Ubisoft claims DDoS attack on its DRM servers, as gamers worldwide get locked out of Silent Hunter V and Assassins Creed II. Updated
Just yesterday we were posting about the apparent cracking of Ubisoft's online-based DRM for Silent Hunter V, and now the DRM plot has thickened even more. For the last few days players have had serious issues playing Assassins Creed II and Silent Hunter V thanks to serious outages with Ubisoft's DRM server.
Ubisoft claims that it's not an outage but a DDoS attack, and that it's only affecting a small percentage of users. The situation on Ubi's forums, however, suggests otherwise. There are 28 pages of very angry users on the official ACII forums, and even claims that whole pages of posts are being deleted - though of course, we understand that game forums do come with a certain amount of hyperbole. Interestingly, one user has managed to get an answer on how to get a refund. "When I threatened legal action [to an Ubisoft representative] for being unable to play the game I purchased I was told that customers who submit their CD keys will be provided a full refund and their account will be terminated," posted one GDFTigerTank.
In return, Ubisoft's adamant that they're in the right. "We worry about our customers and apologize to anyone who couldn't play ACII or SH5 yesterday. All in all, we hope people understand all this is done to preserve the future of PC gaming," Ubisoft said in an article posted on UK tech site Bit-tech.
As of writing posts are still appearing on the Silent Hunter V forums regarding users unable to play, but local Ubisoft reps still say it's a transient issue. "Those who already had a game session open during the attack experienced no glitches in their game sessions," reports Chad Acer, our man at Ubisoft Australia. "Only the people who attempted to open a game session during the attack had difficulty in accessing the servers (from 2:30pm - 9pm, Paris time). It's important to note that ACII & SH5 are withstanding the efforts to crack them."
Which is interesting, given the claims from Ubi's own forum users that cracked versions of the game are the only versions of the game running fine. "I got my game from the Pirate Bay store," posted ultimate_taggof. "Not having any of the problems mentioned here."
It's hard to make out exactly what the issue is, and even Ubisoft's own message seems at times unclear, with early responses to the outages admitting that it's an issue related to exceptional demand, rather than an actual attack. Regardless of what is actually happening, there are however three incontrovertible truths in play.
Firstly, it's pretty obvious that if Ubisoft's going to rely on a server-based solution to DRM, it needs to guarantee that service is going to be rock-solid. It's also obvious that PC gamers do not find this level of DRM welcome, and that's even before DRM server downtimes - needing people to be online really does mean some consumers simply cannot play these titles. Lastly, it's also obvious that regardless of its unpopularity, DRM is very much here to stay - game companies do in fact have a right to protect their property, and the apparent pride of crackers and piracy advocates will only harden publishers to the fact that DRM is a necessity.
The real challenge, will be getting that DRM to work for all concerned.
Update, 10.27am, 10.03.10In regards to the reports from the Ubisoft forums that posts have been deleted, we've been informed by Ubi's Digital and Relationship Marketing guy that this is not in fact correct. The posts were moved to the launching issues sub-folder of the forum, so as to make it easier for support mods can keep across all relevant issues in one spot.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012