Thanks to DRM, Some Ubisoft Games Won't Work Next Week

hypnosec writes "Several of Ubisoft's biggest titles won't be playable as of next week thanks to a server move by the publisher and the restrictive DRM that was used in their development. This isn't just multiplayer either. Because Ubisoft thought it would be a smart plan to use always on DRM for even the single player portion of games like Assassin's Creed, even the single player portion of that title won't be playable during the server move. Some of the other games affected by this move will be Tom Clancy's HAWX 2, Might & Magic: Heroes 6 and The Settlers 7. The Mac games that will be broken during this period are Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell Conviction and The Settlers. This move was announced this week as part of a community letter, with Ubisoft describing how the data servers for many of the publisher's online services would be migrated from third party facilities to a new location starting on the 7th February. The publisher didn't reveal how long the transfer would take."

Comments

I Must Be Missing Something Here

[eldavojohn]

1. Install software at new site.
2. Test software at new site.
3. Lock writes and edits to old database.
4. Dump old database.
5. Migrate old database to new site and populate.
6. Switch DNS or whatever directs traffic to point at new site.

That should be a matter of minutes and since I would guess this is largely just a reading and verifying service, there shouldn't even be an interruption for game validation. There are other strategies to employ if that database dump takes a long time but nothing that should require an unknown downtime.

Uh, I do this stuff with two-bit websites that I don't even make a profit on. What the hell is money monger Ubisoft doing?

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Anonymous Coward]

You are missing the "give a crap about your customer step" that you take before all that other stuff automatically, and ubisoft does not.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[mcavic]

That would require duplicate hardware at the new site. It's hard to convince people to shell out, even when their pockets are deep.

The real question is why you need DRM on a game (or anything else) that's been purchased outright. And a related question, why do you need an Internet connection to play a single player game?

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Drinking Bleach]

Not hiring you, apparently. In seriousness, it is a very good question. I've done similar things not just for sites that don't make any money, but for sites that just sink more money than they ever have hope to make. Ubisoft is just showing a prime example of their incompetence here.

oh and since it's probably oblig: Guess who this move affects the least? the pirates.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[codemonkey2011]

I agree, but there must be something involved with the whole game-server thing that we don't know about; maybe legit copies of the game have a hidden crypto key that must be transferred?

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[NeutronCowboy]

No, this is exactly how it is done. I work with some of the largest data centers in the world (not on the scale of Google or Facebook, but close behind it), and the only difficulty with scale is that moving the data takes a whole lot more planning. Especially if you're planning to keep writing to the old db for almost the entire time of the move. It took us a while, but we now move massive data clusters between geographically disparate data centers in what appears to be a 5 minute window. The reality on the backend is of course very different - but that's the point. Our customers don't give a rat's ass about how difficult the move is - all they care about is that they're paying us to make that problem go away. And therefore, we do.

What Ubisoft essentially did was the cheapest, dumbest way of moving a data center: switch of the database(s), replicate for a few days, start it back up.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Moryath]

Are you kidding?

This is the basic problem with DRM. It treats every customer as if they were a criminal.

Pirated game: always works.
Non-pirated game: customers suffer through shit like this.

And the companies wonder why things like no-CD cracks have been rampant basically forever? I mean fuck, we wound up hand-rewriting the stupid "black text on dark fucking red" sheets from games like Zak McCracken in the old days, and it wasn't a question of piracy, it was just so we didn't have to stand under a 300W floodlight to read the goddamn sheet!

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[TWX]

One could always split existing hardware between a couple of sites if there's enough duplicate equipment, and suffer moderate outages instead of full-blown darkness, then once the switchover has happened, move the rest.

Or set up a virtual network between the two banks of hardware at different physical locations, and switch the traffic routing and whatever other addressing is necessary, and once the new location is up and working and backfeeding the old location, then down the old location and move the rest...

But I agree, it's stupid to use DRM for a purchased game, especially beyond initial activation at the time of installation. If I remember correctly, the id folks intentionally removed DRM once they'd sold enough copies of their software, and actually credited piracy with increasing the popularity of their games to the point that they became a known force...

I guess I look at piracy differently. Sure, there are some people who would have bought a product that now won't, but there are lots and lots of people who end up with pirated copies of something that never would have purchased it in the first place, or never would have purchased it at a price that the seller is willing to sell it for. One cannot count those kinds of pirates as lost sales, since there never would have been a sale. There is a third case though, where someone pirates something and exposes their associates to it, who then go out and buy it because it appeals to them.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Kenja]

The whole point is that they dont think they have customers. They have thieves who have been thwarted.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[cpaalman]

you mean like adjusting the TTL for the DNS records that you know you will be changing, well in advance of the day of the change?

Lesson Learned.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Firehed]

The procedure is reasonably accurate. Although to further minimize downtime, you dump your pre-move database while things are still running, keep the remote site up with replication, and don't write-lock it until you've switched your DNS (you've been dropping the TTL over the last couple days leading up to the move, right?) and put a static "site moving, refresh in a minute" page up on the old site. Obviously too simple for something of Facebook scale, but it worked quite well for a site with a handful of servers.

Of course, Ubi's setup for DRM servers will likely be wildly different than a bunch of web servers and a couple of DBs. I imagine a bunch of open connections with almost no data flowing over them

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[v1]

"Switch DNS or whatever directs traffic to point at new site.
or whatever? Go learn something, then try to participate in the discussion.

I'm no DNS savant but I do understand how to temporarily change my records' TTL values to something like say, 5 minutes. Is that what you were referring to?

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Kagetsuki]

You realize pointing sites at a particular DNS set and using forwards to load-balance is a commonly used scheme don't you? And you do realize there are caching services that handle front end connections while the actual database servers or application servers lie behind them - you know like how Slashdot uses Varnish?

"or whatever" is about as accurate as you get unless you want to list out pages upon pages of different traffic handling schemes that only have DNS pointing at front-line servers.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[cdrguru]

What you are describing (fully parallel hardware) is fine if the budget is unlimited.

I suspect UbiSoft isn't running their servers as the primary source of revenue and the budget for this migration is very limited. So limited that they aren't duplicating the hardware but physically tearing it down in one location and moving it to a new location. Not very nice, but it if you can't afford to replace 100% of the hardware it is what you are looking at doing.

It is nice to work with a huge operation where the external-facing server farm is the primary revenue source for the company and the budget for such a migration is unlimited. But, not everyone gets to work like that.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[alen]

this involves spending money to support games that have already been sold

the smart way is to turn off the servers
load into truck
move to new DC
unload
rack them
turn on and change configs

sure people can't play the game but the revenue is ours already. not like they can return it

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[ae1294]

It doesn't matter what mechanism Unisoft use.
The technology is available today to make the impact of this change be no longer than it takes BGP to converge on the internet if they move the IP addresses with them... or around the duration of a TTL expiry for a DNS record.

There is NO reason why it has to be any longer ..

No there is a reason. UBISOFT DOESN'T GIVE A RAT'S ASS ABOUT THEIR CUSTOMERS.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Technician]

MS is guilty of this dumb move early on. Back when optical mice where the new item, I bought a MS optical mouse for a system I was building on my coffee table. In the software installation, the optical mouse driver hung up the install looking for an Internet connection to register the software. I was like WTF and returned the mouse as defective and unable to function on a stand alone system.

Not everyone who plays stand alone games are connected with an always on connection. Many locations are still on dial up. Multiple machines mean many are not connected while waiting for the phone line. Tying up the phone line for hours is not an option either.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Anonymous Coward]

If they (Ubisoft) were smart the handshake would be signing a date stamped random nuance (and probably the cd-key).

Client has Ubisoft public key, so they can verify the signature.

So, umm, if you can "build a 'bot" then go for it.

Easier to hack the client to have the the verification function always return true.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Hatta]

I'm not a gamer, but I was wondering why some clever geek hasn't just fired up snort to see what their server's saying to the game, then built a 'bot that interacted in the same way with it locally.

The same thing that prevents some clever geek from just firing up snort to see what your bank's server is saying to your browser, and building a bot that interacted with it in the same way locally.

I have no idea if they've actually done it properly, but public key cryptography can be used to prevent exactly the attack you described.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[idontgno]

And that's a critical point. Support is not a revenue center. If they could get away with it, a large fraction of business would wash its hands and walk away.

If their own revenues (like, e-commerce servers) were at risk during this transition, you can be for damn sure that there would be a live warm cutover of a full parallel installation at the new site, with dual operations and a slow de-constitution plan at the old site for fallback purposes.

But a DRM server? Meh. I suppose we should feel grateful they're bothering to stand the things back up at all.

Which is why I don't buy single-player software which requires a live phone-home. Even Steam is pretty close to verboten, though not necessarily (since the games I'm thinking of can run without Steam authentication, at least for a while).

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[hobarrera]

The comunicaction is probably encrypted, the game having the "public key", and server the "private key". I used quotes because it's probably not private/public-key encryption, but something rather similar.
Maybe the server just needs to send the current time and some unique id of the remote host passed through a one-way function, that's validated client-side, or something. Not everything can be sniffed at network level.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Seq]

1. Install software at new site.

Maybe DRM prevents them from installing in two places?

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[geekprime]

Geekoid,

Do you have any idea how stuff actually works on the internet?

Seriously, if eldavojohn is so wrong, what do you consider to be the right way?

Do you even have the slightest clue about what you are insulting others over?

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Seq]

I fail to see what mistake he made. Perhaps they just have DNS point at new servers? Perhaps they route their existing public IP space to the new datacenter (assuming those IPs were ubisoft and not isp-provided)? Perhaps they have a cache or load balancer layer that they simply redirect at the new servers, but which is not moved at the same time?

I think "DNS or whatever" is fine.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[CCurzon]

A two stage move would work in this case:
1 - move to an AWS stored instance
1b - move the physical hardware
2 - restore from the AWS to the physical

People should be able to play the games they have paid for. This would also cover them in case something happens to the truck carrying the hardware or something similar. Pay the rent on the AWS server for a bit longer while the new hardware comes in.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[VGPowerlord]

The problem with locking writes to the database is that all the games mentioned save their save games to Ubisoft's servers. Meaning that as soon as the DB is write locked, players are (essentially) locked out of their games.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[PerfectionLost]

If you can't switch servers with the hour it takes for DNS to refresh being the longest timed item of a migration, you may want to eat those words and go learn something. Really you should be able to do it in the couple minutes it takes to switch the IPs...

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Hatta]

You're right. If you can modify the executable you can tear out the protection. The fellow upthread was suggesting that someone code a dummy server, which couldn't be done if they used PKI.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Mr.LightFoot]

I do this for a living. Migrating sites for major companies the size of FB and MS and the like. I can tell you, with a well planned execution w/database moves, loads, etc., it takes months of planning to make sure everything works well. The general plan above is accurate in terms of the basic/high-level steps. There will be outages. For a DB such as this, I'd estimate at least 1/2 a day is required but it can be several days to get all the bugs worked out post migration. DNS takes about 15-30 min to replicate to the TLD and then spread across the DNS caches out there which can take up to 24-48 hours depending on where you are located and what ISPs do. Some ISPs cache DNS for a longer than TTL so I've seen up to a week when we migrate large sites before it becomes available to end users. Mileage may vary.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Stripe7]

I can see them doing this and then finding out that their db is totally corrupt due to multiple data disk losses. Looking for their last backup tape to find them missing or that someone has spilled coffee all over them etc..

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[w.hamra1987]

Ah, thanks. I'm not a gamer, but I was wondering why some clever geek hasn't just fired up snort to see what their server's saying to the game, then built a 'bot that interacted in the same way with it locally.

It's just easier to dl the cracked version than to go to the trouble of building a workaround for the non-pirated version. I guess it should have been obvious. Carry on.

actually, this was done. go look at the cracks of Assassin's Creed 2. it basically implements a Ubisoft Server emulator that satisfies the DRM checks of the game, and allows you to run the game.

with the next release though, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, this method no longer worked as Ubisoft changed their DRM protocol, nevertheless, it was still possible to circumvent that DRM using the allowed "offline mode" of the game. in their latest Assassin's Creed:Revelations, the same thing is being employed, forcing the game into offline mode to play. I don't know what the hype is all about, you can from right now, open your uPlay program (Ubisoft Launcher), go to Settings, and force offline mode... when Ubisoft do the server move, you'll still be able to play the game in single user mode.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Jason Levine]

It's not whether you have it or don't have it, but whether you are willing to put down money for it and whether the money you are willing to put down is what the seller is asking. Suppose you were willing to purchase Photoshop for $100 but Adobe won't sell it to you for less than $500. If you go out and pirate it, your action is not a lost sale. Absent any pirated copies of Photoshop, you wouldn't have plunked down $500 for it. Perhaps you'd have gone with Paint Shop Pro for $100 or GIMP for free, but you wouldn't have given Adobe your money. (In an odd way, your pirating could be a "lost sale" for one of Adobe's competitors, but only in the most abstract sense.) However, if you would have been willing to pay Adobe's price for Photoshop, but decided to save that cash and pirate the software instead, then your actions would validly be a lost sale.

The problem is that many content owners see pirates and think "these are all lost sales." In reality, some are lost sales and some aren't. Furthermore, some use piracy as a "trial version." If they like the pirated version, they'll pay for the non-pirated version in order to give money to the creator of the product. For these people, piracy actually increases purchases because they might not have bought the item had they not had the "trial version" via piracy.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[blueg3]

It cannot, it can only be used to make it more difficult. If your computer is one of the endpoints for an SSL connection, you have access to the cryptographic material necessary to decrypt the communication. (Obviously, since both the endpoint and the monitor are software running on your computer.) It's just tricky, but some traffic-capture software will decrypt SSL connections using just such techniques.

Of course, for a Web browser it's a lot easier. Take an open-source web browser and hack it to record the SSL traffic. Obviously your browser need to be able to decrypt the SSL, and you're able to modify your browser. The reason people don't bother with this is that tricking your browser into thinking that the bank is telling you "yes, you totally have a million dollars" doesn't do anything. It just displays text on your screen.

Intercepting the DRM communications, on the other hand, is more useful. Unless critical game data is provided to you during this online exchange, though, it would be easier to hack the game to not bother contacting the server in the first place.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[arkhan_jg]

That is how they initially cracked Assassins Creed 2; intercept the traffic, work out all the possible answers, and build a fake server that always gives the right answer. Since the request only has to go to a local port, much faster than the real server.

These days, they've learned to decode the client-side part of the DRM, so just hack the .exe so it doesn't even try to talk to the real servers any more.

Bullshit like is why I've been boycotting all ubisoft games since it came out. Between Assassin's Creed sequels and the Anno series alone, they've lost about 5 full price sales. I'm old enough and earn enough now to buy full price games when I want; what I'm not going to do is piss about wasting my time jumping through the always-on-activation hoops. So their DRM converted a prior release-day paying customer to 0 sales. Shame they don't factor that into the 'piracy is killing our business!' crap.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Have some fucking spine and realize that "I don't care enough" is a perfectly valid reason to not refrain from pirating something. You don't need to rationalize everything, and pretending only hurts honest debate.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[frosty_tsm]

That would require duplicate hardware at the new site. It's hard to convince people to shell out, even when their pockets are deep. The real question is why you need DRM on a game (or anything else) that's been purchased outright. And a related question, why do you need an Internet connection to play a single player game?

They already shelled out a bunch of dev resources and hardware to ward against the pirate-boogie-man. Or put another way, they made their bed now they have to sleep in it.

I don't happen to play anything from Ubisoft right now, but I'd be hounding them if my game of choice was affected (so little game time, so precious).

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Hatta]

You're right. But if you're going to modify the game executable it makes more sense to remove the protection entirely, than it does to reverse engineer the cryptography and reimplement the authentication server.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[AngryDeuce]

some ellaborate plan by the techies

Maybe they get paid by the hour? This is Ubisoft we're talking about...

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[GameboyRMH]

Maybe there's DRM on the DRM servers that makes moving the data across impossible? :-P

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[leonardluen]

and when you are in offline mode they disable certain parts of the game.

not sure about assassin's creed, but in Might and Magic: Heroes 6, they disable the "dynasties" which give your character some special weapons and powers when in online mode.

A bigger issue however is that when in offline mode you are unable to load any saved games that were played in Online mode, and if you happen to be in an online game you are immediately kicked to the main menu.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Firethorn]

Which is why, despite it supposedly being a good game, I haven't bought assassin's creed or any other ubisoft game in recent memory. I think I got some back in 2005 or so.

I refuse to have anything to do with their latest DRM. Not even if I can get the game from steam for $2.50, due to what it wants to do with my computer.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Tokah]

At least in Heroes 6, offline play is a somewhat crippled version of the game. It is missing a major level-up mechanic and makes you unable to access your normal saves.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[leonardluen]

I also will no longer buy any ubisoft games until they give up on this DRM crap.

what finally did it for me was when their DRM servers were down over the last christmas and new years weekends when i had vacation and was unable to play the games i had bought.

i think most of their games have an "offline mode" but it cuts feature out of the game, and at least for a few of their titles titles will not allow you to load saved games that were started in online mode.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[WalkingBear]

Install software at new site.
        Test software at new site.
Set up new database with live replication from old database
Switch on new servers and point to new database
TEST
Flip VIP on front end to point to new servers
Turn off old servers

There.. fixed it for you. ZERO downtime. This stuff is trivial now.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[WalkingBear]

Ahh.. someone has seen the man behind the curtain. It's amazing how many ways your technological priesthood can make it's displeasure known to the gods of the spreadsheets in the corner offices.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Terrasque]

And why not just set up a temp "auth server" that just OK's everything that comes in, for the movement period?

Some people might be able to pirate it for a copule of days? People are already able to pirate their games, nothing new there.

For me, if it was the choice of either cutting off all valid customers for a time, or let people play for free for a time, the choice would be obvious. Paying customers first, then paying customers second. Pirated games that only work a week's time? That's called a "DEMO", stop worrying. You might even gain some sales on it.

*shakes head*

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[bluegreen997]

The day we can copy houses, cars, and all physical property that can actually be stolden and not just copied your analogy will have validity.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[jmerlin]

I have control over the client. I have control over the server. I can modify anything in the client I wish, and I can make the server do whatever I want. Public key cryptography is not resilient against MITM when you control either end entirely. Here's the general method:

1. Generate your own public/private key pair.
2. Replace public key in client.
3. Sit proxy (or server) on your machine that uses the private key.
4. If traffic is to be sent to the original server, use the original public key to send (modified) data through to the orig server.

You've just MITM'ed public key cryptography.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[cheekyjohnson]

The basic problem with your analogy is that the customers own the game and are being locked out of it by the DRM. Unlike with someone choosing to lock down their own house/car, the publishers are harming the actual customers (and the customer basically has no say in the matter).

That's quite different than locking down your own property of your own volition.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[EETech1]

That's a great idea if anyone could easily download the full games from the companies website. Like when the cable company gives you free HBO for a week hoping you'll buy it.

Leave everyone who wants to try it try the whole game. It might drive the hardcore players away during that time though, unless they enjoyed sniping newbs for hours on end:). You'd almost have to run a different server as it would totally screw with the achievements.

Cheers

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[vipvop]

Except it isn't uncommon for ISPs to cache the DNS records longer than the TTL says (I'm looking at you, Charter). Of course Charter also returns their own IP to any DNS query that doesn't resolve, along with a "helpful" search page with ads to try and make more money. You can opt-out, but that just sets a cookie in your browser, which still fucks up everything else (like ping).

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[ZeroSumHappiness]

Except that thieves working on locks are at risk during the whole time they are handling the locky bits, so the longer spent with locks the greater the chance of them going away empty handed. With DRM the "thief" isn't at risk while he's undoing the DRM whereas the customer is at risk of the DRM failing out from under him. Your car analogy is incorrect because it assumes that cracking DRM is risky when it is not.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Flaming Troll Shill]

Almost every game I own is over a year old - some of us live outside our parent's basements & can't just spend our allowance money on games all the time.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[blueg3]

Nominally, yes. It depends on how each is implemented.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Dunbal]

Maybe they get paid by the hour? This is Ubisoft we're talking about...

You're right. If it was Electronic Arts they wouldn't get paid at all...

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[DaveyJJ]

why do you need an Internet connection to play a single player game?

Shut up, and stop asking that. Signed, Blizzard.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[hairyfeet]

I do the same friend, haven't had a Ubisoft game since either Riddick or the first far Cry, can't remember which came later. the problem with just voting with your wallet in this case is what i call "PPT Math" which they use to get ever more draconian laws. you see they'll just break out a PPT and tell the congress critters they are buying "If you see here we sold X amount on consoles, and since there is Y amount of PC gamers that play this particular genre then logically we should have had X+Y sales but since we didn't it MUST be those evil pirates stealing our precious!" and they get worse laws that fuck us ALL over.

For a great example of PPT math see the media companies who despite posting record profits year after year (while fucking the artist with Hollywood accounting so they don't have to share any with the scum that actually made the things) whip out a PPT that says "If you see here it shows they stole elevnty bazillion from us so we'd have had a super duper super cereal year if it weren't for those ebil pirates ZOMG!" and we get all these lovely laws like DMCA, ACTA, and their attempting to ram SOPA/PIPA which I'm sure they'll get after the election.

No what we need is for the EFF to set up some web pages where those of us not buying nor pirating from companies we find odious can sign so that the EFF can hand it to congress critters when these corps try to use PPT math to get us screwed. Because as it is now its a "heads i win, tails you lose" situation for these assholes.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Anonymous Coward]

I also do this for a living. If your even a medium sized company that relies on this data being operational for your mission to continue, you set up some VMs on the other location, then use Synchonizing software to transfer data to it during real time. It takes about 2 weeks for all the data to move depending on the size of the pipeline but you essentially keep existing customers retain functionality and also keep all updates. Then when the sync time is within 5 mins, do a failover and walla. All done. Now you can use the site A equipment/VMs as your hot site (somewhere else).

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[UnknownSoldier]

> I mean fuck, we wound up hand-rewriting the stupid "black text on dark fucking red" sheets from games like Zak McCracken in the old days,

SimCity (the original) had the same copy protection.

A friend of mine ran each successive copy through a fax machine until it was readable.

Me, I just "kracked" the protection all together. That was more fun doing that then playing the game. =)

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[aix tom]

Well, every system *I* run that has *any* customer interaction at all is redundant anyway.

So basically the move would just be:

- Shut down mirror 1, move mirror 1.
- Startup mirror 1 at new location, wait a few hours to see if it works.
- Shut down mirror 2, move mirror 2.
- Startup mirror 2 at new location.

And even for out itty-bitty 200-user company internal Apps we don't have both mirrors in the same data center anyway, so it is very unlikely they would have to be moved at the same time at all.

The only reason I can Imagine that Ubi isn't doing it that way is that they blew 90% of their budget to come up with new DRM schemes and didn't have any left to give the customer a satisfactory service.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[drinkypoo]

One could always split existing hardware between a couple of sites if there's enough duplicate equipment, and suffer moderate outages instead of full-blown darkness, then once the switchover has happened, move the rest.

If they don't have enough redundant hardware to keep the service up with this kind of switchover, they don't have enough redundant hardware to keep the service up with a possible (if not probable) equipment failure. If they don't already have the servers in two sites then they don't have sufficient facilities to guarantee uptime, anyway. We're talking about a product which the user has purchased, they should have the security of knowing that they're going to be able to use it (ha ha ha.)

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[AmiMoJo]

This really harms brick and mortar game shops too. I can't just go in and buy a game I like the look of any more, I have to research it online first to see if the DRM will fuck up my PC or make it too much of a hassle to bother with. And that usually means reading Amazon reviews, and since I'm there already now I might as well just order it from them too.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[PwnzerDragoon]

Same here, not buying any more Ubisoft games with over-the-top DRM. The good news is, the retail version of Rayman is supposed to be DRM-free when it's released (though online purchases still have a one-time activation for some reason), so it's possible Ubisoft is (slowly) learning their lesson.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Al Al Cool J]

A simple trick I've often used is to port forward traffic from the old IPs to the new. For an an emergency physical move once, I just left behind a linux laptop and it port-forwarded the traffic for multiple web/email/DNS servers until the DNS caught up. Worked fine.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Culture20]

What you're missing:
Ubisoft probably doesn't have redundancy or backups for these servers as they are pure cost centers (like ftp servers for providing patches to old software). And they sure as hell won't buy duplicate machines just for customer convenience. They are probably going to shut down the machines, and physically transport them (still in the rack, with HDDs still plugged in), and "sorry about your luck" if the server for your one year old game doesn't work any more because the drives got jostled. They'll rebuild a new server if there's a hint of a lawsuit, but you'll have to wait and your game will not sync with it properly anyway unless it's newly [re]purchased.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Firethorn]

No what we need is for the EFF to set up some web pages where those of us not buying nor pirating from companies we find odious can sign so that the EFF can hand it to congress critters when these corps try to use PPT math to get us screwed. Because as it is now its a "heads i win, tails you lose" situation for these assholes.

This is a good idea, as would be contacting these people. Problem is, Ubisoft doesn't want to talk to customers, much less potential customers.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[hairyfeet]

That's why I didn't say contact the companies because that won't help with PPT math, they'll just file 13 it and pretend it never existed, won't affect their PPT math in the slightest. No what we need is the EFF to set up a site to combat PPT math where those of us boycotting can sign up so that when some megacorp pulls out some PPT math the EFF can say "Members of congress the gentleman is ignoring the fact that his DRM has caused enough trouble for consumers that many of them are boycotting their products. here is a list with but a small sample of those that have pledged to NEVER buy a single product from this company".

I would also suggest everyone have this video bookmarked (warning language NSFW) so that when a shill pops up and says "They are only protecting their IP, this doesn't hurt the consumers!" we can all paste the video and rub their noses in it as it is a textbook example of a legal customer getting punched in the balls by DRM. If you watch the video he has to crack his brand new retail game simply to make it run because otherwise the DRM won't let him actually play the game. And thanks to not being allowed to return an open box, even if the product is defective, in most stores that leaves us trapped in a catch 22 where we can't play the game we legally bought without breaking DMCA and becoming criminals.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Kalriath]

This would be cataclysmic for any service with more than 3 visitors a day. Your personal blog does not have the number of users that Ubisoft's activation server does.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[thegarbz]

but I was wondering why some clever geek hasn't just fired up snort to see what their server's saying to the game, then built a 'bot that interacted in the same way with it locally.

They have. One of the pirated versions of Assassins Creed Brotherhood floating around the net actually is little more than the game + a local DRM server to authenticate against.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Al Al Cool J]

I found it worked well enough even with hundreds of concurrent visitors. Even if some connections did fail, it's still better than doing nothing and have all connections to the old IPs fail.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[DarthVain]

You see that was what I thought it meant to!

Then we moved to a new data center this past year.

Emphasis on *MOVE*.

The "New" data center didn't so much contain new servers, as it was just a new building. They packed up (I assume at least backed up, but I wouldn't bet on it) all the servers into a truck, and DROVE them to the "new data center", and installed the old busted ass equipment into the new center.

We also experienced a short outage due to the transition.

When I heard what had actually taken place (rather than the process you outlined), my jaw dropped and I laughed at the silliness of it all.

I don't even want to think what chaos would have occurred had the trucks had an accident on the way there.

Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here

[Firethorn]

My work is fairly liberal about 'NSFW language', so I watched it here. One of my coworkers commented that the profanity really ruined his message, so I doubt bookmarking it would really help.

What WILL help is putting up anti-ubisoft/SecuROM messages on your facebook page, telling your family and friends about it, etc...

My brother games, but isn't as 'into' it as I am - I make comments, he no longer buys ubisoft games. Oops, that's not ONE lost sale, thats' TWO. We play a lot of the same game types. He's more MMORPG, I'm more strategy, but we both like the occasional FPS.

You get what you pay for

[argStyopa]

Complaints about this will NEVER MATTER until it impacts the bottom line.

STOP BUYING UBI GAMES.

Unless and until publishers see a recognizable impact on their sales that they can attribute to repressive DRM, they won't stop.

And remember, a lot of these guys BELIEVE the bullshit line about every pirated game is a "lost sale" so the negative impact of DRM would have to be a pretty massive number.

Re:You get what you pay for

[Anonymous Coward]

I WRITE random WORDS in caps SO I can YELL LOUDER for no apparent REASON

Re:You get what you pay for

[RogueyWon]

This is what I did - across all platforms for games whose PC release contains this particular DRM. Actually, it's been surprisingly easy. Despite consuming games at a voracious pace (see my various journal posts etc), it's been quite striking how few of the Ubisoft franchises I actually care about. There have been times I've been vaguely irritated to be missing the Assassin's Creed sequels, which do look interesting (better than the first one, which I played on PS3 before the DRM plans were known), but even there... there's no shortage of alternatives.

I did buy one game by accident which included an "always online" DRM requirement - Command & Conquer 4. It wasn't made particularly clear when you bought the thing and, with it not being an Ubisoft game, I assumed it wouldn't be pulling a stunt like that. Ultimately, though, the best form of copy protection that C&C4 had was the fact that it was so utterly shit that nobody would want to play it (and I say that as somebody who liked C&C3).

Re:You get what you pay for

[oracleguy01]

You aren't wrong and I haven't and won't buy their games that have this DRM in it. The problem is they will just blame the low sales on piracy and not on the fact that they are making a bad product people don't want. They just won't get it.

But hey maybe that means they'll get out of the PC games business which maybe wouldn't be a bad thing. They can leave it to people that understand the PC business better.

Re:You get what you pay for

[i kan reed]

I already have. When I'm browsing steam these days, a EA or Ubi logo means I instantly go back and look for something better.

Re:You get what you pay for

[ackthpt]

Complaints about this will NEVER MATTER until it impacts the bottom line.

STOP BUYING UBI GAMES.

Unless and until publishers see a recognizable impact on their sales that they can attribute to repressive DRM, they won't stop.

And remember, a lot of these guys BELIEVE the bullshit line about every pirated game is a "lost sale" so the negative impact of DRM would have to be a pretty massive number.

Sadly, and I speak from experience, if you don't have some DRM your game will be pirated and you will make zilch. But it doesn't have to be repressive and a good fundamental system design, how to validate users, hand out certificates, etc. could have been done very easily. Sounds like they hired some stupid system people or contracted it out to some stupid system designers. Even Microsoft handles this sort of thing better with software install/registration, and if they can get it right, with their empires within empires company structure, there's no reason UBI shouldn't be able to.

Re:You get what you pay for

[countertrolling]

I did buy one game by accident...

Is that like tripping and 'falling into a lifeboat'?

Re:You get what you pay for

[Baloroth]

Ubisoft have already stopped releasing some games on the PC, because of "piracy". Ubisoft Blames Piracy For Non-Release of PC Game. I rejoiced when I read that, because it means maybe Ubisoft will stop making their shitty games on the PC anymore and nearly tricking me into buying them (almost bought Anno 2070 until I noticed the Ubisoft publisher. Well, and the TAGES protection, but I noticed and decided not to buy it after seeing the publisher first.)

Ubisoft just doesn't get it. When you make crappy games with crappy DRM protection, of course people will pirate it instead of buying. It just isn't worth paying when you get less for doing so.

Re:You get what you pay for

[SuricouRaven]

But if you do have DRM your games will *still* be pirated. I have yet to encounter even one piece of single-player DRM for games that defeated the pirates - it only takes one cracker, and their work will be all over the p2p networks in hours. Multiplayer is a different story, yes - you can use things like requiring unique serials then that really do bother the pirates - but single player? No, DRM is useless. Might buy a couple of days.

Re:You get what you pay for

[sakdoctor]

I suffer FROM eTourettes you INSENSITIVE CLOD .

Re:You get what you pay for

[guidryp]

I have always avoided any game with an external dependency. You don't need the latest games, There are tons of older games that are DRM free and cheap (check out "good old games".

But that may come with age, I am perfectly happy only playing old games, but if you are young, and your friends have bought into glitzy add campaign, and are playing HotDRMGameX, you may also feel the need to play HotDRMGameX.

So, sadly, I think the younger generation will supply the game industry with the DRM captive audience they want, and there will be no real way to impact the DRM juggernaut taking control of future games.

Re:You get what you pay for

[ackthpt]

But if you do have DRM your games will *still* be pirated. I have yet to encounter even one piece of single-player DRM for games that defeated the pirates - it only takes one cracker, and their work will be all over the p2p networks in hours. Multiplayer is a different story, yes - you can use things like requiring unique serials then that really do bother the pirates - but single player? No, DRM is useless. Might buy a couple of days.

Cracking hand-written security is easy. Have an application create algorythms and your cracker will be spending a life-time trying to weed through the code

Re:You get what you pay for

[rioki]

What good does your DRM do when it is software that can be altered? You know, patch a few NOP statements over your if statement. Unless it is multiplayer and your don't hand out the server (see how good that works) you have no real leverage with DRM. The only thing you are preventing is some guy installing his copy on 2 PCs. But if they really want to do that they will get a crack for that anyway. I see zero gains in adding DRM. If you don't sell your game it is purely because your price/value ratio is not adequate, reducing the value by adding DRM will not net you money.

Re:You get what you pay for

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sadly, and I speak from experience, if you don't have some DRM your game will be pirated and you will make zilch."

This is simply wrong, try the humble bundle http://www.humblebundle.com/, no DRM and plenty of profit. The games which lack DRM and make no money are usually not very good or have made the Proun mistake ( the only difference between the demo and the pay version is access to a single map, not enough incentive to buy it for most people)

Re:You get what you pay for

[Megane]

UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to COMPUTER BULLETIN BOARDS.

Re:You get what you pay for

[MattW]

That's the whole ball of wax. EA or Ubi? Next.

Re:You get what you pay for

[GameboyRMH]

No, it's like intentionally climbing into a lifeboat and then realizing that someone took a shit under one of the seats.

Re:You get what you pay for

[ninjackn]

But is it really enough to just stop buying ubisoft games? I know the commonly accepted mantra is to vote with your dollars but as a consumer with concerns regarding DRM I feel like I'm a minority who will always loose the the majority popular vote of the dollar. Most popular games have enough momentum and a fan base behind them that the people who do buy it is enough to tell companies to keep doing what they're doing. I've seen numerous complains regarding EA's origin for battlefield 3 yet I'm certain they will have massive sales for Mass Effect 3 and not care for a sale lost because of origin. There was tons of complains about secureROM with Bioshock but 2kgames still included it with Bioshock 2. People were up in arms when Blizzard announce they won't include LAN play into Starcraft 2 but it still sold well. Do we need to expand the rhetoric to tell people to stop playing ubisoft games? If people stop buying games and resort to piracy then the wrong message is being sent, it will all just look like a sale lost to piracy and not a sale lost to their unreasonable DRM. On the totally legal side people might just get the console version and not buy the pc version since the "DRM" on a console is a result of a physical limitation rather than an added limitation like secureROM. Even then, is it enough to just stop buy and playing ubisoft games? They just might come to the conclusion that the specific game series is no longer popular and needs to be canned. I think we need to proactively remind game companies that we don't like DRM and they're loosing a sale because of it. Maybe something like a petition, email or twitter. I'm not a big fan of twitter but if it would reduce DRM I'd get an account and send off a tweet.

Re:You get what you pay for

[columbus]

I'm not sure if I agree with you.

A couple of my old favorite games (Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion & Warhammer 40,000 - Dawn of War: Dark Crusade) were sold without any DRM whatsoever and both were commercially successful. I guess Dark Crusade was more of a niche game, but Oblivion was a big hit, no 2 ways about it.

Interestingly, another sequel to Dark Crusade - Soulstorm was later published; Soulstorm included DRM and sold more poorly than its predecessor. There were other factors in play; personally, I think that Dark Crusade was a more well balanced game. But I do believe that there is not a direct correlation between DRM and increased sales.

Re:You get what you pay for

[MogNuts]

Best advice, comment, and solution on this entire topic. Don't know why you posted as AC. Mod parent up.

However if Kingdom of Amalur paves the way, we wouldn't even be able to do that. Honestly though, best solution is to stop caring about Ubi's games. Now is the best time in history for gaming. I have a library of games that will take me 20 years to finish. I don't waste 1 second on a game in my library I start playing if it's bad. Besides, Ubi has no good games left, so it won't kill us. AC and Splinter Cell. And at the rate it makes SC (2 in almost 10 years), missing out on just 1 in the next generation won't kill us. Shame though because their subsidiary or sister company (?) Gameloft has been doing some good work on mobile games.

Re:You get what you pay for

[Tom]

STOP BUYING UBI GAMES.

I've already done that. They still don't stop doing this bullshit. What should I do next, grand smurf?

Re:You get what you pay for

[mcgrew]

You pay for what you get? SWEET! Wanna buy a Rolex? Only fifty bucks. You're paying for a Rolex, but you're getting a broken one. Fool.

You usually pay for what you get, but you don't always get what you pay for. When you buy an analgesic, what are you paying for? Pain relief. But generic naproxin sodium is 1/3 the price of Alieve. If you buy Alieve, you do NOT get what you pay for. If you buy Alieve, you're a fool.

Never ever believe anything a salesman says. "You get what you pay for" and "there's no such thing as a free lunch" are lies.

Re:You get what you pay for

[necronom426]

I bought Assissin's Creed II then found out that I couldn't back up my own save game file. After weeks of playing my PS3 broke. I was furious, and from then on I'll never buy a UBI game. This kind of "always on" crap doubles how much I won't be buying their games.

Re:You get what you pay for

[toriver]

But your DRM will get cracked and DRM-free copies will be found on torrents. And then the only people suffering the DRM effects are the paying customers.

Good Old Games manage without DRM. Stardock manage without DRM. Plenty of others, too. Piracy is a fact of life, try instead to make it as interesting as possible to buy it. The pirates are not your customers anyway.

Re:You get what you pay for

[ifiwereasculptor]

Oh, yes, I've seen your site.

Re:You get what you pay for

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I suspect you'll find yourself in the vocal minority. When a company sells millions of copies of a game with DRM as bad as this, it's a safe bet that most of the people buying fall into the camp of "aware and want it anyway" and "oblivious and unlikely to be enticed into giving a shit".

Yes, there are some who have purchased who will be outraged. Tens of thousands, maybe - but when you sell millions, it's a drop in the bucket.

Re:You get what you pay for

[westlake]

This is simply wrong, try the humble bundle http://www.humblebundle.com/, no DRM and plenty of profit.

The Humble Bundle is a charitable promotion.

You are not obligated to pay anything to the developer.

The Humble Bundle can be a fine showcase for the Indie developer, but it is not a gold mine.

There are usually four or five games to a bundle, each from a different developer. Earlier bundles may be added to the pot if you pay as little as a penny more than the average sale.

The average contribution about $5 ----

for games which originally sold for $20 each in the Windows market.

Re:You get what you pay for

[Hentes]

It is physically impossible to yell on a written forum. Writing in caps is a way to stress the most important parts of your post, like italics or bold text does.

Re:You get what you pay for

[Anguirel]

But if you do have DRM your games will *still* be pirated. I have yet to encounter even one piece of single-player DRM for games that defeated the pirates - it only takes one cracker, and their work will be all over the p2p networks in hours. Multiplayer is a different story, yes - you can use things like requiring unique serials then that really do bother the pirates - but single player? No, DRM is useless. Might buy a couple of days.

Occasionally you'll find a few games that last significantly longer. Not forever, but long enough to get those all-important first month sales out of the way before a full crack is available.

Re:You get what you pay for

[i kan reed]

Well they aren't the only ones, but they are the ones on the forefront of ruining my enjoyment of things to hurt pirates.

Stop buying their games and enabling them

[Anonymous Coward]

You can

Re:Stop buying their games and enabling them

[ackthpt]

You can

Right.

The next time I get a pile of their games with some piece of video hardware, motherboard, USB cable, guitar pick, can of condensed chicken fat or sack of kitty litter, I'll not install it.

Re:Stop buying their games and enabling them

[shawn(at)fsu]

AC is right, you can. I don't have any ubisoft games not even free ones from video cards. Now that you mention it I haven't gotten a free/demo game from a video card in probably 10 years.

I just...

[trunicated]

There's just so much wrong with this... it's amazing...

• They're locking users out of game they have paid for
• They're unable to move a set of servers without preventing downtime for customer facing attributes
• They're completely oblivious to the reasons why these are bad things

It just leaves me completely flabbergasted. I can't imagine this entire process coming to this point without someone, somewhere in the decision process saying "Who gives a shit what they think? Just do whatever's cheapest right now"

Re:I just...

[ackthpt]

There's just so much wrong with this... it's amazing...

• They're locking users out of game they have paid for
• They're unable to move a set of servers without preventing downtime for customer facing attributes
• They're completely oblivious to the reasons why these are bad things

It just leaves me completely flabbergasted. I can't imagine this entire process coming to this point without someone, somewhere in the decision process saying "Who gives a shit what they think? Just do whatever's cheapest right now"

The obvious gaffe is in the design - how they validate/deliver certificates, could have been done better.

Re:I just...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's just so much wrong with this... it's amazing...

• They're locking users out of game they have paid for
• They're unable to move a set of servers without preventing downtime for customer facing attributes
• They're completely oblivious to the reasons why these are bad things

Yes. They are completely oblivious to the reasons why these are bad things. Their entire concept of good and bad is a currency value flowing into the company, and people keep buying their games in enough quantities to justify their position as a world-class AAA publisher/developer. The hookers and blow keep on a-comin', and they see nothing wrong with that.

I don't see how you're flabbergasted at all. It seems trivially simple to me.

Re:I just...

[Chris Burke]

The hookers and blow keep on a-comin', and they see nothing wrong with that.

So with any luck, their dealer and/or pimp will be trying to play Splinter Cell next week, and cut Ubisoft off in their rage at being unable to play!

Re:I just...

[Baloroth]

I can't imagine this entire process coming to this point without someone, somewhere in the decision process saying "Who gives a shit what they think? Just do whatever's cheapest right now"

I think that about sums up Ubisoft's entire attitude towards video games.

Re:I just...

[Mabhatter]

Are they going to wear their fur coat, hat, and pimp cane while they do this? Pimp gotta keep us in line!

This is like migration 101. It's almost like they WANT to prove they can turn the DRM off when they damn well please. Most companies in this situation would try hard to make sure regular users NEVER KNEW. The servers were moved. In light of the fact that Ubi is a lightening rod for abusive DRM in gamer press, these guys got ZERO customer service skills.

Investors souls be calling to fire EVERYBODY involved in posting that newsletter... Frim the admins to the managers to the girl that sent the thing out.

Re:I just...

[Rary]

You're missing the best part. They're creating a period of time during which the only people in the world who can play the game are the pirates.

Re:I just...

[SuperTechnoNerd]

Yes, but if they have that much control over your product, why would they care? They already got your money.. They know they got you by the balls and that you will wait happily for the servers to come back on line. They know you have no choice.

Re:I just...

[trdrstv]

Don't forget the problem of them only having 1 data-center.

Re:I just...

[Tom]

It just leaves me completely flabbergasted. I can't imagine this entire process coming to this point without someone, somewhere in the decision process saying "Who gives a shit what they think? Just do whatever's cheapest right now"

Almost certainly that is what happened.

Some tech guy probably pointed out that it was a really dumb idea and what the consequences would be. His manager got the job to run the numbers and say how much it would cost to avoid the "hassle". The number he came up with didn't please management. Legal was asked what the worst damage would be if they didn't do it. Legal went over the EULA and decided nothing bad could happen, at worst a couple small claims cases. Management compared figure A to figure B and went with B because the likely total cost was lower.

Total FAIL

[NeutronCowboy]

Failure in implementation of DRM, failure in how to build the DR portion of the datacenter, failure on how to do the transition, failure on how to provide some measure of compensation for intentionally breaking your customers' games.

Hello Ubisoft. Meet Sony. They'll show you around my shitlist.

Yarr!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand. I seem to be unaffected by this.

Now, on t' more pressin' matters. Where did I put that bottle o' rum?

Reward the pirates

[MetalliQaZ]

Since their DRM is ineffective at actually stopping pirates, here we have the perfect example of "defective by design". Anybody with a DRM-cracked pirated version will not have any disruption. Nice job, Ubi.

I get heated over this kind of thing every time I pop in a DVD from Netflix. They send you discs without any special features that are loaded with up to 15 minutes of unskippable advertisements and previews. If I had just downloaded the move, I could jump right in. I am willing to pay, but I see nothing but disincentives to do so! Fools.

Re:Reward the pirates

[Chris Burke]

I get heated over this kind of thing every time I pop in a DVD from Netflix. They send you discs without any special features that are loaded with up to 15 minutes of unskippable advertisements and previews. If I had just downloaded the move, I could jump right in. I am willing to pay, but I see nothing but disincentives to do so! Fools.

If you popped the DVD into a Linux system and used one of the Linux players, then you could skip all of that stuff since they ignore the "unskippable" bit.

It's still illegal, since it depends on the DeCSS code for breaking the encryption (fuck you DMCA). Morally, though, it's perfectly fine.

Does Netflix streaming service do that? I have only limited experience with it, when a friend used his account to stream movies to the Wii that another friend had brought, and I don't recall any ads unskippable or otherwise.

Re:Reward the pirates

[tepples]

They send you discs without any special features that are loaded with up to 15 minutes of unskippable advertisements and previews.

That's to get you to buy your own DVD of the movie from Amazon instead of renting one from Netflix.

Re:Reward the pirates

[MetalliQaZ]

Last I checked, streaming doesn't contain ads. However, the newest releases can't be found there.

Re:Reward the pirates

[Technician]

They send you discs without any special features that are loaded with up to 15 minutes of unskippable advertisements and previews.

Have you tried playing it on GeexBox? I use that for any DVD with a malfunction in the menu.

I put the movie in and it plays.. What a concept. If I want a menu and extras, I can bring up the menu.

Needless to say, it isn't blessed by the DVD consortium.

Re:Reward the pirates

[VGPowerlord]

They send you discs without any special features that are loaded with up to 15 minutes of unskippable advertisements and previews.

That's to get you to buy your own DVD of the movie from Amazon instead of renting one from Netflix.

...which are the exact same DVD with the exact same problems.

Re:Reward the pirates

[mjr167]

I pop the disk in and then go make popcorn/put daughter to bed/whatever while it plays the commercials. By the time I am ready to watch the movie it is at the menu screen.

Re:Reward the pirates

[KhabaLox]

I use Netflix Streaming several hours a week. My kids use it even more. There are no ads, no unskippable bits, and no bonus material. On some titles there is a distributor logo at the head (5 seconds), but that's it. We use it mostly to watch recent television series that we missed (e.g. Arrested Development, Breaking Bad for my wife and I, Power Rangers, Fireman Sam for the kids). Occasionally we'll find a movie we want to watch, but the selection is . . . eclectic, to put it kindly. And sometimes the licensing deal expires when you're halfway through a series, which is annoying.

Best of all, it's convenient. It's fairly quick to start up on my Sony IPTV and my Roku - probably 30-45 seconds from the time the tv is turned on to when the show starts queueing the stream, and about another 10-20 seconds to start the stream.

Very occasionally we get "content errors" and it doesn't play, but repeated tries will work after about 5 minutes. I've also seen a message 2 or 3 times telling me that I'm streaming on another device, and our account is only allowed one simultaneous stream, but most of the time one kid is watching on the iPad, the other on the TV, and we don't have problems.

However, there are times where I suspect Time Warner is throttling my internet connection, but that's probably just paranoia from hanging out on /. too much.

Overall, I give Netflix streaming a big thumbs up. Cheapest (legal) video entertainment around.

Re:Reward the pirates

[blueg3]

People have already answered, but there's no ads in Netflix streaming. To be fair, Netflix didn't put the ads in their discs, either. They don't make the discs, they just rent them out.

I had almost forgotten that DVDs had ads or unskippable material, thanks to playing everything with mplayer.

Re:Reward the pirates

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

Last I checked, streaming doesn't contain ads. However, the newest releases can't be found there.

Neither can most of the older releases worth watching, sadly. Almost everything I search for turns up DVD only.

Re:Reward the pirates

[Tom]

It's still illegal, since it depends on the DeCSS code for breaking the encryption

I host it on my site till this day, despite being a named defender in the DVDCCA case. They served me papers, but they never served me an order to take it down.

No, it's not as easy as that. We've had three court cases around DeCSS. The one in Norway was dropped, DVDCCA vs. The Internet was decided in our favour and Universal vs. Reimers was decided against us.

Poor System Architecture

[ackthpt]

This is news?

Next thing you'll be telling us Credit Suisse has bad data ...

oh, wait.

Far Cry 3

[headkase]

I really want to buy Far Cry 3. Chances are however I will not be. Because Ubisoft is no doubt going to put their "always on" DRM on it. This article is the exact reason that that is unacceptable to me. So, Ubisoft can go about all they want championing how they're "putting it to those evil pirates" (roll-eyes) but in the mean-time they are losing out on me, yes, the person who wants the game but isn't going to submit to their idiocy. So, I lose because: no executive with a testosterone problem is going to back-off and admit he has shit for brains. And the cycle continues.

And as Gabe Newell so succinctly put it: Piracy is a Service Problem. So what's Ubisoft doing? Creating more value in the pirated versions. Way to go guys, golf-clap.

Re:Far Cry 3

[Ihmhi]

Buy it used and then crack it? You get the game, Ubi doesn't get a new sale, and you don't have to deal with the DRM.

Re:Far Cry 3

[headkase]

It's not a case of "damage to be routed around": unless the unthinkable happens and Ubisoft does a 180 I'm not buying it in any way, shape, or manner - or going to pirate it either. I have plenty else to play and I don't want to have anything to do it until they smarten-up.

Put it another way: the extreme Ubisoft is taking makes me feel dirty by having anything to do with it so I won't.

Re:Far Cry 3

[Baloroth]

I think it's great, in a roundabout way. Now you have $50-60 to spend on something else. Go take a look around Steam's indie games. Support the little guys. Some of them are amazingly good, better than most of what companies like Ubisoft put out.

Ubisoft forgets one key thing: no one has to put up with their shit on the PC. On the console, while there are quite a few indie games, if you want a "good" (well, some of them are pretty fun anyways) game that you can spend 10-20 hours on, chances are you need to buy from a big-name company, because only they can afford the licensing and distribution costs. On the PC, I personally have spent 20+ hours in Terraria and know people who have spent hundreds. I have no need to buy from Ubisoft, even though, like you, I might have bought Far Cry 3. But I simply don't need to. There are so many other options out there.

Re:Far Cry 3

[webheaded]

If Ubisoft, the company that made/publishes it, isn't getting any money from it...why even buy it in the first place?

Re:Far Cry 3

[headkase]

I exactly agree with you. I'm not a kid anymore, I do have a disposable income unlike when I was younger. I have, let's see, 155 ONE HUNDRED and FIFTY FIVE games installed in Steam right now. I don't use a personal credit card on Steam, or the Internet in general but that's another matter, so what I do is go to a local store and buy one of those "disposable" ones. You gotta use 'em all up as best you can. Believe me: I have ton's of Indie game that I haven't even touched. I have big name games I haven't touched! Like Batman: Arkham Asylum, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Call of Duty Black Ops, MW, MW2, and World at War, Cryostasis, Dead Island, Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale, Hard Reset, Medal of Honor (the new one), Red Faction: Guerrilla, STALKER: Call of Pripyat, Singularity - and all of those are just the big names, because I buy those disposable credit cards I'm always filling in the last $5-$10 with Indie games. That's the reason I'm up to 155 games.

So, it's well established that while I might want to play Far Cry 3 I, in fact, have plenty to play that I haven't touched in place of it. My backlog is so shameful that I keep telling myself I'm not allowed to buy any more games until I play what I have. Then I OCD buy more games anyway. Ironic, when I was a kid I had all the time to play games but no money to buy them, now I have too much money, apparently, and not enough time to keep up playing-wise with my buying rate.

Re:Far Cry 3

[Ihmhi]

Anyone can have their cake, and then eat it. The real trick is eating your cake, and still having it. It's a common mistake. -Dylan Hunt (Andromeda)

I'd understand not wanting to support their idiocy. I totally get it. But by buying it used, you are not giving them any additional profit. That's an already existing sale, so you give Ubisoft nothing. By cracking it, you avoid the shitty DRM. You get to eat your cake and have it to. Unless you take a really, really strong moral stance on this (as you seem to do) and don't want to have anything to do with it period, this is about as perfect a solution as anyone can expect.

Re:Far Cry 3

[Ihmhi]

So you can have the game without giving them a sale?

Dont worry. Ubisoft has great technical support

[unity100]

that fixes those things before they become an issue. they even have their own trendy name :

razor1911

DRM works

[sakdoctor]

First I stopped buying.
Then I stopped pirating.
Then I stopped caring.

Re:DRM works

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the fact that I wasn't buying like a good little consumer was used as proof-positive that piracy was destroying industries and costing jobs and that huge changes in the law were needed to take away my freedoms in the name of corporate profit.

Re:DRM works

[sandytaru]

That's me. Haven't played an Ubisoft game in years. Haven't missed it, either.

Re:DRM works

[couchslug]

"First I stopped buying.
Then I stopped pirating.
Then I stopped caring."

Sounds like my Windows experience...

"Delivering better uptime"?

[daveewart]

You can "deliver better uptime" by not using DRM in the first place. Voila, 100% 'uptime' with no infrastructure required.

Re:"Delivering better uptime"?

[hobarrera]

And probably the same amout of piracy, maybe even less.

You wouldn't steal...

[SJHillman]

You wouldn't buy a new car that you had to call the dealer for permission every time you wanted to go for a drive.

You wouldn't buy a handbag that you had to ask the clerk to open for you every time you wanted to take money out.

You wouldn't buy a TV if you had to wait for permission from Time Warner just to watch the commercials.

So why buy DRM?

Brought to you by the Media Consumer Association of America.

Re:You wouldn't steal...

[mhajicek]

And they wonder why I won't buy Diablo III.

Re:You wouldn't steal...

[berashith]

My money says that people will be buying this tv very soon

Re:You wouldn't steal...

[SJHillman]

I didn't realize you had to call OnStar every time you started your car. You may be doing it wrong.

Your credit card analogy is flawed. First, credit cards are you borrowing someone else's money. Second, debit cards are you accessing your money being held elsewhere. To make it fit the DRM analogy would be needing to swipe your debit card to use money in your wallet... the game is installed locally so you're not using remote content but you still need to check against a remote server.

Non-skippable ads are a far cry from your DVD player calling a server halfway across the country to let you watch a movie. This is a much more acceptable form of DRM than the product crippling DRM Ubisoft requires.

Re:You wouldn't steal...

[cdrguru]

If every time someone saw an unattended car they would just jump in an drive away you might start seeing cars that needed "permission" to be driven in such a restrictive manner as it would be like calling the dealer or the manufacturer for permission.

Similarly, if every time someone saw a purse they thought "JACKPOT" and ran over to grab it, it might be nice if they were locked and needed permission to be opened. Think of high-security buildings where you get let in to a man-trap where you identify yourself and ask to be let in. If you aren't authorized the outside door opens and the police take you away.

So we have software that everyone seems to want but only a few (usually around 5%) are willing to pay for. The solution seems to be to just take it, don't pay and so what... If you have a software product that has 100,000 users then anything you can do to change that 5% number to 6% is a huge win. It can mean someone's job.

The problem with software today is in many places pirated software (not paid for) vastly exceeds the paid-for kind. If an individual who dedicates his time to putting out free software, that is probably OK. When a company has employees that are getting their jobs cut because of lack of income, well, I suppose if you asked those employees they wouldn't say piracy was just fine. Now, if the publisher has accepted this and decided that their products are free (to pirate) but they will be compensated by ads it is fine - until of course the pirates also disable those nasty ads.

In many cases the point is to remove revenue from digital goods - see, they're free to make so they should be free to take, right? Except that isn't how the world of the 1900s works and many of us are stuck using this completely outmoded concept called "money". Thet want it at the grocery store, they want it at the gas station and there doesn't seem to be any way out of it. Maybe when the rest of the world catches up to the 21st Century we can get rid of money completely. Until then, my employees want to get paid and if you take stuff without paying you are literally pushing them out onto the street.

Re:You wouldn't steal...

[SJHillman]

If your employees are being literally pushed, they should call the local police and file charges. Otherwise, I don't think that word means what you think it means.

You seem to be falling into the same fallacy as the rest of the media industry by assuming that every pirated copy equals a lost sale. Let's take you're number of 5% of users buy it and the other 95% pirate it, so you assume your revenue should be twenty times higher than it is. Speaking as someone that has pirated software in the past when I didn't have the money to pay for it, that's a bullshit way to look at it. Odds are your software is either overpriced, which is the reason so many people pirate stuff like Photoshop, Windows or Office, or else it's just crap, which is why cheap software is often pirated. If you're releasing a $10 software and piracy still accounts for 95% of users then you might want to look at what you're doing wrong. The majority of people have trouble justifying the effort of pirating a $10 program if there's no obstacles to buying it legitimately and the program is actually worth $10.

Re:You wouldn't steal...

[spauldo]

I completely agree with the first two points of your post. The only DRM car analogies I know are the devices that can shut your car off for nonpayment (some used dealers install these) and the device that tests your blood alcohol level before the car can start. Both of these are (in my opinion) good uses of DRM.

DVDs are another story entirely. Non-skippable ads are annoying. I don't find them acceptable. It's not DRM though - sure, any licensed DVD program is supposed to enforce it, but it's not preventing you from accessing material.

Region coding and disc encryption are DRM, and rather nasty. Sure, thanks to DVD Jon and his associates we can bypass the encryption (although not legally), but any licensed DVD device is required to enforce the region coding. Only a firmware hack can get around it.

I remember back when DeCSS first came out, and what they did to the poor boy who released it. It was a classic case of money makes right. Cooler heads prevailed eventually.

I used to buy VHS tapes all the time. I've only ever bought one DVD, and it was only because my desire to support the artist outweighed my desire to boycott the DVD consortium (Weird Al rereleased UHF due to fan demand, and probably at a loss, so I figured I'd make an exception since it was a DVD-only release). I doubt I'll buy another one. I haven't even looked at Blue-Ray (because FUCK SONY) but I don't think I'll be buying any of those either.

Re:You wouldn't steal...

[nahdude812]

The problem with using physical world analogies for software piracy is that the former depletes the available item supply, while the latter does not. Stealing a $60 physical good hurts the creator of that good FAR more than stealing a $60 virtual good. To the point that the cost of the former is the opportunity cost against the thief, plus the opportunity cost against the customer who would have bought it, plus the material cost, plus the distribution cost, which can collectively come pretty close to the overall cost of the good. The cost of the latter is exclusively the opportunity cost against the pirate, who very likely would never have bought the product either way. Trying to make analogies between piracy and theft is like trying to claim a public drinking water fountain is stealing from bottled water distributors.

I get that software companies, being companies, need to make a profit to exist, and that they tend to feel like each pirated copy is a lost sale like it would be in the physical world where they can only produce so many copies, most of which they eventually sell. It's really not the same in the software space though. Trying to create this sort of scarcity artificially (the goal of all DRM) only hurts their customers. Meanwhile every major DRM-laden software release has a pirated version available anyway, usually within only a few days. Those who wish to pirate still pirate away. Those who wish to pay for the product get something less functional than the free version they could have downloaded. I have previously purchased games, then downloaded them anyway because the DRM interfered with my ability to use what I bought.

you might start seeing cars that needed "permission" to be driven

Funny, it seems like I recall my car possessing some kind of permission enabling device that doesn't involve asking the dealer every time I start it up. I wish I keyould remember what it was keyalled. It also doesn't come with some kind of limit as to how many people are allowed to drive my car, or try to violate first-sale doctrine by preventing me from selling it to someone else when I'm done with it.

Re:You wouldn't steal...

[chilvence]

I have always believed that all you have to do to stop piracy is sell at a price point that doesn't scream extortion. And then steam / gog etc came along, and it seems like all everyone ever says about them is how many games they have bought and not even played yet because they are so cheap and they go into impulse shopping mode. So I feel vindicated in my opinion. I've even bought games again that I paid for on disc, just to have the modern convenience, and I am a thrifty bastard!

Where the fuck do publishers get the idea that £50 quid is an acceptable price for anyone? They are making entertainment for people who work a shitty job to earn a living, and they are surprised that those same people have no respect for them. What a fucking joke. They made the used game market, they made piracy - who would actually go to the trouble, in other words, to have a second hand copy, or to break the law, if there was no reasonable motivation to do so?

Here is a thought excercise - try and think of any individual item that you buy on a regular basis, that is anywhere near the price of a new game. I dont think my food bill for a month even comes to that.

Re:You wouldn't steal...

[spauldo]

If every time someone saw an unattended car they would just jump in an drive away you might start seeing cars that needed "permission" to be driven in such a restrictive manner as it would be like calling the dealer or the manufacturer for permission.

Um, they have those. They're called "keys". They're given to the guy who buys the car. After that, the dealer no longer has any say, and the owner has complete control over who can operate the vehicle.

Similarly, if every time someone saw a purse they thought "JACKPOT" and ran over to grab it, it might be nice if they were locked and needed permission to be opened. Think of high-security buildings where you get let in to a man-trap where you identify yourself and ask to be let in. If you aren't authorized the outside door opens and the police take you away.

What?

Purses already need permission to be opened. It's a legal question. Seriously, you want a situation where you someone needs to get 3rd party authorization to open a purse, or they'll be immobilized and apprehended? How many tazed grandmothers do you think it will take before that idea goes out the window?

So we have software that everyone seems to want but only a few (usually around 5%) are willing to pay for. The solution seems to be to just take it, don't pay and so what... If you have a software product that has 100,000 users then anything you can do to change that 5% number to 6% is a huge win. It can mean someone's job.

I seriously doubt your numbers. The concept though, sure - increasing the number of paying customers increases profit.

Some kinds of disc copy protection do this. Requiring the CD to be in the machine is one of those. Requiring an install key is another. This will keep people from just copying the game and handing it around to all their friends.

Anything harsher than this does the opposite. The same people that will pirate a NoCD hacked game will also pirate a game that bypasses the DRM. You gain none of those customers. You lose legitimate customers because your DRM interferes with their ability to play the game they paid for. "I can't play C&C4 (or whatever) because dad's on the phone and we're on dialup" is the type of behavior that breeds the next generation of pirates.

Also, never forget that a pirated copy does not equal a lost sale. I've downloaded NoCD cracks for many games I've purchased legally, and many other do the same. Someone who is pirating a game because they can't afford it isn't going to buy the game anyway.

The problem with software today is in many places pirated software (not paid for) vastly exceeds the paid-for kind. If an individual who dedicates his time to putting out free software, that is probably OK. When a company has employees that are getting their jobs cut because of lack of income, well, I suppose if you asked those employees they wouldn't say piracy was just fine. Now, if the publisher has accepted this and decided that their products are free (to pirate) but they will be compensated by ads it is fine - until of course the pirates also disable those nasty ads.

You confuse free software with pirated software. They're not, in any way, shape, or form, the same thing.

People will be much less likely to seek out a pirated ad-free version of a game than they will a drm-free version of a game. Sure, some people probably will, but most will just put up with the ads, unless they're so intrusive as to make the game unplayable.

In many cases the point is to remove revenue from digital goods - see, they're free to make so they should be free to take, right? Except that isn't how the world of the 1900s works and many of us are stuck using this completely outmoded concept called "money". Thet want it at the grocery store, they want it at the gas station and there doesn't seem to be any way out of it. Maybe when the rest of the world catches up to the 21st Century we can get rid of money completely. Until then, my e

Re:You wouldn't steal...

[Richy_T]

You may want to check those disks again. I wanted to play half life (that I never finished) that I had bought on CD but it would not install/play on XP. So I put the CD code into steam and lo and behold, not only did I get Half Life, I also got Blue shift, Opposing Force, Counter Strike and a few other bits and pieces. Quite a deal.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[ackthpt]

How does this make you feel?

Is this Eliza?

>

Re:Boo hoo, you can't play some old games for a we

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a job, a family, a home and when I have a break from taking care of all these I want to be able to play games I bought.

I don't want to hear, too bad you have free time now because you are not allowed to play for the next couple of weeks, hope you have some free time again.

not competent

[Skapare]

Obviously not competent in how to move servers. But whether this is a case of bottom of the barrel IT employees, or idiot executives badly micromanaging (or both) is unclear. They can let us know which it is, if they know how to login to Slashdot (which I doubt).

Re:not competent

[0racle]

Or they did a cost analysis of the situation and figured that it wasn't worth it to do it without downtime. And they'd probably be right, they probably won't loose any money on it.

Re:not competent

[Mister Whirly]

They already have the money from the sales of those games. Keeping the servers up at this point isn't bringing them any new income. I think they figured people wouldn't be happy about, but those unhappy people have already given Ubisoft their money, so what are they going to do?

Re:not competent

[cdrguru]

Having done server moves on the cheap, I would say it is just an unwillingness to duplicate the hardware in the new location. If you don't do it, then you have to tear everything down, move it, and reassemble everything. Can easily take a couple of days.

Since these servers aren't doing anything to contribute to revenue I can certainly understand an unwillingness to spend lots of money on the move. Probably the reason for the move in the first place is to cut costs, so buying all new hardware would certainly change the perspective on that.

It isn't nice to their customers and that is a factor that probably got trumped by costs.

Might & Magic 6 - seriously failgame

[Anonymous Coward]

* The single-player campaign is available in both online and offline mode (of course! Anything else would be outrageous!)
* However, if you ever lose connection in online mode, you're kicked out.
* Oh, and did I mention that in this overhead map strategy game, where a single map usually takes hours, campaign saves from "offline mode" are not compatible with "online mode" and you must effectively restart the game? LOL YOU CAN OF COURSE PLAY OFFLINE AT ANY TIM.. no, gtfo.
* And that a core component of the campaign mode are "Dynasty Items", "Dynasty Heroes" and "Dynasty Bonuses" which are unlocked during campaign mode and become persistent across games - except that they only work in online mode?
* So the story will make frequent references to wielding the Sword of Legendary Dragonslaying except that you have no such thing in your inventory and will never have it or any other uber-item because you decided like a chump to start in offline mode in case you were worried about losing connection while playing.

And that's aside from any other of the numerous gameplay issues and servers being down. A lobotomy of a game.

And of course

[MitchDev]

You know the pirates won't be shut out by this server move. Remind me again why DRM is good and accepted?

No worries

[mwvdlee]

No worries; I'm sure there's a downloadable bugfix to repair these broken games.
Assuming your country hasn't blocked those websites yet.

If I were ubisoft, I'd patch it out and ditch srvr

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems like a waste of time and money. None of these are new games. Take a step of good faith towards your paying customers and patch the fucking drm out you assholes.

Re:Boo hoo, you can't play some old games for a we

[mwvdlee]

Two hatefull comments from you in a row and plenty more in your post history.
Have you got some personal situation you'd like to share with the group?

Small Claims Court

[i8a4re]

Everyone who can't play a game during this move should take Ubisoft to small claims court. Lawyers are not allowed in small claims court, so this is an advantage for you. Just claim the value of the game as damages and the cost to file the claim. If Ubisoft doesn't make an appearance, you win by default. If they show up and you lose, you still caused them to lose far more money than they got from you for buying their game. If you win and they fail to pay your claim, you can put a lien on them or have an equivalent value of their property seized.

Re:Small Claims Court

[TheSpoom]

The game will be available again before they have to respond. Trying to argue the lost value of two days of game play in front of a judge would be... difficult.

Re:Small Claims Court

[jittles]

Everyone who can't play a game during this move should take Ubisoft to small claims court. Lawyers are not allowed in small claims court, so this is an advantage for you.

Any officer of the company can show up on their behalf. They can send a corporate lawyer to small claims. They certainly couldn't expect the CEO of the company to have to show up to every single small claims hearing!

Re:Small Claims Court

[Tom]

I'm quite sure that their legal department went over this beforehand and decided that their EULA made sure you had no rights.

And yes, you don't face a lawyer in small claims - but you will surely face some company drone with a sheet of paper with talking points that a lawyer has prepared for him.

Re:Small Claims Court

[subreality]

Assuming the clickwrap license is a valid contract, maybe.

But they would still have to waste time showing up in court to make that argument. You lose filing fees, they lose a plane ticket and wasting some executive's time.

It's kind of exploiting the legal system, but hey, I'm tired of being on the sucking end of that arrangement. Letting them swallow for a turn would feel nice.

Re:Small Claims Court

[Rich0]

If that happens you've already won. That corporate drone's appearance has cost Ubisoft more than they made from your game purchase in the first place. If lots of people did this they'd lose more than they would in a class action even if they won every case.

pointless and stupid

[Karmashock]

First, the drm was broken just about instantly by the pirates. So this is at BEST pointless.

Second, if you're going to set up systems like this then you have to be committed to a strategy of NOT having the systems drop... EVER. I mean, if you have them drop for five minutes at 2 am on a Sunday... then that's excusable. But a whole god damn week? If you can't do better then you have no business setting up a system like that.

Basic rule of security is that if the hacker gets physical control of the code you're basically boned. The only way to protect yourself is to not give up bigger portions of the game code. Too much to be reasonably emulated. That way... best case... it ACTUALLY works. That will mean more robust servers and bandwidth to process whatever is being offloaded. Doubtless that's a cost benefit issue... do the curve and get as close as is economically possible.

Another option might be releasing games exclusively over some system like OnLive which retains the game effectively in the cloud and it never gets on the user's machine at all. A system like that should make hacking a game difficult.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[stanlyb]

Gooooooood, especially when i look and i dont see any Ubisoft games on my shelf.

I don't have UBIsoft

[AdmV0rl0n]

And generally this is why. I don't buy defective, faulty, or badly designed products and nor should you.

I do have sympathy with people over piracy, but creating the above in answer to it isn't tolerable.

Re:They're getting to all of you

[SuricouRaven]

From my understanding, the term was first used in relation to copyright a long time ago and was intended to be insulting - but since then, those pirates have adopted the term as their own and see no shame in it. Many of them deliberatly take naval piracy as a theme inspiration and adopt the associated symbols, as The Pirate Bay does. So, viable or not, it seems to be a term both sides can agree on.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[mcgrew]

How does this make you feel?

Smug. DRM is why I stopped buying computer games a long time ago (I do miss the gaming scene sometimes). Yes, piracy costs sales -- they say DRM is for piracy, and DRM has cost them hundreds of dollars they would have gotten from me had they not treated me like the thieves they are. I'm sure I'm not the only one who refuses to buy anything that has less functionality than if I'd pirated it.

Stupid, stupid corporations.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[idontgno]

Meta-x psychoanalyze-slashdotter

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[durrr]

I hope someone ambushes the convoy and destroys their servers. The backlash from "lol sorry your DRM games are broken forever" would be the most hilarious ever in the history of DRM.

Mac App Store

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's terms of services for the MAS explicitly forbid any kind of extra DRM except the Apple provided receipts (which your app should check on startup). So, if you downloaded assassins creed from the MAS and it stops working, it will be interesting to see what the consequences are.

Pirate version still working of course

[Tridus]

You have to wonder what special kind of fail Ubi management is when they've failed to notice that they're breaking their own product for their actual customers while the pirate edition continues to function perfectly well.

I mean, even your average MBA isn't this stupid. These guys must be top of their class.

Allow Me To Interject....

[tunapez]

Lulz!
  Any apologists or paid shills care to sophize about how wrong I was to NEVER buy a DRM game?

Oh yeah...'3rd party servers': Bwahahahahahaha! That's going to end well.
 
Remember kids, your money is your only vote that counts.

They need it before you can start playing

[Anonymous Coward]

So Steam is verboten for me.

And there are thousands of screaming hordes going on about the "benefits" of Steam like

Cloud save games!
Steam integrated Chat!
Online updates immediately!

All of which require that you have an online connection to get their use. But without them, why would someone choose Steam?

And remember: you can't pay for 1 days' internet access, you'll pay £20 a month every month.

Plus many people have their game hosed by an automatic Steam update gone wrong and need to uninstall and reinstall. When you have a 5GB/month cap as some poor sods do (others even less!), you can't afford to do that.

Re:They need it before you can start playing

[GameboyRMH]

I don't get why people who normally hate DRM see Steam as acceptable. It's no better than any other DRM system IMO, it just has a bigger selection. A lot of steam games have SecuROM and other shit on top of the Steam DRM too.

Re:They need it before you can start playing

[ZeroSumHappiness]

The basic Steam DRM (not the games that have additional DRM such as SecuROM) is unintrusive (it doesn't do any crazy driver stuff or rootkitting) and has a very simple go-offline mode. (Yes, that does have to be activated while online but it's easy to do and works for all your games that support it.) Also, in the event of Valve going under only one system, Steam, has to be patched to get rid of the DRM, not every individual game.

Is Steam DRM still DRM? Yes. It is, however, nearly invisible and only rarely causes any issue unlike most other DRM schemes. Also, I find that the value of the Steam ecology is worth more to me than the negative value of the Steam DRM. You may not. The "quality" of Ubisoft games, however, are not worth the negative value of the absurd Ubisoft DRM.

Re:They need it before you can start playing

[Richy_T]

I agree. I do have Valve games because they are great and I usually only single-player and I look at it as a sunk cost. If I lose the games because of DRM failure, I got the value out of it already. However, the DRM does irk me and definitely decreases the value of the game (I tend to buy them during Steam sales though so...). I wasn't too happy with having to sign up for Windows Live after buying Bioshock 2 through Steam though.

Re:They need it before you can start playing

[Dutch Gun]

So, you're asking what the benefit is of an online gaming store is if you don't have a fast, reliable internet connection? Seriously? Obviously Steam is sort of pointless without the online component. No one is saying otherwise, as far as I can tell.

Re:They need it before you can start playing

[dissy]

I don't get why people who normally hate DRM see Steam as acceptable.

That one is easy!
People who hate DRM do not buy Steam games. At all.

Most people do not hate DRM specifically, what they hate is not being able to play a game they paid money for. If DRM is the thing stopping you from playing it, then DRM is the cause of the problem. If it is another thing stopping you, then the other thing is the cause of the problem.
In this sense, Steam has never been a problem, as this doesn't happen.

Will that remain so for all of eternity? I can't say, and don't know. But they have so far given me no reason to think otherwise.
If they ever do change to more restrictive DRM, I will simply krack what games I do have and never make another purchase from them again.
They are fully aware of this, and don't want to lose me and others like me as a customer, so they have plenty of reason NOT to make such a change, and exactly zero reason to do so.

I'll even give you my latest example. Skyrim, the all new hotness of RPGs. I bought mine off Steam.

I can either run the SkyrimLauncher.exe that the shortcut points to (As does the Steam submenu item) and access the steam community while playing.
OR
I can launch TESV.exe in the same directory, and bypass everything steam related.

In fact I have mods installed, one of which is a scripting extender (SKSE for those curious), which is a wrapper around TESV.exe.
I do not have default-allow rules for any executable in that folder, my firewall asks me each time. It has never done this in three months. In fact a week from tomorrow will be exactly three months to the day. There is no checking in, there is no verification, no Internet needed.

Obviously I needed connectivity to download the thing, and it was activated and registered with them then for updates.
It won't be connecting to Steam again until the next major 1.4 patch is released, and only then because I want the update.

Other than multiplayer only games, which obviously must be online to even use, Steam does not prevent you from running games you buy.
And that is what most of us hate. Most don't hate DRM because it is DRM. We hate DRM when it prevents us from using what we purchased.

Ubisoft is a different ballpark all together, as this article shows.
I don't mind activating or registering a game after downloading it. I'm clearly already online, so it's not a problem. If the company doesn't bug me after the purchase, then there is no problem.

Some people are far extreams. Either they hate all DRM with a passion and avoid all DRM.. Or they could care less and buy whatever has the most pretty graphic on the box.
But I believe most people are more in the middle, and would agree with me on this.

Re:They need it before you can start playing

[dissy]

Oh, and please don't think I am calling you an "extremist" or anything.
I don't even mean to imply any negative connotations using that term, as there might be with other subjects.

If you or anyone else reading that is against DRM on principle, then that is a perfectly valid opinion, and by all means avoid any and all such software. More power to you!

I'm not here to say your opinion is wrong, or to claim mine is more right in any way at all.
You just implied asking about the opinion of someone who doesn't see Steam as unacceptable, and I wanted to be as detailed on why as possible.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[TheCycoONE]

I buy from gog.com since they seem to be actively targeting the anti-DRM crowd. Of course most of the computer games are quite old - still I didn't own all the good ones when they were new.

Tempest in a teacup

[Rastl]

They'll be offline for a while. Not permanently unplayable. Consider it a long maintenance window.

Migrating huge databases takes time. Lots and lots of time. They're being smart and honest by saying they don't know how long it will take because, well, they don't know how long it will take.

Take a break, play some other games, and then when the server is up and running play those games again.

And for eldajovon who does this 'all the time for two-bit websites' it's a bit different when you're migrating terabytes and terabytes of data along with all the checks and balances that go with the migration process. You remind me of the people who would ask why the entire company didn't switch OS platforms 'because I did it at home and it was easy'. You just don't get it.

Re:Tempest in a teacup

[ledow]

So what you're saying is that Ubisoft don't already have a hot-backup to these database that is customer- and business-critical and needs to be up 24/7? They don't have a testing regime with a live copy of the dataset to test against? They couldn't have performed the migration piecemeal? They couldn't have done the migration in the background while the main servers take the brunt of the traffic and then - when and only when it was tested and working - started the background database serving queries instead?

Don't talk shit. This is a large system - millions of customers, always on, etc.etc. It's cost millions of dollars. If you need to take it down for more than a day (especially for PLANNED maintenance), it means you didn't implement it properly, don't test it properly, didn't even spec it properly, don't manage it properly and don't care about your customers. This is why redundant systems exist - for exactly these sorts of systems.

Do maintenance by all means, but taking it OFFLINE to do so with no backup system? That's just shoddy whether you're migrating a handful of MySQL instances or the back end of a large bank.

Re:Tempest in a teacup

[Lehk228]

Even if the keys were 4096 bit monsters and they had a billion stored that would still only be 476 gigs, round up for storage ineffiency and it's still less data than I can store on my desktop or on my portable hard drive. No excuses for morons

Re:Tempest in a teacup

[EdgeCreeper]

Heh, they could just have a server that by default allows the DRM check to pass, and not have to worry about customer details for the time that the other server is offline. But no, they had to choose the horrible way to do it. Should be thinking twice about buying a game from these jokers, I mean other than the way they already treated their 'customers' up until this point.

In other news...

[mseeger]

Ubisoft CEO announced a new campaign to promote piracy.

Re:In other news...

[GameboyRMH]

Maybe Ubisoft is going to start selling cheap DRM-free games one day, and is deliberately losing money right now to build up a customer base that will make them bigger than Apple the day that they switch.

Hey, I can dream...

And...

[J'raxis]

And people just keep buying this shit...

Ubi Forum Migration

[drfishy]

Not that they're worth anything but if the forum migration that the did recently is any indication this could last for weeks...

Enabling the very people they're trying to battle

[Frenzied Apathy]

The last paragraph in the linked article says it all:

"Nice Ubisoft. Integrate something to stop pirates and in-fact you end up blocking people that bought the game legitimately from playing the game. Those people paid money for your game and they won't be able to play it. If you didn't pay, downloaded illegally, pirated, you'll be able to play fine."

Discs that say "RENTAL"

[tepples]

Apart from the "FBI warning" and other legal notices, most clips displayed before the menu on DVDs that I've bought aren't exactly unskippable: either the next chapter button works (in which case the chapter number button usually works too) or the menu button works.The unskippable problem may have been worse early in DVD's lifetime before end users started posting one-star reviews to Amazon for DVDs that abuse UOP.

And it might not have "the exact same problems". I'm not yet a Netflix customer, but I've noticed some Redbox discs say "RENTAL" on the label, and they leave out the making-of documentary, deleted scenes, and other special features. Both Netflix and Redbox have the same 28-day embargo, so I guess they get the same "RENTAL" edition cheaper from the studio.

Re:Discs that say "RENTAL"

[Algae_94]

I haven't noticed much of this unskippable stuff on DVDs either, but I sure as hell see it a lot on Blurays that are purchased and definitely not rentals. It's extremely annoying, and not always just ads, sometimes its a shitty intro to the menu screen that's 30 seconds long and can't be skipped. It's almost enough to make a person go spend some time outside.

They lost me a long time ago

[tsotha]

After all the DRM suffering I went through on the last Ubisoft game (Silent Hunter 5) I swore to myself I'd only play pirated versions of Ubi games in the future.

DIAF

[Jaysyn]

Die in a fire, Ubisoft. Die in a fire.

Anti Consumer

[poly_pusher]

This really is getting ridiculous. I buy an obscene amount of games. Partly because I want to help support artists and creators like myself. That rationale is starting to wear thin for me now.

For instance, I bought Arkham City, an absolutely amazing game. One of the best I've played in years. I got 89% through the whole game "2nd play through, 440 riddler trophies, most of the challenges, all sidequests," Then there was a problem with my internet connection, entire neighborhood went down. After I got my internet back I started Arkham City up again and oh look, my save files disappeared. The reason it disappeared is DRM. Saves are managed by Windows Live and encrypted to be specific to your system. They were trying to keep people from cheating and instead they've ended up punishing people who play their games.

Re:Anti Consumer

[GameboyRMH]

Had the same problem when some Tron: Evolution saves got corrupted, luckily I had just started (and the game is pretty damn short anyways).

I still can't imagine why they encrypted the saves. Why why why.

my method

[MXPS]

If I buy a PC game that has prohibitive DRM (i.e. from Ubisoft), I will always download the pirated version of the game to make sure I dont have any ridiculous issues like we see here. I dont care about the legality of it as I purchased the game, own a license, and therefore I will play it whenever I want, will upgrade my PC as much as I please, etc.

Why do they persist in this?

[Control-Z]

I can maybe understand some sort of DRM for the first year or two a game is out. But I've never even heard of half these games. How long are they going to hold these gamers hostage?

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM is not for piracy, regardless what they say. Because guess what... piracy can usually find it's way around DRM. DRM is for the used game market, they simply don't want you to sell back the game you bought from them. That's the real goal of DRM.

But yes, they do say it's for piracy, and the side effect is that they treat all normal players as if they were pirates, while the real pirates work around the DRM and play it anyway.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[equex]

Aye, I bought one DRM game since DRM was invented, and that was the last too. The experience was rage-inducing. I still buy games that are 100% guaranteed DRM free. Same goes for movies. I have to watch 15 minutes of FBI warnings, unskippable trailers, intros and crappy transitions you say ? For something I paid for? Nuh-uh.

YOUTUBE that!

[phorm]

*SOMEBODY* needs to make that into a virus video!

Re:YOUTUBE that!

[SJHillman]

Errr... virus or viral? Common root, bit of a difference in meaning.

Re:YOUTUBE that!

[phorm]

Damn. That should have been "viral"... autocorrect = fail :-(

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[Tsingi]

Gooooooood, especially when i look and i dont see any Ubisoft games on my shelf.

I have assassin's creed, it's mentioned in TFA.

I also have a PS3, I plugged it in to the net and unplugged it halfway through reading SONY's license agreement.

So the game is severed from the net. How will my game know that the server is down? For that matter, if it is always on DRM, why does it even work?

I Won't Take That Bet At 1000:1

[tunapez]

Obfuscations and shinies. The long-con continues to be our most cumbersome 'innovation' in modern marketing. Now with added spyware included*!
 
*For only a small fee, of course. We can always pay more.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[jd2112]

Best practices would be to stand up a new server and then transfer the data. If done right downtime would be measured in seconds. But no that would cost more money. Lets instead make the games legitimately purchased by our customers unplayable durrng the move. Once again the legitimate customer is punished while the pirate is unaffected. Chances are some exec thinks that if they can't get the server back online everyone will simply repurchase thier games when they get a new DRM server online.

Sigh

[Tolkien]

I bought Splinter Cell: Conviction at Christmas on Steam with but hadn't installed it yet. Looks like it was a waste of my money. Unsurprising, I should have expected this. Of course they won't spend a dime to patch their games, fuck the community! It's the bottom dollar that matters, I mean really, it's not like the gaming community are the ones who will buy the games, right? I guess I'll have to download a crack to play it.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[MogNuts]

You should get back into gaming. I think most people forget that there are SO many games out now that one doesn't have to waste 1 second on a game that is bad, has bad DRM (Ubi), etc. I have so many games picked up on a whim that the next 20 years are set for me. And that's after I go through my library and find a stinker and move on to the next. I haven't played 75% of my collection yet.

Try something different. Always play the same genre? Play something new.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[toriver]

I think this mainly affects the PC and Mac releases. E.g. Assassin's Creed not working if you fire up your laptop on the train or plane with no internet connection...

Unless you have a cracked, pirated version which is DRM-free. Yay to companies treating their paying customers as criminals...

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[hairyfeet]

And yet again the pirated version is the superior version. Is it any wonder why we get PC gamers posting rants when they get fucked out of their money? Personally all i use anymore is Steam and GOG and if a game says it uses third party anything its buh bye, no thanks. BTW if any Steam guys are reading this? you REALLY need an icon so when I'm looking at a long list of games, like during one of your sales, i can see which are only Steam and which have extra crap. And before anybody says 'ZOMG Steam IS DRM" yeah yeah to serve man is a cookbook. Steam DRM is also the most trivial to bypass there is, the net is full of Steam hacks, so if Valve ever goes under it won't take me 3 minutes to have my games hacked.

But I think we need a new tag for douchebag DRM, probably called "Hey its Ubisoft" as when it comes to treating customers like shit and giving them the finger while they take their money NOBODY innovates like Ubisoft, they are at the absolute bleeding edge when it comes to active douchebaggery, from DRM that burned drives to always on crap that we see gives them a way to give everyone who was stupid enough to buy from them an electronic Goatse, nobody but nobody leads in the area of digital douchebag behavior like Ubisoft, nobody.

Well I did what I can do

[Lord_Alex]

I didn't even pirate the Ubi games this go-around. I simply deprived myself of the glorious Assassin's Creed and Driver sequels. I was also looking forward to From Dust.

It's just cheap entertainment, and there are SO many awesome things $60 can go to. It's not sex; you *can* abstain from Ubisoft.

You got to wonder at the managers

[SmallFurryCreature]

Ubisoft knows its DRM is unpopular as hell, so they got to make a server and they take the choice of how to do it that has them deny their paying customer access to bought games for a very long period of time due to no other fault by the customer then being stupid enough to buy a Ubisoft game.

Do they simply not care that Ubisoft has now given an entire new argument against DRM? Not just that servers will go down at the end of live of a game or due to a attack or due to a bug or due to an accident but due to any server movement or other server maintenance?

What if it went down like this

[SuperTechnoNerd]

UBISOFT Sales booth at some game conference.

Customer: I would like a copy of Assassin's Creed please.

Sales person: Ok that will be $60.

Customer: Thank you..

Sales person:

Wait! There's one more thing before you leave. First off we don't trust you as far as we can throw you, so we added a nifty feature to that game that protects us from people like you (the customer). You must have your a working internet connection even to play single player because we know your a criminal at heart so we must spy on you.. If you try to get around this like the sneaky sleazy criminal customer we know you to be, we will cancel your account and sue you for a great deal of money. If your try to install the game more than three times we will stop you because we know your trying to steal our shit, and we wont allow that. We also have the right to shut down our servers at any time, for as long as we want. You will gladly wait for us to bring them on line. If you find all this to be a problem, too bad. We will no let you sell that game because you don't own it and we will sue you for a large sum of money and possibly have you arrested for piracy. We just don't like you or trust you, however we're glad to take your money.We feel there is ample reason to believe you will try to steal our game. Just watch out! Oh yes, we don't do refunds. Thank you for your money and enjoy the game while you can.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[jackbird]

I dunno, I'd have to put the incident where Interplay(?) reverse-pirated the scene crack of their game for their official DRM-removal patch above that.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[natd]

I've avoided all painfully DRM'd titles, but I genuinely want the latest Settlers but just can't buy into the DRM requirement. Every time I see a headline like this I hope the detail is that they are getting rod of the DRM. Disappointed again, so no Settlers 7.

writing style

[mattack2]

From their page: http://static2.cdn.ubi.com/transition/details/

first list: will NOT be impacted

second list: will not be playable

Interesting how they over-emphasize the NOT in the first list, but not in the second one. Also, I originally expected the affected games to be listed first (yes, reading comprehension fault due to skimming on my part), and was wondering how PS3 games were affected -- they aren't.

So basically, this only affects some (but not all) computer games and not console versions. That's not meant to dismiss this, but if it did affect the console versions too, I'd be much less likely to get their games in the future.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[Mista2]

And this reminds me why Ii boycott DRM products.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[networkBoy]

I had a friend who just bought a bluray player/drive for his PC. The software player it shipped with was out of date and they wanted to charge $70 for an update. He bought anyDVDHD instead.
heh.
-nB

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[hackwrench]

What I don't understand is how it was supposed to be abundantly clear that it wasn't a cookbook of recipes to serve _to_ mankind.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[MagusSlurpy]

By "hacking Steam DRM," do you mean "enabling offline mode?" Because yes, it is that simple to play Steam games without a 'net connection.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[derfy]

Like Ubisoft did?

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Ubisoft-Cracks-Own-Game-with-Reloaded-Fix-90318.shtml

Re:dowtime

[Anonymous Coward]

Any sufficiently advanced astroturfer is indistinguishable from obvious parody.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[Culture20]

DRM has cost them hundreds of dollars they would have gotten from me had they not treated me like the thieves they are.

They've lost thousands of dollars from me. My decision came when Mechwarrior4 decided it didn't like any of the optical drives I owned. I was unable to use the game, so I vowed never to buy DRMed crap ever again (for PC). I am buying something similar to DRM with console games, but at least with consoles, it's completely up front that my DVD of Okami for Wii won't work in my Xbox. But most of my gaming is from my extensive collection of old games; after I cycle one pass through it, the next pass seems newish.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[hairyfeet]

Noooo...I mean there are hacked Steam .executables out there that will let you use pretty much any Steam game offline forever. As i understand it you can't currently leave Steam in offline mode forever, after something like 30 days it'll want to connect and won't let you go back to offline mode until you do. But there are hacked copies of both the .exes and the whole games themselves that will work just like any hacked game, it just calls a phony Steam that returns the correct value and quits. If you don't believe me look for some of the Valve games on P2P like L4D, HL2, they even have one that has all of the HL1 games plus all the mods all packaged together and it uses a hacked Steam client.

so while i don't use these things because frankly Valve and those publishers using Steam price the games aggressively enough that it isn't worth the effort, its nice to know that if steam went tits up tomorrow i could have all my games permanently in about 20 minutes, big whoop. The Steam hacks are just as simple as the old .exe swaps back in the day, simply drop in folder and launch game. Easy peasy.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[Kalriath]

Steam has several conditions to enabling Offline mode. In my opinion, it's pretty damn buggy - every time I've ever hit that button due to the crappy DSL going out I've received a message saying Steam cannot enable Offline mode and I can either retry or quit.

Turn this into an opportunity

[snoozy355]

Sounds to me that this could provide some good news if Ubisoft wanted to. Instead of disallowing all DRM auth requests for the move period, why not have a cheap server that just authorises all requests for those few hours - legitimate or otherwise. Even extend this free period to be 24 or 48 hours, take the pressure off your server crew to get everything up and working against the clock. You might get people who haven't paid playing the game for free... big deal, after the free period they're disconnected/revoked. If you've planned it well, you could have a big "Buy now" notice appear at the end of the period. Let's see if they can convert freeloaders into paying accounts - surely that's a win/win for Ubi and gamers?

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[BlueBlade]

As i understand it you can't currently leave Steam in offline mode forever, after something like 30 days it'll want to connect and won't let you go back to offline mode until you do.

Not from my experience. Steam offline mode lasts forever, and it never bugs you to go online. I've had steam running offline on my laptop for well over 6 months (I hate it when it disconnects my desktop) and it never asked me to go online to play any game I've tried, and I have about 200 games in my collection.

Steam offline mode is just that, offline mode. The only check is done when you go offline, after that you can use it forever (or in my case, until there's a new game I want to play on my laptop that I have to download).

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[BlueBlade]

That's because, ironically, you have to be online to enable offline mode. So it won't help you if you want to play a game but suddenly realize that your ISP is having connectivity issues. This has actually happened to me once, and I used my iPhone's network connection to enable offline mode and after that it was fine. I admit though, that if I hadn't had that option I would have been quite mad.

Class Action Lawsuit

[chrismcb]

Sounds like a perfect opportunity for a class action lawsuit.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[Shrike82]

Not in my experience. I've had my ISP go down and all I had to do was hit the hotkey to turn my wireless adapter off. Steam was happy to go into offline mode, but sometimes does have a problem if a router drops out or something along those lines. Again disabling the network adapter will fix that. Steam seems to be unhappy when it thinks there SHOULD be a network connection but there isn't.

Re:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST

[hairyfeet]

Well that might be because its on a mobile device. i noticed when i had to be offline for awhile on my desktop which normally has a 24/7 cable connection it got a little chatty, but that may also be because most of my games have achievements and those of course don't count when offline because of the risk of cheaters.

Personally the fact that its butt simple to hack if Steam ever went away makes it a "I don't give a crap" DRM for me, its like those CD checks back in the day. those never bothered me because i'd just drop in a cracked .exe and put the game box in my closet so it never affected my gameplay one way or another. But with this always online DRM bullshit it WOULD affect my gameplay unless i went all out and downloaded the razr1911 version which has hacked the whole thing but I'm not gonna pay good money for a game that I have to go through THAT much trouble for just to be able to play if/when my network is down. Fuck that.

Ubisoft's minimalism

[Zargs]

Aren't they also the people who brought us the 5 hour duration single player games hoping that playing the multi-player mode would make up for their meager offerings? By comparison I've already spent over 200 hours playing Skyrim and am still enjoying (bugs and all).

Re:They don't care, they already have your money!

[Drinking Bleach]

I haven't bought an Ubisoft game since around 2000. Mainly due to lack of any interesting games from them, though their DRM shenanigans are certainly a good reason to avoid them too.

Heroes Kingdoms... Offline... with better message.

[lordmage]

Heroes Kingdoms went offline, and that is an ONLINE Ubisoft Game. The message posted stated from 9am Tuesday to 9am Thursday basically.

Of course, they will "Freeze all game timing" which also means we all get this as extended to the subscribers.

Btw, Heroes Kingdoms is pretty addicting as Free to Play, and cheap as Pay to Play.

Yep.. I got the WITHDRAWAL from an online game right now...

*shiver and shake*