Thanks to DRM, Some Ubisoft Games Won't Work Next Week 332
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."
Re:I Must Be Missing Something Here (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:2, Informative)
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:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:You get what you pay for (Score:5, Informative)
"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/ [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:Thanks to DRM, I stole your FIRST POST (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Informative)