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Ubisoft's Authentication Servers Go Down
ZuchinniOne writes "With Ubisoft's fantastically awful new DRM you must be online and logged in to their servers to play the games you buy. Not only was this DRM broken the very first day it was released, but now their authentication servers have failed so absolutely that no-one who legally bought their games can play them. 'At around 8am GMT, people began to complain in the Assassin's Creed 2 forum that they couldn't access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games.' One can only hope that this utter failure will help to stem the tide of bad DRM."
I don't know anything else that should be said here.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
Down or DDoS? We all know exactly how easy it was going to be for an outsider to screw everyone.
Skid-Row will soon have a fix for this problem. This will also lessen the strain on Ubisoft's servers!
Why would this stem the awful DRM? They have the money, gamers are still going to play, life moves on.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Stop supporting games with this kind of DRM
Actually, the proper term is Digital Restrictions Management.
DRM only exists to restrict, period. Any use of "Digital Rights Management" is due to marketing.
I'm sorry, I'm having a little trouble feeling sorry for people who support DRM (those who bought the game).
They paid for it. They got what they wanted.
Find someone else's sholder to cry on.
First time I've heard of a DDoS attack being used to break DRM...
Do I smell a class action lawsuit? Seems like it might make sense.
Can't find it now, but definitly NOW the DRM protection WILL be the discussion topic on the schoolyard. And maybe company lunchrooms too. People who bought the game will ask around, especially their "IT clued" friends what they could do to play what they paid for, and they will be informed about how to get cracks.
People who never pondered cracking will now be introduced to it. So far they did actually buy their games. Either because they simply didn't know about it or, worse, because they didn't want to go through the hassle and thought that paying 50 bucks is easier, faster and less of a problem than futzing about with cracks and copying this and cracking that and executing this registry tuner and writing that into the registry...
Now they learn that buying games leads to more futzing, more frustration, more "it doesn't just work" than finding it in P2P and downloading it. Legal copies just lost the only edge they had over cracked ones: Ease of use and "just working".
Great job, UBIsoft. Just as the software industry finally regained some footing in the battle against copying, you go and aim the bazooka at your (and the industry's) foot.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You knew the game had this DRM, you knew that it was susceptible to server crashes, you whined about it endlessly, AND THEN YOU WENT OUT AND BOUGHT IT ANYWAY. How stupid can you get? Ubisoft must be laughing their heads off.
It's as if nobody learned the first time about DRM when Microsoft shut off its MSN Music Store DRM servers, thus having people locked out of their own music they bought legitimately.
For those who got burned, it's not like people weren't warned. If you bought the game, you got what you deserved.
--
BMO
1. Give The Game away free (sans DRM and assorted BS), let people pay for it on an honor/donations basis if they like playing it.
Actually my experience with Silent Hunter 5 (having played the game somehow for a frustrating hour or so) is that I don't want it even for free. The game sucks balls. I guess the only good thing about this whole experience is that I updated my video driver.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Please do not post about illegal activities and or downloads.
The response summarizes the situation appropriately:
WTF I posted a link to google that shows how to play since UBIcraps servers are down and you call it ILLEGAL activities? RAbble rabble! I will never buy another ubisoft product and I advise you to do the same!
Several DRM schemes have only involked a reaction in the tech community such as slashdot while the general public carried on not caring.
This shambles has made it painfully obvious to the masses of the dangers of DRM.
The 45 page thread is evidence of it and is quickly filling up with hatred. Comments such as "I'll never buy from you again" which usually tend to be hyperbole this time ring true.
Hopefully the end result of this is that the public won't have a short attention span and make true on their threats of not buying from them again.
When I saw this story: *laughing for 5 mins* *gasping for air* *laughing for another 2 minutes* wooooooooooooooooooooooooo! ha ha ha
Seriously, obey, or you will be fucked by it.
Disagree != mod troll.
The guy behind mIRC did this, and I still remember reading an interview with some guy probably years after the first release where he was one of the early people who had actually paid for it assuming that he had to. He was like number 10+ or something such.
So yeah, works great having people pay if they like the product, or not ..
While I agree that "Digital Restrictions Management" is more accurate, it's not the "proper" term.
We should all send flowers or candy or something to Ubisoft Headquarters. They've done more with one game launch to torpedo the use of DRM than a thousand indignant ./ stories and editorials.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Well, that probably won't work either because, well, people are cheap. Let's be frank here, maybe a few people who know what effort and work is associated with creating a game will donate, but most won't. And there's a few millions to be recovered.
But how about, you know, selling the games for 50 bucks a piece, without DRM? I know, it's a radical idea, but think about it that way: No 20 bucks per unit for worthless DRM and no customer service troubles due to faulty DRM resulting in a smaller support department. The amount of sales you lose due to copying is easily balanced by a lot lower per-unit costs, basically meaning you have to sell half the units to net the same revenue.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
the german law 69d UrhG allows cracking of software that you legally own and that won't work otherwise...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
you're only thinking of the hardcore that knows to hit forums. All it takes is 1 phone call or email and they've lost all the profit on the sale, even if the call consists of "Servers down, try again later!".
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Subscription model seems to work pretty well for WoW.
Free basic game with in-game purchase of add-ons seems to work pretty well for Wizard101 and its ilk.
Yes, either system leaves room for abuse of various sorts... maybe the real challenge is to come up with anti-pirate systems that work for offline games.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
You should look into Stardock. They're an independent studio/publisher based in Michigan that have some pretty top-notch games. They're also widely known to have a very pro-gamer stance on DRM.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
DRM manages rights the same way prisons manage freedom.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Like many interested observers, I have been waiting to see how this DRM implementation would play out. Despite all the doom and gloom prophecies, I really wasn't expecting the game to be cracked in a single day, or for Ubisofts authentication servers to fail so quickly. Regardless off the reasons behind the server being down, a failure to anticipate hostile reactions in the form of DDOSs, or grossly underestimating your own authentication codes effects on the server, are Vanguard-level failures.
/.'ers is a very real one: How do they find a way to minimize pirating without pissing off customers who pay for a copy and can't play it due to ridiculous DRM restrictions?
Which brings Ubisoft back to the drawing board. The problem they face, despite the protestations of the vast majority of
The "don't treat me like a criminal" line is very cute, and while everyone who posts on DRM topics always says they pay for most of their games, the truth is that many, many people pirate games and software. Publishing DRM free games is not an optimal business plan because even the most casual ThePirateBay'er will just download your game and you miss out on those sales. On the flip-side, publishing games with intrusive DRM systems is the best way to make you hated by your customer base.
So, what DRM systems can you think of that would strike some kind of middle-ground balance, but also be relatively difficult to crack?
At this point, if I ran a major game publishing house I'd probably focus on two things.
1) Console gaming: Much more difficult for the casual pirate to rip off your games. While I'm not a game developer, I think if this problem was facing me I'd approach it by using an in-house engine that was optimized for console gaming but could also be used to publish for PC in a streamlined way that, despite whatever flexibility I'd lose to streamline, would greatly cut down on the total cost of publishing for PC.
2) Pc gaming: Much has been said about dongles, but they're not around anymore (for the most part anyways) for a reason. I've lost hardware dongles, had them stop working on me, conflict with systems, etc etc, but the worst part is that the games can be stripped of DRM and dongle protection by an able group like SkidRow, and then the pirates have a better user experience than those who are stuck with the dongle. The problem here is that pirate groups just need to get their hands on the code to crack it. I think the way I would combat this is by trying to get together some of the larger publishers and maybe even ATI or Nvidia to go a different kind of hardware based software distribution (cartridges perhaps?). If enough of the big names in game publishing and graphic cards supported a standardized piece of hardware, something that would connect to your PC not as a dongle but as a means to read the new hardware game mediums, then it would be easy to spread the cost of research and development and to subsidize it at next to nothing to the gamer ("if you buy 3 Ubisoft cartridge games, the cartridge drive is yours for free", etc). The whole idea would be to stop digital copies of the game from floating around for long enough to capitalize on your game release, instead of trying to make an uncrackable game. It would require as high encryption as would be possible to protect the code, and steady streamlined firmware updates to stay ahead of the pirates. Hell, replace the actual drives every year with backwards compatible models that have new hard-coded security features, and at no cost to upgrade for any customer with an old one.
Depends on your point of view. It is their rights that are being managed, not yours. Personally, I just won't buy this shit.
Even in Europe a class action will be a hard sell to judges. Ubisoft will avoid a lawsuit in the same way as ESRI, AutoCAD or any other company that licenses it's software with a time limit and a kill switch after that time limit has expired.
The legalese will spread beyond the EULA and into many other licensing documents, after all that all Ubisoft have to do in order to reach around EU law is put in tiny writing on the outside of the box "Requires Internet Connection to Play". Once this is done, they have effectively transferred the responsibility to the consumer. In Australia I have seen this warning written on every game I've bough in the last 2 years, even the single player games which install and run quite happily without a connection to the internet.
ESRI, who prefer to license ArcGIS yearly haven't had their product shoved anywhere by EU regulations, same with Pitney Bowes. Why, because they put a whole bunch of legalese in their license agreement which is accepted by the customer at the time of purchase. In order for Ubisoft to do the same the most they will have to do is put a small warning on the outside of the box.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
It also might trigger the 'interoperability' exemption of the DMCA. After all, cracking the program is only used to let the game work properly..
No, proper means "That which is right, suitable, or appropriate." Digital Restrictions Management is a much more suitable term.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
1) Gamers may try and return the game. I suppose Ubisoft could refuse to issue refunds but that opens them up to lawsuits. Like it or not, a sold product does have an implied warranty of fitness, meaning that it will work for the purpose you sell it. If it doesn't, customers can get their money back and if you won't give it to them, a court can and will force the issue.
2) It puts off people who haven't bought the game yet. Not everyone buys a game on the day it comes out. Plenty of people wait a bit. Well, they see this, realize that it is true if the auth servers are down there's no game to be played, and decide "Nah, I'll buy a different game." I mean we do not at all lack for good games these days, people can and will take their money elsewhere.
3) It can lead to these people refusing to be customers again. Sure you got their money this time, however a business does not live based on selling one product. You need repeat sales. People who get burned by this (or just hear about it) may decide to give Ubisoft products a miss in the future because of it.
The idea of "Oh well they got their money," is rather short sighted. When businesses operate like that, screwing people over and saying "We already got the money so who cares?" the end result is often the business suffering or going broke in the future.
Just because your connection to Verizon is up doesn't mean their connection to some other arbitrary network is working reliably.
I use Time Warner and a cablemodem.
One day, my net connect starts getting "spotty". Connect. Disconnect. Repeat all day long. After a couple of days it goes down altogether. I put in the call. Guy comes out and looks at the cable and shows me where a squirrel had been nibbling at it. Replaces the cable bit on the pole, off he goes. Cable goes right back down again. Put in another call. Another guy shows up, twiddles something, gets a good meter reading, and bails. Repeat this for about three months. Last guy finally fixes the problem - a router box upstream was foobaring my entire block's connection. Nobody on my block was getting internet, cable, anything through TWC. Dozens of customers complaining daily and it took them three months to finally figure out "gee the whole block is down, let's go look at the router for this block."
So a few weeks later, a lady calls me. A customer survey drone wanting to know about my "experience". I tell her how frustrating the whole thing was. How does she conclude the call?
By asking if I'd consider a package deal to have my telephone run through their modem too.
This entire planet is mad, you know.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
right now... are the pirates?
that's just completely hilarious. I posted in the recent thread on this saying the pirates were the ones that were going to ultimately get the better product, and looks like I was right. I want my cookie now.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
What everyone predicted has happened. /b/tards decide to DDOS them for "pool's closed" - they only care that they cannot play the game they BOUGHT) it will become a massive one.
The servers fail just after the game is released, tens (hundreds?) of thousands of customers are highly unsatisfied, not to say irate.
This is already a PR disaster, should the servers keep failing (whatever the reasons - the people don't care if your servers are to weak to handle the load or if some
Oh, and since Silent Hunter 5 was already cracked I suspect a crack for Assassin's Creed 2 won't be long.
So in a way, Ubisoft, you decided to ignore the warnings, now your tears, they taste delicious.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
There's no way that an home user can afford five nines internet access, so even if it isn't the authentication server end that's a problem, well, you're screwed anyway.
Do you really need to play "Assassins Creed 2" continuously with only 5 minutes of downtime every year? If so, I suspect that your Internet connection is the least of your issues.
Even three nines (eight hours of downtime per year) is more than reasonable for a normal home connection. That might even be good enough for a DRM server.
I'm at about four nines from Verizon FiOS (about 5 hours of downtime in the 3 years I've had the service).
... but I think you're missing the point. It doesn't matter what the total downtime over the course of a year is (unless you're lucky enough to get it all in one sitting). The problem is that with a less-than-perfect connection, that downtime can happen a second or two at a time. It was my understanding that even one second of downtime is enough to boot you out of the game and lose all your progress. By extrapolating from your figures, that happens more or less daily even at "five nines". I think a once per day random chance of program failure and loss of progress is going to alienate and upset all but the most casual of gamers, and I have no sympathy for a company that treats its paying customers like criminals.
Knowledge != Intelligence
From Ubisoft concerning the announcement of the crack:
Please know that this rumor is false and while a pirated version may seem to be complete at start up, any gamer who downloads and plays a cracked version will find that their version is not complete.
So, apparently, this inability to play is the feature that those who pirate the game are missing out on...
Oh, was that my outside voice?
The original idea of copyright, the whole "exchange" thing going on here, is that a content producer is granted a limited, exclusive time period to profit from a work before it becomes public domain, as the nature of any form of information allows unlimited copying anyway. In the US Constitution, this exchange is established to promote the advance of arts and sciences, and it is a reasonable way to encourage content creation as an actual profession. All understandable...
When a company places nasty digital restrictions management garbage on their information product, especially this kind of phone-home to use / read sort of nonsense, it completely removes the part of the exchange that the public receives. The public, the people, via government allowed a limited time for the content creator to exclusively profit from their work before it enters the public domain, and that is the concept of "copyright." DRM, especially this kind, breaks the agreement. It destroys the very foundation of the concept. Therefore, I do not consider any such work to be copyrighted. I am not a lawyer, etc... but I am someone who understands what copyright is for, and that it has become something else entirely. Unlimited terms (beyond a human's lifetime), means it is not under copyright. Permission-every-time sorts of access models mean it is not under copyright.
I know very well that these matters are settled by throwing money at lawyers and congress-creatures, and therefore, my opinion means nothing in a court of law. I also know that I do everything in my power to ensure that people understand the concept of "intellectual property" is against the very nature of information, and is a disgusting concept that has come about through purchased laws.
I'd say that France is simply bad ad building stupid shit they don't need. The Eiffel Tower had great symbol status, which is what the World's Fair was all about. They built it well. Their current telecommunications network is useful for everyone. They're building it well (by what I can tell from the outside). The anti-German wall was useless by then-moder standards, the aircraft carrier was somewhat questionable and the DRM is again a bad idea from start to finish.
The moral: If you want to build shit you don't need, don't let the french handle it.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Now is the time to send a message to Ubisoft that this sort of intrusive DRM will NOT be tolerated. If the servers had stayed up and people just refused to buy the game, they would have written the poor sales off as being caused by "pirates." Now, you have a chance to prove otherwise. Every single person who bought this game on PC should return it to the store. Yes, most will attempt to deny the returns due to policy, or to exchange with a new copy since that one is perceived as damaged/defective. Do not stand for this. Tell them that yes, it is defective, but ALL copies are defective. Let them know that the software itself works just fine on your computer, and in fact ran EXACTLY the way it was supposed to. However, you are forced to return it because it does not work properly on yours or ANY system, because Ubisoft's servers weren't online to allow you to play a game that you legally purchased and met all the requirements for being able to play.
Ubisoft won't be able to shrug it off as "piracy" when their sales numbers for this game begin to shrink due to returns and angry retailers. THIS will hit them in the pocketbook more than a simple, dubiously effective boycott. When they are forced to start handing money back because of their failures, that will speak much louder than never having been paid that money to begin with.
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
Reminds me of some experiences with the German Telekom some years back. Though it must be said that they mostly seem to have cleaned up their act a bit in the meantime. But anyway it's enough to make me shudder at the thought of even my single-player games depending on Internet access.
Act 1: So I get pressured by a couple of people to get a "proper" email address, because apparently my web based one was "unprofessional." (Someone better tell that to Google too;) So I go to the Telekom's site, activate the email, go to a page which said it would change the password for the email. I change it to one of my handful of password. (I know it's bad practice, but I reuse passwords to keep the total number manageable in my head, mostly grouped by categories.)
Thereafter suddenly I can't connect to the Internet any more. Neither my old nor the new email password work.
Hmm, ok, let's assume it's PEBCAK and call their support politely. I agree with the guy that I probably mis-typed the new password and all, ask him to reset my password. Asks for my invoice number, says it's OK. As per their rules, they'll send it to my home address, they can't tell me the new password by phone. (Dunno why. I'm calling from the phone number that's on the same line and all.) Means I'll be without internet for a couple of days, but ok.
After a week, I still didn't get it. I call again, get another drone, asks for my invoice number again, I read it to him off the latest invoice from them. It's ok, I'll get the new password by post, bla, bla, bla.
After a couple of days, still no password, I call again, read the invoice number to the drone, bla, bla, he'll send it right away.
The whole circus repeats every couple of days like clockword for a month and a half. (By that time I had installed an old ISDN card in the computer and was using a pay-by-call service at another provider to at least get my email.) Eventually I lose my temper, don't believe them any more, escalate it until someone tells me the problem: when I had moved, I had received a new invoice number. Dumbly enough, different invoice numbers from their telephone department and the internet one. Since I receive a combined invoice, only the telephone one was written on it.
Essentially for a month and a half those drones had _lied_ to me. They'd see the invoice number doesn't match and wouldn't even tell me so, or point me at some other office to solve the screw up. I can show up in person at one of their shops so they can see it's me, or whatever, you know? Nah, they kept telling me that they'll send me a new password, knowing full well that they _won't_.
Act 2: My brother buys a new house, asks them to move his DSL account to that address. They ask for his address, invoice number, etc, gets told he'll have internet access in no time. Nothing happens. Calls again, same circus, nothing happens. And again. And again.
I should also mention that we had discovered he was VIP customer at the Telekom for whatever reason. Maybe because he and his wife are practically addicted to their cell phones, and get a bill on par with what some companies get. Dunno. But at any rate this was how they treat their VIP customers.
Eventually he gets tired and annoyed, escalates, finds out the problem. Let's say his house number is "42 D". (Not the real one, but for illustration sake.) The drone who typed it in had hit the key next to that "D", so it was "42 S" in their computer. Which didn't even exist. So again and again they'd see that the address doesn't exist, and didn't actually tell him. They kept reassuring him that they'd do it, then basically just ignored it all.
(At this point he was smarter than me and just started looking for another provider instead. He soon moved both his phone and internet access to a cable company.)
Act 3: So after that ordeal I get paranoid, you know? They keep calling me to propose to upgrade my speed, give me some great deals, I just keep telling them to keep their hands off my line. Don't fix what's not
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
But here goes: I don't think this DRM would be a huge problem in my life*.
[(*) Assuming it worked "correctly"--i.e. the Ubisoft servers were never down [...]
RTFA dude. In fact, just read the *title* and you will learn that this is not a hypothetical discussion - the Ubisoft servers ARE down.
Actually, I think that Digital Rights Management is actually the correct and honest-to-God description of it. They just hope you'll misunderstand whose rights they are protecting, and what those rights might be. A lot of people for example seem to think that if it mentions "rights", it might be your rights. In reality, it's about what rights they can give themselves to shaft you. E.g., their unilaterally self-given "right" to revoke your legal customer rights, by preventing you from reselling the game.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
a shit-ton of money
Gotta love that imperial system. Wonder how much that is in metric.
There are two ways to attack this. Ordinarily, a metric ton is 1 000 kg, but a ton of money involves forex:
Chances are pretty good that this outage was simply due to incompetence.
That said, it raises a rather interesting issue. It really demonstrates that there is a single point at which the game can be brought down.
I have to wonder if in the future, if other games include even more draconian DRM schemes that also require constant Internet access, if pirates might just intentionally attacking the servers involved (probably DDoS). I could see them doing this just to discourage such DRM (that may be harder to crack in the future, such as if more of the game data is held on the servers).
DRM could really be turned against the publishers. Ironically, by trying too hard to stop the pirates at launch, they may just be making it easy for pirates to destroy the launch.
Here's the problem - that works wonderfully as a theory. It fails utterly in practice.
Really? Based on what metric?
The simple fact that PC game developers are still in business and still making money, despite wasting who knows how many millions of dollars every year on failed anti-piracy measures is all it takes to prove otherwise. And that's not even mentioning the small developers that are being successful despite using no DRM whatsoever. Here's just one excellent example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sins_of_a_solar_empire. Here's a bit I'm quoting from the page itself: "As of September 2008, Stardock's CEO, Brad Wardell, has stated that the game has sold over 500,000 units, with 100,000 of those being digital download sales, on a budget of less than $1,000,000. It sold 200,000 copies in the first month after release alone." And since the sources for that quote are extremely relevant here, I'll link those as well. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20026 http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/14383
The only possible metric you can use that would make what you said in any way correct is the one the big corporations use: that every pirated copy is a lost sale. So I guess it "fails utterly" if your metric is that they aren't making near as much money as they "could" be.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.