Ubisoft DRM confirmed to boot you from your singleplayer game when the net drops out

[MacMichael]

According to that article the game was not cracked.

 

As far as I understand there has been cracked version of the game since day one, but ubi claims is not "legit" cracked version since it lacks some extra download content.

 

What I keep hearing is that while it was cracked the first day, the cracked version hangs or crashed at several points. The first trip into the animus and some story mission. So, the open world can be played, and using some savegames can get around these points, it doesn't let you play all the way through without issue. Supposedly, the game downloads part of the story mission, thus the isues. But I've also heard everything from one end to the other on whether it's cracked or not, so I'm not really sure what to believe about it.

[Humodour]

According to that article the game was not cracked.

 

As far as I understand there has been cracked version of the game since day one, but ubi claims is not "legit" cracked version since it lacks some extra download content.

 

What I keep hearing is that while it was cracked the first day, the cracked version hangs or crashed at several points. The first trip into the animus and some story mission. So, the open world can be played, and using some savegames can get around these points, it doesn't let you play all the way through without issue. Supposedly, the game downloads part of the story mission, thus the isues. But I've also heard everything from one end to the other on whether it's cracked or not, so I'm not really sure what to believe about it.

 

Assuming that's true, I guess that means it won't be fully cracked until next Tuesday.

[Magister Lajciak]

It has been 3 days and Ubisoft's DDRM servers are STILL not working properly!

 

What's even more interesting is that Ubisoft cannot get the story right. It provides conflicting explanations for why the servers are not working. The first explanation was on the boards, where Ubisoft representatives posted that the servers have problems due to unexpected 'exceptional demand'. The second explanation on Twitter (and picked up by some gaming media) said that the servers are not working properly due to a denial of service attack. The third explanation appearing now is responses from customer support to angry customers, which say that servers are down because of maintenance. It's pretty ridiculous!

 

Only one thing is clear. Ubisoft has tried to create a single-player online game (he, he maybe SOG as a single-player counterpart to MMO) and merely managed to anger a lot of people and not make it work properly...

[Purkake]

I don't see the need repeat the point for the 27th time.

 

It's obvious that this was not going to work day 1 and a company's PR giving out BS explanations it pretty much standard practice. It might be interesting if they don't fix it in a week or so.

[Magister Lajciak]

I don't see the need repeat the point for the 27th time.

 

It's obvious that this was not going to work day 1 and a company's PR giving out BS explanations it pretty much standard practice. It might be interesting if they don't fix it in a week or so.

 

I guess.... but one would have thought they could at least make their explanation consistent. The PR department should be able to at least coordinate a single explanation, no matter how BS it is, unless of course all three explanations are true, which seems rather unlikely.

[Purkake]

I'm surprised they said anything at all beyond a "we're experiencing technical difficulties with our servers".

 

Trying to explain it further just made it worse, as we can all plainly see. I'm still pretty sure that Ubisoft were expecting something along those lines, which is why they started off with a PC port released months after the console version.

Edited March 9, 2010 by Purkake

[MacMichael]

I don't see the need repeat the point for the 27th time.

 

It's obvious that this was not going to work day 1 and a company's PR giving out BS explanations it pretty much standard practice. It might be interesting if they don't fix it in a week or so.

 

I guess.... but one would have thought they could at least make their explanation consistent. The PR department should be able to at least coordinate a single explanation, no matter how BS it is, unless of course all three explanations are true, which seems rather unlikely.

 

Actually, the stories make for a neat and tidy progression. The servers go down due to "exceptional demand" which turns out to be "a DoS attack" which necessitates "maintenance." Of course, it could just mean they couldn't figure out how to make it work and have now resorted to poking the servers with sticks, hoping they'll start working on their own, and they just need a cover story, it's hard say.

[LostStraw]

Edit: MacMichael beat me to it

Edited March 9, 2010 by LostStraw

[Deadly_Nightshade]

...it could just mean they couldn't figure out how to make it work and have now resorted to poking the servers with sticks, hoping they'll start working on their own, and they just need a cover story...

 

I like that theory.

[Walsingham]

That reminds me. My stick is broken.

[Humodour]

That reminds me. My stick is broken.

 

Mate, you should probably get that checked out by a doctor.

[Azure79]

Really, who didn't see this coming?

 

Too bad. I really wanted to play Splinter Cell Conviction and the new Prince of Persia game.

[Mamoulian War]

Really, who didn't see this coming?

 

Too bad. I really wanted to play Splinter Cell Conviction and the new Prince of Persia game.

 

Obviously the Ubisoft top-managment didn't see it comming Else they would never come up with this kind of **** That's what you get when you let your company directed by someone who thinks that sending emails is a top IT achievment

[Rosbjerg]

I'm still hoping for that one company who figures out how to deal with pirates in a simple and meaningful way.. I doubt the PC market will crash and burn in the foreseeable future, but if it is this difficult to make a tiny profit I don't blame companies for leaving the market. While I would be a little sad to see the big productions dissapear, it would leave room for the indie developers who know that in order to sell something you need to make it good and not just exposed.

[Mamoulian War]

I'm still hoping for that one company who figures out how to deal with pirates in a simple and meaningful way.. I doubt the PC market will crash and burn in the foreseeable future, but if it is this difficult to make a tiny profit I don't blame companies for leaving the market. While I would be a little sad to see the big productions dissapear, it would leave room for the indie developers who know that in order to sell something you need to make it good and not just exposed.

 

The biggest difficulty to make a profit is the current financial crisis not the pirates...

 

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27556/A...ins_For_PS3.php

 

making it more difficult for your customers to play your games is an economical suicide... People think now 10times over when deciding which game they should buy

[LostStraw]

The biggest difficulty to make a profit is the current financial crisis not the pirates...

 

The financial downturn makes the effects of piracy worse. Not only by possibly increasing the rate of piracy but by also by lowering the already small overall profit of PC game sales which makes porting to the PC a less and less attractive option, even for big titles.

[Mamoulian War]

The article i linked is not only about PC gaming... It's about all gaming including consoles... even Wii is 40% down compared to february 2009...

 

people have less money, they buy less stuff... giving them more hurdles in their way to spent their cash on games does not help to get into black numbers in yearly earning reports...

[Humodour]

Really, who didn't see this coming?

 

Too bad. I really wanted to play Splinter Cell Conviction and the new Prince of Persia game.

 

I really wanted Beyond Good & Evil 2, but I flat out refuse to fund this sort of trash.

 

There are many other good games out there, and trustworthy and loyal developers (Valve, Blizzard, even Bioware) such that I lose nothing by completely avoiding Ubisoft products.

Edited March 10, 2010 by Krezack

[Mamoulian War]

Krezack, the DRM for SC2 might be very similar to this at least for multiplayer But still no one knows how Single Player campaign will be handled...

[Gorgon]

Heh, remember back when STEAM was considered the absolute worst DRM had to offer. The good old days.

[Niten_Ryu]

people have less money, they buy less stuff...

 

Games are luxury items so it's no wonder that they take big hit on worldwide depression (or recession if you accept the virtual GPD growth tricks). This brings us back to original argument - Would people buy significantly more games if piracy wasn't possible? Based on PS3 info and consumer behaviour during this depression, I'd say no. Yes, there are rich bastards who pirate everything just because they can but based on the data they can't be the largest group.

[cronicler]

But there is a catch Mamolian War, Unlike Ubi Blizzard does have "some" experience with handling massive numbers of players on their servers and setting up servers.

 

The SP aspect and it's connection requirements are still an unknown quality but for Multi, most people were going to use Bnet anyway.

 

I know the following will fall under "trusting a corporation who is there to make money first" but personally I'm expecting an official "lan patch" in a year or so after the game's release.

 

 

For me, Blizzard's next 2 games (Diablo and Starcraft) will fall under the grey area; Good Game + Control Freak Drm + Good Net Based Support. I'll probably buy Sc regardless of it's Single Player Drm (Galaxy Editor is my main target) but I'll probably wait a bit in case of D3.

[Mamoulian War]

people have less money, they buy less stuff...

 

Games are luxury items so it's no wonder that they take big hit on worldwide depression (or recession if you accept the virtual GPD growth tricks). This brings us back to original argument - Would people buy significantly more games if piracy wasn't possible? Based on PS3 info and consumer behaviour during this depression, I'd say no. Yes, there are rich bastards who pirate everything just because they can but based on the data they can't be the largest group.

 

Yes, that's exactly what i do think aswell, the people just dont conjure the money out of air... if their yearly budget to gaming is 250USD/year atm (including the money which they get back from selling games 2nd hand), their gaming budget will be still 200USD per year after piracy and secondhand sales are eliminated... which will mean less game sales in total due to elimination of possibility to get some money back from secondhand sales... luxury items are not needed for human life, they are nice bonus, but when you put enough of hurdles in the way to the nice bonus, the bonus just stops to be worth the hassle at some point...

 

@cronicler... for me SC2 is in grey area aswell, going more towards no buy area atm... i am not going to play it competitivly so when i waited 10 years to see it released i can wait another 3 until it gets into BattleChest category... so at that point i might be persuaded to buy it... and hopefully 3 years will be enough to see some group to remove this sily DRM aswell, if Blizz does not remove it by themselves...

 

Anyway... anyone knows if Ubi's servers are still down???

[Rosbjerg]

Also I've noticed that me and my friends tend to buy the same games, usually the douche of the group pirates it and tells everyone how utterly amazing it is and the rest of us go out and buy it as the word spreads.. That's why I personally have this theory that if you actually used pirates as a PR resource of sorts, you might actually see an increase in sales, unless your game stinks of course.

[213374U]

No, no, no!

 

You've got it all wrong. It is in fact if your game stinks that pirates ARE your #1 PR resource: you blame them for dismal sales, and vow to keep future titles exclusively to the completely piracy-free medium of consoles. That way your reputation might be saved, and you have an excuse to scrap any plans for future ports. The PC gaming market is dying anyway, so who cares?