Ubisofts crazy mental DRM cracked within 24 hours of release

[Starglider]

I'm just postulating that the PC per se offers more flexibility just because you can configure it however you like.

Firstly, you original argument was 'the move to consoles (and phones and web games and DRM) is bad for small developers'. Clearly that is not correct, in general. Secondly, your 'more flexibility' argument is meaningless. There are lots of engines and libraries available for other platforms as well (there are hundreds just on XNA), and you have not been able to articulate a case for how increased popularity of these platforms will necessarily harm indie gamers. You haven't even articulated a case for what this 'increased PC flexibility' enables, other than 'I can afford a PC but not an IDE' or 'Microsoft won't let me publish my hentai dating sim!'.

Even if it only provides output for niche markets, or it is hell to configure for different settings, it still offers more flexibility by virtue of offering a larger number of options.

As a developer, you cannot predict what hardware your users will have. That is inherently bad for development; a huge waste of time and (assuming you're more than a one-man band) money. If you insist that your game is only playable with a Radeon 5870, 8 gigs of RAM and a flight stick, you are reducing your possible player base to a tiny fraction of the market, wheras all console/phone/web games target the entire installed base. No one actually trying to make money would impose such restrictions on themselves, thus everyone who does this commercially would prefer that the PC platform was less diverse. The tiny minority of a minority making free arty games that also need specialist hardware are irrelevant, and will be utterly unaffected by the PC->Console transition anyway.

If you want to misconstrue that as an attack on XNA, or as a claim that all devs should embrace my particular development choices, by all means, go ahead.

Choice of tools used purely for development is irrelevant. The PC has zero competition as a development platform and won't any time soon; why would it? Furthermore your personal preferences in engine etc are irrelevant to your assertion that the decline of PC gaming is bad in general.

[Oskuro]

If you bother to actually read what I was saying, I admitted I'm not sure if the move to consoles will be bad or good, I just speculated that if someone was to be hindered in any way was this, it would be small and indie developers, precisely the minority you are mentioning, since profit-driven developers will certainly benefit from the more controlled console environent. So maybe my wording led to believe I was referring to all small developers regardless of their motivations or needs? True, my bad, but I hardly made any case for the downfall of PC gaming being bad.

In fact, I was actually trying to shoot down the alarmist notion that major game development moving to consoles is akin to the end of days for gaming, simply by pointing out the possibility that those who might be negatively impacted by the move will be left with a relatively competition-free PC market to do their thing.


As for PC versatility, I kind of messed up there, my notion was that a game meant to be run on the PC has more options available than a game meant to run on consoles. That's the flexibility I was talking about, not sure how my train of thought jumped to dev tools, sorry for that. So if I want to make a game that requires three joysticks, two driving wheels, and a USB cheesegrater, I can. Yeah, the market for that would be minimal, but I'm just postulating the flexibility of the PC platform, not the profitabilty.

[General Zod]

Looks like it was just attacks.

Those playing Assassin's Creed 2 on the PC got a rude reminder of DRM's pitfalls when the servers that authenticate the game went down. Many complained on the company's official forum, and tempers ran hot. Remember: the game has to be in contact with Ubisoft's servers to work; if the connection is lost, the game shuts down.

Ars Technica contacted Ubisoft to ask about the issue, and we were told that the issue wasn't simply a server malfunction. "This 'failure' was due to a massive DDoS attack on our servers," an Ubisoft spokesperson told Ars. "Our servers didn't go down but 5=5 percent of the overall people attempting to connect received denial of service errors. This is, of course, unacceptable and our teams are working around the clock to ensure it doesn't happen again."

The issue of pirates playing the game also gets short shrift. "Neither Assassin's Creed II nor Silent Hunter 5 are cracked at the time we speak. As mentioned previously, 'cracked' versions are incomplete... as in missing whole parts of the game and crucial features," the spokesperson continued. That means that with just the data from the disc or your download, you won't be able to play the game. The content requires whatever the Ubisoft servers are giving it.

Ubisoft leaves us all with a reminder that no matter how intrusive or failure-prone it is, DRM isn't going away. "We worry about our customers and apologize to anyone who couldn’t play ACII or SH5 yesterday. All in all, we hope people understand all this is done to preserve the future of PC gaming."

[White Haven]

Assassin's Creed II and Silent Hunter V have not been cracked. The Americans are committing suicide at the gates of Baghdad.

Makes you wonder who's really writing Ubisoft's copy.

[Ace Pace]

In a sense, they are correct. The cracks for SH5/AC2 did not fully re-implement all the functionality that was server side. This isn't so surprising and with time might change.

[Ace Pace]

Damn sliding edit window.
What I mean is behavior similar to this. Let me quote the relevant portion:

How it worked: Very sneakily indeed. Rather than simply blocking pirates from playing the game, Rocksteady chose to give them just enough tantalising bat-joy to show them what they were missing. Illegal copies of the game worked perfectly apart from one little detail. Batman’s cape glide ability was disabled, making the game playable but uncompleteable. If the Joker made DRM, this is the DRM he would make.

Apparently (according to the internet), this is not perfectly correct, gliding would work, but grappling onto specific places wouldn't.

These sort of things happen in games such as Titans Quest. Others have incomplete cracks being released early for scene favours, with the crack later on being patched.

I'm not saying straight away that the AC2 crack has to be incomplete, only that Ubisoft may not be lying.

[White Haven]

Yeah, but 'the crack sucks, btw' and 'there is no crack' are two different things entirely. One is a lie, for starters.

[Oskuro]

I doubt Ubisoft would admit to their DRM being cracked any time soon anyway, it's not in their best interest to do so.

I suspect it will be mentioned if the scheme fails to achieve the projected sales increase, as a justification for more draconian measures, but then again, the notion that this scheme is UbiOppression BETA has already been postulated on this thread.

As for the server failing due to an external attack, they keep ignoring the elephant in the room: Without this type of DRM scheme these things wouldn't happen. The reason for the server failure is secondary to the fact that the servers can fail and screw up paying customers.

[Stark]

I figured it would be an attack. People will blame Ubisofts system
for a problem pirates created.

[Thanas]

I figured it would be an attack. People will blame Ubisofts system for a problem pirates created.

Not really. There were problems reported even outside the timeframe of the pirate attack. Unless the people on the Ubi forums are deliberately lying.

EDIT: Even funnier: Ubisoft hacks your system and prevents you from changing network settings.

[Stark]

I'd be curious if they released data showing how much of the day 1 load was refused authentication. Hundreds of pirates gettin 'no' replies aren't going to help the everpresent underestimation of demand.

[Thanas]

I'd be curious if they released data showing how much of the day 1 load was refused authentication. Hundreds of pirates gettin 'no' replies aren't going to help the everpresent underestimation of demand.

From what my friends tell me, the cracks work by not even asking for authentication. Am I wrong here? Because if that is true, no pirate will get a no reply because they already got the content.

[Stark]

Well I wouldn't know, I have no interest in shit sub games. but not all piracy is competent - plenty of people get pirate copies and (try) use it normally. A crack that doesn't get whatever Ubisoft sends users will probably not be great if my understanding of the system is correct.

[Oskuro]

I agree with Stark, although I guess that more than actual crappy cracks it might be un-cracked illegal copies of the game that keep bouncing off the server, after all, is not like advertising a regular copy as "cracked" is beyond the honourable pirating groups.

[Uraniun235]

I figured it would be an attack. People will blame Ubisofts system for a problem pirates created.

Not really. There were problems reported even outside the timeframe of the pirate attack. Unless the people on the Ubi forums are deliberately lying.

EDIT: Even funnier: Ubisoft hacks your system and prevents you from changing network settings.

That seems like such a silly thing to do, especially when you could just reach over and physically disconnect the network cable. I have to wonder if that's an unintended consequence of some aspect of Windows 7, although if it really is Ubisoft reaching in and saying "nuh-uh you can't fiddle with your computer while you're playing the game", that would be pretty rude.

[Thanas]

^It is the latter, according to the German site, Ubisoft installs a datafile that prevents you from changing the settings.

[Starglider]

I can't see how that would do anything to hinder cracks or crackers. Installed cracks will disable the network checks in the first place, and crackers have RAM viewers, decompilers, virtual machines, packet sniffers, transparent proxies etc etc. Certainly I can't see why a legitimate user would alt-tab out of their active game and start messing with their network settings.

[Edward Yee]

I would, but only because I'm the type who'll interrupt one's own game for instant messaging, sudden mail-check or the like.

[Starglider]

I would, but only because I'm the type who'll interrupt one's own game for instant messaging, sudden mail-check or the like.

Why would that involve fiddling with your LAN configuration?

If Thanas meant that the Ubisoft malware locks your configuration even when you're not playing the game, obviously that's idiotic and another massive backlash waiting to happen. I doubt they'd be that stupid, but... what am I saying, this is Ubisoft, of course they could be that stupid.

[Oskuro]

Even if they lock your configuration while you're playing, who the fuck are they to decide what you do with your system? I sure hope this behaviour is explicitly stated in the EULA or wherever, because covertly hijacking the user's system is wrong on too many levels.

[Edward Yee]

Why would that involve fiddling with your LAN configuration?

Oh whoops, I was referring to alt+tabbing out of an active game, period.

[Oskuro]

Know what? I have to agree with Andy Chalk's latest article on The Escapist. Ubisoft's DRM scheme might be an award-winning bad idea, but people still bought their games.

How can people complain if they accepted the deal in the first place? It's not like Ubisoft had been hiding the details of their DRM scheme before launch. It just saddens me how stupidly sheepish people are about this. It's gaming, you won't die of starvation if you don't play an over-hyped game, and in fact, it's your privilige as a customer to decide not to buy a product you don't agree with, yet after all the complaining, they go right ahead and buy it.

Know what? I bitch a lot about things I don't like about the videogame industry, but then again, I'm at least coherent with my own complaints and refrain from buying products I don't agree with.

[Stark]

Uh, no shit? People say that in every thread here about DRM. Of course, it's not significant people bought it; it's significant what change there was in sales. Nerds always complain about all kinds of shit and still buy it; why should anyone care about a sector of the market that always complains but doesn't impact sales?

If you thought for yourself you wouldn't need a blogger to give you all your ideas.

[Oskuro]

why should anyone care about a sector of the market that always complains but doesn't impact sales?

That's the point, said sector doesn't matter unless they change their buying habits. The sad thing is how these types treat gaming as some sort of god-given right, or first order necessity. Gee, I bet some would even look at me in puzzlement if I told them I passed up on Half-Life 2 because I didn't agree with the Steam scheme back then. And they wouldn't do it because of me not buying the game, but because I didn't pirate it either, wich leads us to the even sadder idiots who don't even plan on ever buying the games, and still believe they are entitled to complaining.

If you thought for yourself you wouldn't need a blogger to give you all your ideas.

And here we are treated to another one of Stark's famous catchphrases.

[Stark]

Oh sorry I forgot you'd snip out the part where this is not a new point and people often laugh at nerds for kicking up shit (most recently over Starcraft 2) when they're all going to buy it anyway.

No no we have to care because some idiot nobody said so ON THE ESCAPIST.