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Ubisoft DRM Problems Remain Unsolved

Posted by Soulskill on from the think-of-is-as-encouraging-you-to-find-a-new-hobby dept.

ocean_soul writes "More than three weeks after the release of The Settlers 7, with the controversial 'always on-line' DRM, a lot of people still can't connect to Ubisoft's DRM servers. The forum threads where people can post if they are unable to connect keep growing daily. One reason for the lack of fixes or responses from support seems to be that the people responsible were on vacation during the Easter holiday, despite the promise of 24/7 monitoring of the servers. The moral of this story seems to be that it is a bad idea to buy a game just before a major holiday." Or perhaps that it's wise to avoid games with such DRM altogether. So far, Ubisoft hasn't shown any sign that they're reconsidering the requirement of a constant connection. They've recently said it's "vital" to the success of their games and promised that their DRM would "evolve and improve" over time.

2 of 430 comments (clear)

  1. Re:They don't care about the problems today. by LoneBoco · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's fine and all, but Ubisoft is a French company.

  2. Re:They don't care about the problems today. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    *works in aerospace as a CAD/CAM draftsman; can answer authoritatively.

    BOEING uses Dassault Systemes Catia V5 R19, as of the time of this posting.

    It has been cracked and released on Pirate Bay as of R19 service pack 4.

    The crack in question exploits the server based authentication DLL, by replacing it with one that automagically returns "authenticated" for whatever license the local client is requesting. (thus, no authentication server is needed at all.)

    The name of the hacked file is called JS0GROUP.DLL

    A pirate installation of this sort provides the user with over 1 million dollars worth of CAD/CAM power, in equivalent licensing fees.

    (Catia is a modular "I can do just about anything, DAMNIT!" CAD/CAM/PLM package. It has workbenches for doing everything from sheetmetal design, to rapid prototyping, to designing skyscrapers, to designing and diagnosing plumbing/pipe routing, planning infrastructure and space requirements for industrial robots, and even electronics engineering. The pirate dll activates "ALL" workbenches.)

    Long story short: The DRM (Licensing server with expensive licenses required.) has been broken, and has been broken for quite some time.