DRM Woes Torpedoes Ubisoft Customers
Ubisoft has been a firm believer in DRM. When it announced a new DRM system last month, it assumed people would be happy. After a day where that new system has already lead to a spectacular failing, it has to be asked if this is what sinks DRM for good.
Ubisoft and DRM have had a ‘colourful past’. 18 months ago, one of their customer support people had to resort to sending people scene cracks, because of DRM problems. They then released one of their Prince of Persia games without it, to see if that would induce people to buy it. Last month, though, they released info on their new DRM system, which was (at least partially) cracked within a day of Silent hunter 5′s release. That new DRM (“Online Services Platform” or OSP) system has now backfired on Ubisoft, as the authentication servers, needed to play the game, have been unreachable for the majority of March 7th, and are still unreachable at the time of publication, almost 36 hours after the initial reports.
There are many things that can be said about DRM, but there are two things that are inescapable. The first is that, if everything is done perfectly, the DRM is unnoticed; but if something goes wrong with it, people are left with nothing to show for their money. The second is that while it’s meant to prevent ‘piracy’, the first thing that ‘pirates’ do, is remove or circumvent the DRM, so the only people who end up dealing with it, are the legitimate customers.
Right now, the legitimate customers of Ubisoft – specifically those who have bought Assassins Creed 2, or Silent Hunter 5 – have been experiencing the inconvenience of that new DRM system first-hand. The online servers that purchasers are required to log onto in order to play have been unreachable, preventing any game-play at all. On the Ubisoft Forums, a community manager gave a brief description, saying
Due to exceptional demand, we are currently experiencing difficulties with the Online Service Platform. This does not affect customers who are currently playing, but customers attempting to start a game may experience difficulty in accessing our servers. We are currently working to resolve this issue and apologize for any inconvenience.
Many players are, unsurprisingly, livid, or amazed that it has taken so little time for it to happen. Both OSP-based games were released within the last week (Silent hunter on March 2nd and Assassins Creed 2 had it’s EU release March 3rd). The system overload problem should never have happened, as Ubisoft supposedly monitors capacity 24/7 and has backup systems online to deal with surges. Worse, the US release of Assassins Creed is this coming Tuesday, and that is likely to lead to another huge surge, potentially knocking the servers out of reach again.
The fallout from this, so soon after the the Playstation outage, will certainly give many a reason to shy away from further Ubisoft purchases, meaning that the DRM, rather than boosting sales through inhibiting piracy, has instead put a large torpedo into those sales, followed by dropping them from a great height.
How long it will be until Ubisoft gets the message from it’s users is unclear, but the smartest thing Ubisoft can do at this point, is disable the system and put it down to a bad idea, and hope to regain consumer confidence. Instead, it’s more likely that worse-than-expected sales will be attributed to piracy, leading to more DRM, driving away more sales, and that cycle continuing. Meanwhile, the only people playing Assassins Creed 2 or Silent Hunter 5 during all this, are the ones that didn’t buy it.
Its a DDOS attack I thought? Im pretty sure its a bunch of pissed off users attacking the servers.
hehe, DRM IS NOW OFFICIALLY PRO-PIRACY!!!
Doesn’t surprise me one bit, I’m having DRM problems with a legitimately purchased game that causes me to have to restart the game for each single multiplayer session.
The solutions provided by the games developers have been the usual canned responses, and I fear that my faith in this particular software developer is flailing, which is a real shame because they have some good-looking new games coming out soon.
They will have the same DRM, I know it. Why should I waste my money on these things if the support isn’t there?
Seems like a good way to get the ignorant to buy more than one copy one with drm and one without when they “realize” drm is a bad idea. Good for sales and good for there age when they say they made a mistake
“Meanwhile, the only people playing Assassins Creed 2 or Silent Hunter 5 during all this, are the ones that didn’t buy it.” <– or the ones that bought and cracked em like I`ve already seen.
And in the end that`s the rule: blame your own failure into the pirates. It`s easier this way. Unfortunately other industries have taken similar actions in the past to meet their own demise.
Let them be, I don`t think Darwin will be failing anytime soon ;D
Isn’t it lovely to see the entire collective gaming community, pirates and sheep alike, agreeing that ubisoft has made a collasal blunder that will only hurt their sales?
And don’t believe that denial of service attack story either…does anyone honestly expect them to stand up less than a week after launch and admit that their hugely expensive, wildly unpopular, ludicrously restrictive, “future of pc gaming” drm method has problems, and worse that those problems ONLY affect legal players? Ubi has already generated for themselves a massive ammount of illwill from their desired customer base, and bad press in spades…at this point they really CANT say it was their problem even if it really was. DOS attack is the only explanation they can offer that doesnt put another nail in their coffin. In the end it boils down to greed of entitlement…companies like ubisoft, activision, and ea feel entitled to your $60 because you played their game, regardless of whether or not it provides a quality gaming experience. Ask valve how much they worry about piracy…valve is one of the few remaining game companies that actually somewhat value their customers, and they discovered that if you make a really good game and back it with really good support, people will buy it. Scene community rule#1: if you liked it, go buy it. The greedy companies that approach making games on the basis of maximizing profits are the primary force driving piracy, even though they would have you believe we are just theives. We have $2000 gaming rigs, $50/mo internet connections, and dozens or sometimes hundreds of legally purchased titles. Make something worth buying, and we will buy it. Slap a ferrari logo and a $250,000 price tage on a 1979 ford pinto and dont be surprised when nobody wants to give you their money.
I can hear it now…
UBISOFT declares bankruptcy – nothing of value was lost.
Yes because we all want to play online for with each other, wait 8 hours for a fail raid to sicken me of the game, oh wait, that sounds like WoW!
I agree with Ninjafroggie regarding Valve (+ Steam). They’re the only company whose games I buy anymore (with the exception of Bad Company 2 last night b/c I’ve heard from 10+ people that it’s very very good).
Ubisoft gets what it deserves.
Make a good game like Splinter Cell Chaos Theory was.
Well, it’s official, the security DRM on silent hunter 5 has been completely defeated. A combination of the skidrow crack and a manual workaround to flag missions completed by editing .cfg savegame files has allowed players to enjoy the full game with no connection to ubisoft’s drm servers whatsoever. Is this solution yet easy enough to drive ubi’s paying customers into playing cracked versions over the legal copies they purchased? Not yet, no. But, in just one week, the “uncrackable” DRM has been completely defeated. Now that the pirate community knows how to fool the game into thinking its getting the information it needs from the server, it’s only a matter of time until someone packages it into one neat, easy, hassle free to use crack and ubisoft can kiss their legal user base goodbye, especially if they continue to have any kind of disruption of service whatsoever. Contgratulations ubisoft…pirates-1, you-0. I hope the massive loss of face amongst gamers you have suffered due to your greed was worth the 7 days it took hackers to defeat your copyright protection, and I seriously hope that these games become the most pirated of all time. Ubi may say that we have to “get used to it, because its here to stay”…but a “beatings will continue until morale improves” policy is not the way to put money in your pockets. Some idiots will always be parted from their cash, but 85% of the subsim.com community refuses to buy sh5 until the DRM is removed…that proves that ubisoft is on the wrong track if they want to stay in the gaming buisiness. Companies like ubi need to talk to companies like valve and futuremark and realise the only way to defeat piracy is to create a game that gamers WANT to spend their money on.
I just want to make sure that i make this clear…The person that discovered the way to bypass the DRM to allow mission progress was a legal owner of SH5 that was unable to play due to spotty internet. The solution was originally posted to ubisoft’s forums, but they swiftly removed it (heaven forbid anyone else see!). Fortunately they didn’t remove it in time to prevent somebody seeing it, and the information has already spread around the internet, with copies of the posting appearing in links on sites like the pirate bay. 7 days ubisoft. JUST 7 DAYS.
NEVER bet against the internet. These are the only people in the world balsy enough to challenge the church of scientology. These are the people that governments seek not to prosecute, but to offer jobs in information security. Hard to immagine that governments are being more proactive about realising that you cannot defeat them, only hope to get them to join you…but its the truth. You hear that ubisoft? You officially fail worse than the US federal government.
wow, if the fact that a legal SH5 user was the responsible for the cracking because their servers failed then this is one of the most colossally epic failure I’ve ever heard of.
And the fact that 85% of their LEGAL and possibly REGULAR customers won’t buy if they don’t remove the DRM is just nice proof that Darwin will either kill DRM or Ubisoft along with it if they fail to remove it ASAP.
[...] FreakBits The [...]
DRM IS FAKE AND GAY, FUCK COPYRIGHT, AND ALL THEM MONEY GRABBING COMPANIES, YEAAAAARRRRR!! THE PIRATES ARE HERE TO STAY….!!
I made the mistake of buying a game with DRM, DragonAge:Origins. The package said I could download a free DLC only to find out that I had to have an internet connection to use it. Then the game doesn’t seem to perform on the level of WoW. There was something that just wasn’t right about the game. Corporations are selling us out, it’s no secret. They’ll sell us our own kidneys one day. The people that have money will spend it. No one needs the garbage products that these digital rights people are trying to extort us into paying for. People deserve to pay for a quality product and that’s what they do. These days it’s a malicious legal environment where a person pays for a product that is portrayed to be more than it is, a scam to make people pay for garbage.
well, I bought supreme commander 2 mths ago and I still havnt played it because I’m on dial up, I figure in the range of 18000 minutes to download from steam, while they are worrying about pirates how many people on dial-up have they lost and are saying what I’m saying screw you gas powered games I will not be buying anymore pc video games. I’m going to get broadband and learn to be a f–cking pirate. they should be taken to court on a class action suit for selling me a game I cant play with dial-up. FRAUD
is what its called
@eric – LOL, so you have dial up so cannot play SUPCOM 2 as you need to download it and it will take too long so…you’re going to get broadband (which will allow you to d/l Supcom 2 in a couple of hours) in order to be a pirate? That’s a pretty dumb response mate.
Also, why would you buy a game that you need to download if you’re on dial-up?
Why are you even on dial up? Phone costs are probably more expensive than if you got Broadband and you can clearly get broadband as you mentioned you will do so to become a pirate!
Man, some people complain for the sake of it.
Back to the topic; I really like the Settlers series but I’ve not bought Settlers 7, even though I’d really like to play it, purely because of the DRM.