Ubisoft's Authentication Servers Go Down 634
ZuchinniOne writes "With Ubisoft's fantastically awful new DRM you must be online and logged in to their servers to play the games you buy. Not only was this DRM broken the very first day it was released, but now their authentication servers have failed so absolutely that no-one who legally bought their games can play them. 'At around 8am GMT, people began to complain in the Assassin's Creed 2 forum that they couldn't access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games.' One can only hope that this utter failure will help to stem the tide of bad DRM."
LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know anything else that should be said here.
They have the money already (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would this stem the awful DRM? They have the money, gamers are still going to play, life moves on.
Re:Down or DDoS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does it really matter though? If they're using something like this, they should had have hardened and test the system properly. Things like this are completely unacceptable. I would have thought they did as otherwise its going to backfire so good, but it seems stupid people never cease to amaze you.
Hope they learned a lesson (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop supporting games with this kind of DRM
Re:The DRM is working. (Score:2, Insightful)
No it is called Digital Restrictions Management. They restrict how often you can play as per the current demands of parental and religious groups
I'm not mad (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry, I'm having a little trouble feeling sorry for people who support DRM (those who bought the game).
They paid for it. They got what they wanted.
Find someone else's sholder to cry on.
Do I smell a class action lawsuit? (Score:2, Insightful)
Do I smell a class action lawsuit? Seems like it might make sense.
I already said it (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't find it now, but definitly NOW the DRM protection WILL be the discussion topic on the schoolyard. And maybe company lunchrooms too. People who bought the game will ask around, especially their "IT clued" friends what they could do to play what they paid for, and they will be informed about how to get cracks.
People who never pondered cracking will now be introduced to it. So far they did actually buy their games. Either because they simply didn't know about it or, worse, because they didn't want to go through the hassle and thought that paying 50 bucks is easier, faster and less of a problem than futzing about with cracks and copying this and cracking that and executing this registry tuner and writing that into the registry...
Now they learn that buying games leads to more futzing, more frustration, more "it doesn't just work" than finding it in P2P and downloading it. Legal copies just lost the only edge they had over cracked ones: Ease of use and "just working".
Great job, UBIsoft. Just as the software industry finally regained some footing in the battle against copying, you go and aim the bazooka at your (and the industry's) foot.
No sympathy (Score:4, Insightful)
You knew the game had this DRM, you knew that it was susceptible to server crashes, you whined about it endlessly, AND THEN YOU WENT OUT AND BOUGHT IT ANYWAY. How stupid can you get? Ubisoft must be laughing their heads off.
Re:They have the money already (Score:5, Insightful)
Gamers have already paid for the game but you see the issue we have here is that gamers have only paid once for the game. All DRM schemes are about extorting more money out of customers. Whether by killing the 2nd hand market or planned obsolescence they want you to pay to keep playing your games.
Mark my words, in 12 or 18 months time EA/UBI and so forth will start complaining that keeping these DRM servers online is costing them money, meaning they require more money from existing customers to keep them on line.
Re:Down or DDoS? (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't really matter to the user, does it?
And before you say "A DDoS wouldn't be UBIsoft's fault": Deliberately and needlessly introducing a single point of failure to your system is patently dumb, and most definitly the fault of the party that introduced it if it fails.
Re:I'm not mad (Score:4, Insightful)
Good call. As someone else pointed out above:
The publisher has the customer's money. Support after payment is always awful. Until customers vote with their wallets, it will only get worse.
Enjoy your intentionally defective products!
Re:Hope they learned a lesson (Score:0, Insightful)
MOD PARENT DOWN
Let me just say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Murphy's Law (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Interesting method... (Score:5, Insightful)
First time I've heard of a DDoS attack being used to break DRM...
It didn't break the DRM, it broke the game.
Re:I'm not mad (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They have the money already (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No sympathy (Score:4, Insightful)
Did they? I didn't hear about the DRM until after the game was released. If I had not been waiting until it came down in price a bit, I might have purchased it based upon the merits of the first game and some early reviews which didn't mention the DRM.
I might even have failed to notice the small print which said that an Internet connection was needed in order to play it. I certainly wouldn't have expected that to be a requirement.
I bet a lot of people had no idea. This might do more to kill gaming on the PC than DRM, though.
Thank You Ubisoft (Score:5, Insightful)
We should all send flowers or candy or something to Ubisoft Headquarters. They've done more with one game launch to torpedo the use of DRM than a thousand indignant ./ stories and editorials.
Re:Down or DDoS? (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess the same way google, microsoft update or similar sites do it. Massive bandwith, redundant servers, a little black voodo.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Down or DDoS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Deliberately and needlessly introducing a single point of failure to your system is patently dumb
Quiet! You'll give them ideas.
Re:Down or DDoS? (Score:3, Insightful)
...which would have cost them more than the game will earn in profits.
Re:They have the money already (Score:3, Insightful)
Presumably they want to sell people a *second* game a year from now and angry customers usually aren't repeat customers
Re:I'm not mad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm not mad (Score:5, Insightful)
Now they know better.
This is the best possible thing that could have happened to them.
Tech support calls... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:LOL (Score:3, Insightful)
How about I called it, [slashdot.org] as (I assume) did anyone who gave the entire stupid scheme more than a moment's thought.
Re:I already said it (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't tell your friends to crack the game. Tell them to go to the store and demand their money back.
The software is fundamentally broken. You haven't gotten what you've paid for. Returns will be a lot more painful for Ubisoft. Pose 90% returned games vs 90% pirated games at a stock holders meeting, and they'd probably prefer 90% pirated, as the 90% returned will be more expensive in the long run.
So let me get this straight (Score:2, Insightful)
So let me get this straight: the pirated[sic]/counterfeit product is superior to the real thing, just like with Windows?
I'm shocked. SHOCKED!
Well, not that shocked.
Re:Down or DDoS? (Score:1, Insightful)
I guess the same way google, microsoft update or similar sites do it. Massive bandwith, redundant servers, a little black voodo.
Having servers in 2-3 (or more) distributed data centres and using anycast (or geo-based DNS). This way any DDoS only hits servers that is "closest" to the zombie, and the attack's traffic is centralized into one location.
Re:Down or DDoS? (Score:5, Insightful)
But, who am I kidding, they'll just chock it up to losses to pirates and shake their fists all the harder because they can't directly access people's bank accounts.
Re:I'm not mad (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Down or DDoS? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it's a good thing! If one company patents it, no one else will be able to do it for 20 years without spending a shit-ton of money!
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just amusing that it's so close to the release that we've seen it happen. If people don't wake up and smell the coffee on this one we'll all be bent over a barrel with every new game release from now on.
There's no way that an home user can afford five nines internet access, so even if it isn't the authentication server end that's a problem, well, you're screwed anyway. Hell, if there's problems at higher tier routing you're probably going to be screwed anyway. I've seen this happen before with MMOs. If the servers were hosted locally (ie, in Australia, where I am from) we'd still be able to connect, but due to international routing problems no one in Australia was able to play. I know that's a bit off topic, but it seems to me that warning signs like that dictate that moving down a server authentication method for a single player game is fucking stupid.
Unfortunately the people who make decisions about protecting profits aren't exactly technologically proficient, let alone able to understand the intricacies in a global network like the internet. I doubt the team that programs the game even has anything to do the team programming the DRM other than having to somehow work it into their product.
In essence, what Ubisoft here has done is given people a real reason to boycott their products in a major way. I can't say I've seen a grass roots boycott take off, but when you shit on your customers you essentially force the boycott through ineptitude.
True, time will tell on this one, but I doubt it will be long before Ubisoft make the decision to take the same route as EA by rolling back DRM - well, that or their stock will tank and the company will go under.
Re:Down or DDoS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then implementing something that requires your servers to be available 24/7 OR ELSE is patently stupid.
Re:No sympathy (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually I expect the technical types at Ubisoft are shitting their pants right now. They are probably working on their 25th hour of overtime (except they are salaried so they dont actually get overtime... heh) trying to fix the problem, grumbling about why they ever had to implement this stupid DRM in the first place.
On the other hand management types who made the decision to go with this retarded (literally) DRM are probably comfortably watching a DVD and wont care about this until monday... at which point they will blame all the technical types and demand a fix immediately.
Re:The DRM is working. (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM manages rights the same way prisons manage freedom.
Re:They have the money already (Score:3, Insightful)
People have the long term memory of a goldfish. Politics alone should teach you that.
They will buy. My only hope is that at least some will think twice, and that the PR disaster is expensive enough for UBIsoft to backpedal at least a bit in their DRM hunger.
Re:LOL (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no way that an home user can afford five nines internet access, so even if it isn't the authentication server end that's a problem, well, you're screwed anyway.
Do you really need to play "Assassins Creed 2" continuously with only 5 minutes of downtime every year? If so, I suspect that your Internet connection is the least of your issues.
Even three nines (eight hours of downtime per year) is more than reasonable for a normal home connection. That might even be good enough for a DRM server.
I'm at about four nines from Verizon FiOS (about 5 hours of downtime in the 3 years I've had the service).
Re:Down or DDoS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, so please inform us how you would had hardened their systems against the DDoS if there was one.
Uhhh..... Not have playing the game tied to an online authentication? That might help. I think that's kinda the point.
Re:Interesting method... (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually, it broke the game for the paying customers.
Re:Down or DDoS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, that's a bit of a stretch. While I would probably find it amusing if someone like the /b crowd went and messed with the auth servers to get a kick out of it, it's not what I'd consider something like a "political statement". Or a necessity because I'm so angry at them.
I'm not angry at UBIsoft for creating that DRM scheme. While I find it quite disappointing that I can't buy a game that I thought would be great (companies make games and set the terms, but I, and only I, get to choose whether I accept them), it's not like I'm "angry" over it. If find it amusing, though, that time and again my prophecies about games and why I do NOT buy them come true. MW2: Lack of servers will make cheating run rampart. Result: True. AC2: Mandatory internet connection will hurt legit players and not affect crackers. Result: Judge for yourself.
So I'm not angry. I'm smug.
Re:They have the money already (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Firewall alert: assassinscreed.exe is trying to access the internet. Do you want to [Allow] or [Deny].
2) Clicks deny.
3) ???
4) Profit!
Another way would be to put "onlinenow.ubisoft.com" in your Hosts file.
Re:Hope they learned a lesson (Score:1, Insightful)
30 lives, bro.
Re:Nice response from an Ubisoft rep (Score:2, Insightful)
This is common sense. This is societal expectation. Why is this not the law?
(Thought question, no need for politics.)
Re:The DRM is working. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Down or DDoS? (Score:4, Insightful)
...which would have cost them more than the game will earn in profits.
I doubt it, but still a fatal flaw. Among many. The game only lasts as long as the servers are up and active. The servers are up and active as long as the game is still making a profit. The profitable window for games is not very long. So the game is fucked by design.. Long live stupid DRM. Every pissed off user is another nail in the coffin.
Re:They have the money already (Score:3, Insightful)
Before they do that they would simply release a patch where those servers were not needed and allow you to download your save game.
I doubt it. Once you have already paid for the game, your continuing to play the game costs them money. It is in their best interest to simply shut the servers down as quickly as their lawyers say that they can without getting a class action suit. They won't allow you to play offline because if you could play without their DRM servers, you wouldn't need to buy new games as often, and they can't allow that. This DRM seems specifically designed to insure that you *must* buy new games every year or two.
It sounds exactly like Steam would be if Microsoft owned it.
Re:The DRM is working. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, proper means "That which is right, suitable, or appropriate." Digital Restrictions Management is a much more suitable term.
Re:LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
My shitty TimeWarner cable internet is constantly having intermittent connection problems. It's happened at least three times already today. Most of the time I don't notice it, and I'd appreciate not having some horrible DRM system making the problem worse.
Re:Down or DDoS? (Score:5, Insightful)
How would they do that? As far as I know, the pirated version doesn't even try to phone home, so there would be no way to track pirates.
I find it endlessly amusing that the only people who can play AC2 right now are the people who pirated it, despite the fact that the DRM is intended to prevent piracy. No pirates are inconvenienced by this outage; only customers who have already paid.
Re:Interesting (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem I see with this is "How do you keep it on the Cartridge?"
Which is not different to trying to keep it on a floppy, a HDD a CD, a DVD or other.
Once placed on the cart, it is nothing more than computer code that can be copied to any other medium. Even if the cart itself was a specific dongle, it would be no different to when games required a CD to work. "Virtual drives".
Good thinking though.
Few reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Gamers may try and return the game. I suppose Ubisoft could refuse to issue refunds but that opens them up to lawsuits. Like it or not, a sold product does have an implied warranty of fitness, meaning that it will work for the purpose you sell it. If it doesn't, customers can get their money back and if you won't give it to them, a court can and will force the issue.
2) It puts off people who haven't bought the game yet. Not everyone buys a game on the day it comes out. Plenty of people wait a bit. Well, they see this, realize that it is true if the auth servers are down there's no game to be played, and decide "Nah, I'll buy a different game." I mean we do not at all lack for good games these days, people can and will take their money elsewhere.
3) It can lead to these people refusing to be customers again. Sure you got their money this time, however a business does not live based on selling one product. You need repeat sales. People who get burned by this (or just hear about it) may decide to give Ubisoft products a miss in the future because of it.
The idea of "Oh well they got their money," is rather short sighted. When businesses operate like that, screwing people over and saying "We already got the money so who cares?" the end result is often the business suffering or going broke in the future.
Re:Down or DDoS? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Then implementing something that requires your servers to be available 24/7 OR ELSE is patently stupid."
So is buying a game from such a company...
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, it doesn't matter if it's up 99.99999999999% of the time. Because most of the time you're not trying to play a game that requires the internet connection. It only matters if it happens to be down when you want to play the game.
The only way to achieve that is to have a connection that is either ALWAYS up 24x7 with 100% reliability; or otherwise is only down when you don't want to play the game. Neither is a particularly realistic proposition.
Sure, it's not the end of the world if you can't play the game at some point. But that's just weasel-words to get around the real issue: Ubisoft have added a dependency on a component which is otherwise completely unrelated to the game. If you're playing a single-player game, your internet connection shouldn't matter. In fact, a single-player game is exactly the kind of thing you might decide to do if your internet connection does go down in order to pass the time while you wait for it to be fixed.
And of course, it's not just your own internet connection that matters here: your ability to play the game is dependent on the reliability of things which are entirely outside of your control. Just because your connection to Verizon is up doesn't mean their connection to some other arbitrary network is working reliably.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
What I love about this is the number of posts in previous threads over the last few months claiming that this was a nontrivial DRM, that it wouldn't be broken for weeks.
Can we finally set to rest the notion that there is such a thing as non-trivial to crack DRM?
Re:LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're referring to the producer, then yes. Absolutely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jade_Raymond [wikipedia.org]
so the only ones able to play the game (Score:3, Insightful)
right now... are the pirates?
that's just completely hilarious. I posted in the recent thread on this saying the pirates were the ones that were going to ultimately get the better product, and looks like I was right. I want my cookie now.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Not just all that but as crazy as it sounds I have gamer friends with no internet, but with all the latest consoles, games and ridiculously overpowered PCs. They own and enjoyed the previous Assasins Creed games but will never purchase this latest one. Congrats, Ubisoft, you just fucked over the only guy I know that buys around half dozen games monthly.
Re:Interesting method... (Score:3, Insightful)
It didn't break the DRM, it broke the game.
Which forces the developer to remove the DRM from the game so that their paying customers can use the product.
If this is a DDoS attack it's essentially a ransom. It's like creating the world's most secure data network only to have the CEO's daughter kidnapped and getting a ransom letter for the password.
Instead of attacking the DRM you attack the human interests of those who have the keys.
Re:Reminds me of a story (Score:3, Insightful)
> Dozens of customers complaining daily and it took them three months to finally figure out "gee the whole block is down, let's go look at the router for this block."
That's what you get if you streamline your business by only hiring phone droids and cable monkeys. They are not paid to think, so they don't.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
- The only people who can play the game right now are pirates.
- The only people who are blocked from playing the game right now are those who legally purchaced the game.
Which group would you rather be in?
Welcome to Bizarro World...
Re:Reminds me of a story (Score:5, Insightful)
The sad part is that it's likely quite a few of these actually have engineering degrees and real problem-solving skills but learned within a few weeks of starting their jobs that thinking for yourself and trying to find solutions that would not only temporarily fix a single customer's problem but also avoid having the problem happen to anyone else is not only not encouraged but downright discouraged, because thinking about things like that is what management is supposed to do.
This is at least how my experience with working tech support was, a bunch of guys, ~50% of which were engineers or computer scientists, sitting in a room applying the same stupid workarounds all day every day and complaining amongst each other about how they weren't being put to good use.
/Mikael
Crack your software. (Score:1, Insightful)
If you paid for it, you own it. Learn how to install cracks to disable DRM for the software that you own. EULA are not legal because you already bought the software at the store based on the doctrine of first sale. You own that copy of the software 100%, don't let anyone tell you different.
If you get on a jury regarding anything pirate and DRM related, do whatever it takes to get on the jury and then vote innocent.
Re:Well, duh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Any reason he can't do both?
Re:Nice response from an Ubisoft rep (Score:3, Insightful)
I do agree, though. Don't advocate breaking the rules. Advocate better rules.
A friend of mine had to wait two weeks for his new computer to make it from the internal IT dept to his desk. The reason? Some kind of tangled mess involving license keys that were valid, yet didn't work. Lots of time on the phone with Microsoft, and finally he got his new machine. Then he had to go and download the software he needed from various websites, and click through all the questions and license agreements to get it all installed. Total employee time taken? I don't want to know.
Meanwhile, I got my new computer, popped in my Linux disc, and used Aptitude to install my favorite software while I was having lunch. Total employee time taken? A little over one hour.
The reason I could do that is that many people have rejected the conditions that come attached to the major proprietary software packages, and given their support to free software, instead. The same can work for games, too: play the games that don't come with onerous rules, and refuse to play the games that come with too many strings attached. Breaking the rules won't solve the problem, because it doesn't give the right incentives to the producers. We don't want to break the rules, we don't want the rules to be there in the first place!
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
indeed, very likely it took some people who were very capable.
But ubisoft did the stupid thing: bragged that their new system was going to be really hard to crack and there's few things that will get hackers hacking faster than telling them they're not smart enough to do it.
Re:so the only ones able to play the game (Score:1, Insightful)
No. Pirates can't play it.
There is no working crack yet. That part of the DRM is actually working.
Send A Message (Score:5, Insightful)
Ubisoft won't be able to shrug it off as "piracy" when their sales numbers for this game begin to shrink due to returns and angry retailers. THIS will hit them in the pocketbook more than a simple, dubiously effective boycott. When they are forced to start handing money back because of their failures, that will speak much louder than never having been paid that money to begin with.
Re:LOL (Score:3, Insightful)
There's still the small third group of smartass white-hats who purchased the game and then applied the crack to a legally owned copy :)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:LOL (Score:4, Insightful)
What karma? People who already gave Ubisoft their money can't play. Looks to me that Ubisoft's dogma is alive and barking.
Go on, argue that all those idiots won't be dumb enough to give Ubisoft more money next time. I'll bet that anyone retarded enough to do it once isn't the sort of person likely to learn from their mistakes.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
All internet connection arguments aside, let's not lose sight of two simple facts:
- The only people who can play the game right now are pirates.
- The only people who are blocked from playing the game right now are those who legally purchaced the game.
Which group would you rather be in?
Welcome to Bizarro World...
This is the whole problem with DRM of any kind.
It only ever works against the folks who actually paid for your game.
The pirates have cracked the DRM, they've removed it or bypassed it or whatever. Your DRM is completely and totally irrelevant to the pirates. At best it'll take a day or two before it is cracked, so a few very impatient folks will pay for the game rather than pirate it... But that's the best you can hope for.
Your paying customers, however, have to put up with whatever awful DRM you've wrapped your product in. They've chosen to do the right thing... To shell out their hard-earned cash for your product... Even though, generally speaking, they are able to get their hands on a pirated version. And you repay them by taking a big ol' dump on their computer.
Effective way of fighting draconian DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
Chances are pretty good that this outage was simply due to incompetence.
That said, it raises a rather interesting issue. It really demonstrates that there is a single point at which the game can be brought down.
I have to wonder if in the future, if other games include even more draconian DRM schemes that also require constant Internet access, if pirates might just intentionally attacking the servers involved (probably DDoS). I could see them doing this just to discourage such DRM (that may be harder to crack in the future, such as if more of the game data is held on the servers).
DRM could really be turned against the publishers. Ironically, by trying too hard to stop the pirates at launch, they may just be making it easy for pirates to destroy the launch.
Re:People complaining about the DRM should read th (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the problem - that works wonderfully as a theory. It fails utterly in practice.
Really? Based on what metric?
The simple fact that PC game developers are still in business and still making money, despite wasting who knows how many millions of dollars every year on failed anti-piracy measures is all it takes to prove otherwise. And that's not even mentioning the small developers that are being successful despite using no DRM whatsoever. Here's just one excellent example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sins_of_a_solar_empire [wikipedia.org]. Here's a bit I'm quoting from the page itself: "As of September 2008, Stardock's CEO, Brad Wardell, has stated that the game has sold over 500,000 units, with 100,000 of those being digital download sales, on a budget of less than $1,000,000. It sold 200,000 copies in the first month after release alone." And since the sources for that quote are extremely relevant here, I'll link those as well. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20026 [gamasutra.com] http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/14383 [techreport.com]
The only possible metric you can use that would make what you said in any way correct is the one the big corporations use: that every pirated copy is a lost sale. So I guess it "fails utterly" if your metric is that they aren't making near as much money as they "could" be.