Ubisoft's New DRM (fail)

Cuddlesworth

Overheal wrote: »

Thats why my email password is an algorithm derived from one of the first string of pairs of my DNA

(its not really. but that would be cool)

I use a pretty good 21 digit password.

humanji

I just write mine on the mens room wall in my local. No problems so far.

Jumpy

humanji wrote: »

I just write mine on the mens room wall in my local. No problems so far.

Except by some fluke it was my phone number. Thanks for that. Really.

Overheal

I thought that sounded like a man! :mad:

Overheal

Ubisoft had the fantastic idea of forcing gamers of Assassin's Creed 2 to stay online while they played, to ensure via DRM that players weren't pirating their wares. Then hackers brought down the servers, rendering the game unplayable.

Now the publisher is apologizing by tossing players some free games, Kotaku reports.

Kotaku says Ubisoft is emailing an offer to affected gamers, letting some choose the downloadable content for Assassin's Creed 2, while offering others downloads of Prince of Persia, Heroes Over Europe, Endwar or H.A.W.X.

If you were affected by the server shutdown, let us know if you're happy with the make-good offer.

Ubi Apologizes For Assassin's Creed 2 PC Downtime With Free Games [Kotaku]

http://consumerist.com/2010/03/ubisoft-apologizes-for-hosing-pc-gamers-by-offering-free-downloads.html

HAWX was a good game... now i dont have to feel bad at all about not paying a dime for it.

yoyo

Overheal wrote: »

http://consumerist.com/2010/03/ubisoft-apologizes-for-hosing-pc-gamers-by-offering-free-downloads.html

HAWX was a good game... now i dont have to feel bad at all about not paying a dime for it.

Well it was indeed a nice offer, I do think they should also re think their DRM strategy though, The DRM will be cracked soon, and as always further versions will start getting cracked in shorter amounts of time, thats the way DRM always works, also hackers didnt bring down ubis servers I heard, it was just simply to many people accessing it at the same time, blame the hackers of course though :rolleyes:

Nick

marco_polo

Overheal wrote: »

Thats why my email password is an algorithm derived from one of the first string of pairs of my DNA

(its not really. but that would be cool)

Reasonably secure, however a long lost evil twin could easily steal your entire online identity antiOverheal.

Star Lord

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

I use a pretty good 21 digit password.

abcdefghijklmnopqrstu ?

AlmightyCushion

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

So you lost your password to your steam account, and lost your password to your email account and valve\steam are to blame?

Nope that was my own fault. Although in my defence I only set up the email account to get half life installed. Never used it after that as I still didn't have an internet connection. Why I was pissed at steam was because when I told them I didn't have access to the email address I signed up with they asked me to email them pics of my serial key and receipt and all other types of things. When I sent them this I got nowhere with them. The other reason it pissed me off was because most other games would just let me stick in the cd and install the game.

humanji

Not sure if anybody mentioned it already but I was reading a review of Assassins Creed 2 in PC Gamer and they actually say that the game is good but don't buy it because of the DRM. Looks like everyone is against them. Poor Jade

Kiith

I dont think i've ever seen a game thats been released for as long as Assassins Creed 2, without being cracked. Yes its a pain in the hole, but for stopping piracy, its a pretty effective pain in the hole. If it continues to stay un-crackable, then we will see more developers take this route, as they have no choice. Something needs to be done against piracy, and if this is their only option, then they will take it.

jaykhunter

Is there no easier way to combat piracy? What about making you open an account with ubisoft and registering the unique CD-key? And so registering your PC with your ubisoft account so it knows you're legit. And then if you wanted to reinstall it to the same PC, hey no probs, and if you wanted to reinstall it to a different PC, "unregister" the game with your old PC and re-register it with the new one.

Is is that bloody hard to do? Is this really the best that this company can come up with? Uninterrupted constant online checks?

Stev_o

jaykhunter wrote: »

Is there no easier way to combat piracy? What about making you open an account with ubisoft and registering the unique CD-key? And so registering your PC with your ubisoft account so it knows you're legit. And then if you wanted to reinstall it to the same PC, hey no probs, and if you wanted to reinstall it to a different PC, "unregister" the game with your old PC and re-register it with the new one.

Is is that bloody hard to do? Is this really the best that this company can come up with? Uninterrupted constant online checks?

That's what most games do and look how pirated that stuff is.

I like Stardocks play on things, you won't be asked for the CD key when your installing your game but when you go to get a patch or update off their site you will have to provide a CD key to download it and when you install it, same for the Witcher aswell.

Mochara627

If this stupid move continues then it will kill PC gaming. I normally play online but i'm having serious DSL sync issues with my connection lately and keep getting cut off meaning I can't play online games. I play single player games instead for the moment. If this situation was more widely used then i'd be unable to play anything. What a wonderful situation for gamers to be in.

jaykhunter

Mochara627 wrote: »

If this stupid move continues then it will kill PC gaming. I normally play online but i'm having serious DSL sync issues with my connection lately and keep getting cut off meaning I can't play online games. I play single player games instead for the moment. If this situation was more widely used then i'd be unable to play anything. What a wonderful situation for gamers to be in.

The PC game developers must be pretty confident that all unhappy PC gamers will just buy a console and a copy of that game instead :rolleyes: I'm not a PC gamer and I'm angry for you!! :pac::pac:

jaykhunter

Stev_o wrote: »

That's what most games do and look how pirated that stuff is.

Surely that means the CD-key is not unique; it's randomly generated and so can be overcome easily with a CD-key generator?

Maybe they should do it like how ready-to-go can top up; which is essentially the same thing (i.e just an instantaneously randomly-generated code that is immediately activated)

i.e. you buy a game in HMV, they order a unique CD-key; and you use that key to register online, giving your e-mail address/ubisoft account so if anything happens they know your copy is legit?

Maybe this stuff is harder than I make it out to be, but if 02 can do it, why can't it be applied to videogames? Are paying customers their most hated foe? :P

marco_polo

Kiith wrote: »

I dont think i've ever seen a game thats been released for as long as Assassins Creed 2, without being cracked. Yes its a pain in the hole, but for stopping piracy, its a pretty effective pain in the hole. If it continues to stay un-crackable, then we will see more developers take this route, as they have no choice. Something needs to be done against piracy, and if this is their only option, then they will take it.

The PC sales figures will be a factor as well, after all not much point having an uncrackable game that you can't sell. I don't know what they are like for AC2 on PC, but they deserve to be ,and I expect that they are, are quite low.

yoyo

Kiith wrote: »

I dont think i've ever seen a game thats been released for as long as Assassins Creed 2, without being cracked. Yes its a pain in the hole, but for stopping piracy, its a pretty effective pain in the hole. If it continues to stay un-crackable, then we will see more developers take this route, as they have no choice. Something needs to be done against piracy, and if this is their only option, then they will take it.

Splinter Cell chaos theory, google that + star force, took ages to be cracked. That wonderful protection did come with its disadvantages though, it broke loads of peoples dvd drives :rolleyes::rolleyes:, Ubi were sued a good bit for using it due to this issiue naturally

Nick

humanji

Why can't they go with the honour system? When you go to install the game, you're asked if you pirated the game. If you say no, it continues to install. If you say yes, then it doesn't install. If you're lying and say no, then it installs and you're left with a feeling of guilt.

Seems perfect to me.

Antar Bolaeisk

Apparently Skidrow have cracked AC2 and it's now fully playable. I believe they've also included their own DRM as well to frustrate Ubisoft.

I wonder if this is the end of the Ubisoft DRM or will every new game sporting it require the same length of time to build a queries/response database.

oceanclub

Antar Bolaeisk wrote: »

Apparently Skidrow have cracked AC2 and it's now fully playable.

Fair play to Brush Shiels; didn't know he was a hacker as well:



P.

Antar Bolaeisk

He obviously does it in his spare time

wayne040576

Antar Bolaeisk wrote: »

Apparently Skidrow have cracked AC2 and it's now fully playable. I believe they've also included their own DRM as well to frustrate Ubisoft.

I wonder if this is the end of the Ubisoft DRM or will every new game sporting it require the same length of time to build a queries/response database.

If it took this long to crack then I imagine that UbiSoft consider it a success and will use a similar approach in future games.

Antar Bolaeisk

wayne040576 wrote: »

If it took this long to crack then I imagine that UbiSoft consider it a success and will use a similar approach in future games.

Depends on whether it's a one crack fits all scenario or whether they'll have to start from scratch with the server queries/responses I would imagine though it's most likely the latter.

yoyo

wayne040576 wrote: »

If it took this long to crack then I imagine that UbiSoft consider it a success and will use a similar approach in future games.

Not really a success considering the number of times the games were returned, not to mention the fact people having experienced the protection first hand have not boycotted buying further Ubi games due to it, As with all copy protections, the longer it is out and the more time hackers have been working on it, the easier it gets to crack gradually and soon it will be "no problem" to crack by the hackers, It will be interesting to see Ubis reponse anyway, will they release the no DRM patch as promised, I doubt it :rolleyes:, games using simple cd check based protections and online activation have taking much longer than a month to crack in some cases, Look at Tages SolidShield or Securom Activation, although both these solutions get cracked shortly after release date these days ironically

Nick

jaykhunter

You'd have to think that legitimate customers having big problems will kill their future sales. Or maybe those PC gamers will get consoles....

There has to be a better way to combat piracy & protect their product than to inconvenience both pirates and legitimate customers.

wayne040576

yoyo wrote: »

, It will be interesting to see Ubis reponse anyway, will they release the no DRM patch as promised, I doubt it :rolleyes:,

Nick

They did release a patch to remove the drm from Anno 1404 last year only a few months after its release. I'm hoping so as I won't buy it until there is an official patch.