PC Assassin's Creed II stumbles on Ubisoft DRM server snafu

They shouldn't be able to force people to shell out $60.00 to buy a game that only works some of the time..... Maybe they should come up with something better like what Microsoft does with their discs, better yet just accept that Piracy is here to stay no matter how much you hate it [I'm not promoting software piracy]. Piracy is a serious crime but everyone takes part in it to some degree.... Get over it UBI-SOFT, you aren't the first ones to be hacked, pirated or ripped off..... Everybody wants something for free, Nobody likes paying so much for a game that might be over in a few hours, try a better idea to stop piracy that doesn't leave people hanging.....

@ krytorii the internet is basically a communistic (not meaning it in a bad sense) democracy without permits or licenses. Everyone is equal in the sense that you can all access the same things, you just need to put forth more effort to get to some of the more hidden stuff. Everyone is free to put up there own page and rant or spread a gospel, or sell something. No permits or licenses are needed to sell, inform, or spread your word like you were protesting in the street. Hehe, the internet is the US government's best friend for spreading western ideology and worst nightmare for stealing western profits all at the same time. Gotta love it.

@serieus Have you seen those ridiculous "you wouldnt steal a car" piracy ads?

LOL i did a search and there are people who say they can play the cracked version of the game and with fixes that will take away the protection bugs. :shock: Damn, sorry ubisoft, you lost!!

The main problem is the grey area covering the internet when it comes to pretty much anything. If a french game gets cracked by an australian, hosted on a canadian server then downloaded in england, who takes legal action? Then again Im sorta against these laws because they will get more and more restrictive till the internet becomes too well monitered and watched for "criminal" activity (like nation-wide censorship programmes)

@ krytorii how is it stealing if i'm in my own home? :)

the sad fact is this is only the beginning of the terrible lengths the video game industry is going to use to "protect' revenues. i think before all is said and done all games will have this and worse measures to stop piracy.

I reli hate it when you get people who say "its just one game, these massive companies wont miss less than £50" (retailers dont sell at the price that gets paid to publisher... Its only one game, then another, then another and so on. Then they get their mates involved, and it ends up being several hundreds of pounds missing. This is why we need clearer internet laws on large scale pirating like this. I can kind of understand emulation of, for example, the GB original pokemon games as they are not really accessable in their original form (not counting firered/leafgreen), and the companies arent missing any money cos there wasnt a product to sell, but pirating a game while its new or still being published is simple theivery. Too many people wouldnt dare steal a game from a shop, even if there was a 100% chance of getting away with it, but wouldnt care about downloading the same product illegally.

@ziv_ew anything and everything is hackable. Why do you think our government agencies don't transfer information via the web. They have an internal network that they use. I know that's what I use when I bill Medicare. When I ask them why, it's because nothing is safe online. Credit cards can be cracked, online accounts can be cracked and video games DRMs can be cracked. No matter what you do, your security can't possibly stop any and all infractions. I just dig how Steam Cloud works for saved games and settings, I dig the VAC that's offered with the system as well, and the fact that if my internet goes down i can still play my single player games, as long as they're already installed. Why not use what's available rather than reinventing the wheel. Not that I think everyone should jump on Steam, but I hope that not all companies start their own services cause that'll be overwhelming for gamers and a turn off. Blizzard has one, EA has one, Steam, Impulse, Microsoft Live. In my opinion Steam's the top of the line for now, with lots of room for improvement though.

Haha, a lot of online journalist predicted that they would blame their problem on others. Denial of service attack my butt.

Thats wat you get ubisoft

you know hackers already have made a cracked offline version right :P

I doubt it's because of demand....lol. I'm sure they have decent demand, but I doubt that's why their crappy DRM failed. Bad excuse lol.

If any game deserves a boycott it's this one.

I remember when copy protection was you had to answer a question about something printed in the manual, lose the manual, too bad. Then it moved to CD-keys, then online verification, then now you got this stuff. I cant imagine logging into a server to play a single player game. The best way to combat piracy is strict internal controls to prevent leaks before a game goes live. Creative solutions like intentionally leaking faulty versions of the game, ala Arkham Asylum, that turn the game into a really big demo. Using multiplayer components of the game to identify and block cracked cd-keys and pirated games from playing in officially run servers. And of course theres Stardock who just doesnt give a s***, accepts piracy and prefers to create a close user/developer environment. But you can understand Ubisoft trying as hard as they can, wasnt it something like only 90k copies of Assassins Creed 1 were sold and over a million pirated. That hurts the pocket book too much to accept a little casual piracy

Haha... this is hilarious. "The reason our DRM servers are down is because the demand to play our amazing game is so great! Oh and the fact that we're getting DOS'd..." Wtf, talk about opposite ends of the spectrum, which is it you buffoons. Anyway, whether they are getting DOS'd or not, this shows EXACTLY why DRM like this is ridiculous. People pay their hard earned money to play an OFFLINE game, and are now being penalized because of actions by people that they have no relation to what so ever. Congratulations Ubisoft, you've managed to create the first OFFLINE game to be disrupted by DOS attacks. That's quite a feat to pull off, really. Oh and for those that have not heard. The DRM for this game was cracked in under a day. So currently, the only ones being screwed over by the DRM are the people that actually PAID for it. Good job Ubisoft, you definitely outsmarted everyone this time.

And this time, the pirates have a major excuse to crack the game. Why deal with random Ubisoft crashes when a 2 min download allows you to play single player like you should be able to.

Thought this was funny... [URL=<< LINK REMOVED >>]<< LINK REMOVED >>[/URL]

LOL it's so easy to pull up excuses out of their backsides when they screw up so badly. Ubi couldn't come up with something more sophisticated than a DoS, we know they want to stop supporting PC gaming and that's fine, let them move to consoles and we PC gamers will stay loyal to companies that respect us.

Lol Ubisoft found out just what happens when you piss off the right gamer.

@serieus steam games have been hackd, i have ppl in my school that carry a pirated version of counter strike that they play druing brakes on school computers

Everybody knows that GTA IV also had this DRM (well I think so) and it was cracked within a days. Why don't people learn from mistakes?

Not being able to play a single player game because of server issues is ridiculous. This is going to encourage pirates not dissuade them.

I can understand why ubisoft wants to do this, it makes their games harder to pirate. Piracy obviously is going to have an impact on the market, it will either devalue the products and prices will drop to entice more customers, or prices will increase to make up for the loss. One may seem favourable, but it damages the economy and may reduce the growth of the industry. On the other hand, over the top DRM pushes people into doing this. I remember on my old PC games the DRM was limited to "please insert key on back of box". Now if you have to log in every time to play, what happens if yor internet breaks or you cancel your internet to save money (sounds strange but I know a few people who did it and played only offline games and used public access areas for general browsing). Piracy will never go away, but this isnt really helping if it goes down every time a popular game is released or the internet connection temporarily breaks for whatever reason.

this is the equivalent of strip-searching everyone who goes to the cinema for the fear that one of the people will have a camcorder with them.

This protection will also be removed by pirates in the near future, i'm sure of it... And this time, I hope they'll let Ubisoft bleed.

360 games are also easily crackable yet they sell tremendously well with their goofy DRM. what makes u think it's so important to put DRM on PC games? the amount of ppl who will buy the game in the period until it's cracked is really that big to justify the pain of the costumers who buy AC2 and have issues with it?

This is yet another failed attempt to foil piracy and spends valuable time that could be used in development of the game overall while doing nothing to protect their product. All this does is hurt their customers and I wish game companies would realize that they are actually supporting piracy by forcing their registered users to use cracked files to simply play the stupid single player game offline. All this does is punishes those who buy the game and nothing more and the sooner they realize their mistake, the better. There is no way I would ever buy a product that ties me to the Internet every time I want to play unless it's an MMO meant for online activity. A huge anti-kudos to Ubisoft for the epic fail of this design and philosophy and a big win for the pirate groups who are laughing hysterically right now.

What happens in 10 years from now when you want to pick up your game again and play for nostalgic purposes? Are the servers going to be down then too? I know a lot of peeps hate Steam, but really that's the way to go. Steam cloud hasn't failed me yet and Steam works offline as well as online. Ubi stepped over there boundary this time.

i hate that system of security, if the internet goes out i cant play games,

Did Ubi just not test this? @couly I'm sorry that you spent that kind of money. You could have bought a lot of good european food with that kind of dough.

Wouldn't be the first time Ubisoft's DRM went down hill except this time it went far, faaar down.

At least the pir8s can run the game! UbiFAIL. Every one of you who bought this game is contributing to the bastardization of PC gaming. If you have a console, buy it used.

Why can't Ubisoft just get it through their heads that their new DRM just downright sucks?

now it says 'failed to download saved games' hooray. That was 50 euro well spent.

ok so i managed to play a bit and then when i exited it said "failed to save your game, it is not lost and will be uploaded next time you play". BS

this is a bit of a pain

well for the first time in my life I think pirates are cool way to go ubisoft

@icepop4who So this DRM is going to stop ACII from being pirated? Looks like it's more effective at stopping paying customers from using the product...

So wait are companies thinking that DRMs actually stop piracy. It's like the war on piracy right, cause the war on terror and the war on drugs sure stop terror and drugs right? Get a clue, a war on piracy only provokes piracy. It's time to get these people's historical facts straight so they can maybe learn something to make the present better. What a shame that those that actually bought the game get shafted. Not only do PC gamers have to wait longer for the game but now they get shafted. Horrible strategy Ubi!

I agree with; dakan45 The funniest thing of all is that people were against this because issues like this would appear. Welcome to the era that you buy a singleplayer game and you cant play it because the developer's site is down Thats the big sound of a facepalm right there. I cant believe we reached a point that you buy a game and you cant play it because the gamedevelopers are not around. So in the feature they will be forced to drop support for one of their titles since they cant keep the servers up an running for many diffirent games and millions of users. Basicly its messed up. & DarkGod189 PC games will be pirated and cracked 99.9% of the time no matter what kind of protection you put on it. This online connection crap will only screw over people that actually buy your games. I really dont understand why certain companies will do this to screw over loyal gamers, since those are the only people they really hurt. Those that pirate the game wont be spending any money regardless, they'll just have to wait longer for a cracked version to come out that works... If they really wanted to avoid pirated games, they should just stick to consoles because from what i've seen, console games arent pirated as much (despite the fact that they are passed around through gamefly and whatnot. My thoughts; A sad day for PC gaming..AC2 is mainly a singleplayer game, why do I have to be online to play it? It really is getting to the point where we don't actually own the game we buy...

I kinda feel sorry for Ubi. They just want people to stop pirating already. Unfortunately people who didn't buy it get to play it, and people who BOUGHT it can't, exactly what they don't want. Right now it's just damage control for Ubi. Regardless I wont be buying any game infested with this ****.

This crappy DRM is actually making the public sympathize with pirates.

looks like another case of punish the innocent and exonerate the guilty

For me the question has always been about 2 things: quality and price. These days you pay a premium price for a crappy title and I'm sorry, but that's not good enough. I live in Australia, and the prices we pay here, compared to anywhere else in the world, are absolutely ridiculous, for both console and PC. What game companies don't seem to realise is that by halving the price of the game they're going to more than double the sales - hence, more money! Now there seems to be one more reason NOT to buy a game. Headache.

It may take awhile, but Ubi will eventually realize this doesn't work.

@Just-Adam lol wtf what ever I'm right with ya "Ubisoft lied, servers were attacked." << LINK REMOVED >>

@PublicNuisance: Yes, this DRM is a Fail, I totally agree. But I really like this game and the concept op beeing able to run around in an awesome historical city etc... People just need to see that when they want games on the PC, that there has to be something against piracy, if not, company's won't be making anymore Single player games for the PC and then the same whiners will come here because they can't download cracked games anymore. 1: atm there isn't a decent working crack for AC2, all cracks have errors/issues, it will probably take a week or something. 2: One day of not playing isn't that big of a deal for most people Oh well, I would just find it terrible that there won't be an AC3 for PC, because I won't be buying an xbox or PS

it seems these devs/pubs keep getting dumber and dumber while the pirate nerds are getting smarter and smarter while the paying customers are getting more pissed off