm not directly involved with the server side of this system.'
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Maybe...just a wild thought now...ring someone who is? Before you post something that makes you look like a complete fool :)
 
Dano said:
Link to the official thread needs removing as it's not safe for work or your breakfast either :(
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This, clicked the AS2 link and was greeted with lots of pictures that I really don't want to see, especially at work :(
 
Goldfingers said:
Why does everyone find it so funny that they still can't find a way to stop pc piracy? At least they are trying.
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oblivion and fallout 3 sold massive amounts of games, their copy protection?


a simple CD key.


Make a good game don't punish your customers for having the audacity to actually buy your game and it will sell well.


Make it a generic piece of crap you release every year and make your customers jump though half a dozen hoops and it will get pirated.*



* and still sell sickeningly well because you spent tens of millions on advertising.
 
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