Saturday February 11, 2012 8:59 AM AEST

Atomic MPC > News > Game > PC Games > Ubisoft offers free games for service outages

PC Games

Ubisoft offers free games for service outages

Games publishers might still be perfecting workable DRM, but at least some have their hearts in the right place.

We've been riding Ubisoft pretty hard over the company's decision to enforce an internet connection to play its Silent Hunter 5 title. Forced connectivity might seem an elegant solution, but it's only as useful as your server is reliable - and between alleged DDoS attacks and the game's own popularity, Ubisoft's servers were anything but at launch.

That said, the company has offered gamers who suffered connection difficulties and problematic save games a pretty neat deal. We woke up this morning to find this on our inbox:

Following the recent temporary game server outages which may have caused disruption to some Silent Hunter 5 players on PC only, we would like to reward your patience if you have experienced any problems by offerring you a full downloadable game from the list provided below, completely free of charge.

The games on offer are Prince of Persia and Shaun White's Snowboarding - nothing to sneeze at. So, while we may not agree that Ubisoft's solution to piracy and digital rights is the best one, we have to applaud them for at least following through with a generous offer.

Behind the scenes with Mass Effect 3! GTX 560 VGA round-up! Essential Skyrim tweaks to improve your game! Plus reviews, news, hardware, more games, and easy to following modding guides for PC builders. ON SALE NOW!

Ads by Google

13 Comments

sirtrancealot Mar 26, 2010 10:43 AM	The road to Hell is paved with good intentions :)
Hawkeye Mar 26, 2010 10:47 AM	That it surely is.
majestic975 Mar 26, 2010 11:14 AM	Not a bad deal, if you like those games.
somemadcaaant Mar 26, 2010 11:49 AM	As I've said on many an occasion... make good games and people will come in droves with wallets wide open... the only way to clear pirating. Make shit games and it will have the complete opposite effect. Try before u buy comes in many forms... They can protect their crap-ware all they want.
philo-sofa Mar 26, 2010 1:48 PM	^^ I'm sorry but I do think that's a little naive dude. People who would buy will pirate good games - I mean seriously, arre you suggesting people intentionally torrent only BAD games? Not saying I've never done it, or that I will never do it again, but I do try and support th eindustry where I can, and on the odd occasion I don't I try and be self-honest enough to admit I'm nicking something and not blame companies for their DRM.
bozo01 Mar 26, 2010 2:01 PM	I hope that email you got was real and not a scam. :D
Hawkeye Mar 26, 2010 2:16 PM	Gee, bozo, vote of confidence right there... you know you don't have to live up to your username, right?
sirtrancealot Mar 26, 2010 3:25 PM	For me if I don't think it's worth the $50-100 for the game then I won't buy it, but hell i played BFBC2 off a cracked copy for the first 2 weeks it was out, while i made my decision to buy. And now i have and feel like i got my money's worth.. pretty much the same for every other game ive ever purchased. Nothing worse than picking something up of the shelf with no idea what it's really like, playing it, realising it's shit after 5 mins and not being able to get your money back. Wii games have to be the worst for that tho, there are so many $60+ games that i wouldn't pay $2 for, sometimes I find turfing the burnt disc off the balcony more entertaining than the game itself.
somemadcaaant Mar 26, 2010 5:14 PM	Yeah I was about to state a reply about the Wii/xbox as an example. Nail right on the head. They force feed us shit and expect us to like it and pay royally for it. Quote: "Not saying I've never done it, or that I will never do it again," - Now see If the game was good enough for your hard earned u wouldn't hesitate about spending on it, as it would be a worthy investment, obviously. It's all about trying before u HAVE to spend these days, too much rubbish to sort thru. AVP broke my heart when I played my cousins PC version, PS3 demo was rubbish... the early games where the best games I've played. Some companies r in the wrong business and their all out to scam a buck. Blah, no caffeine today. SMC.
MasterShrive Mar 27, 2010 5:54 PM	I do agree that if it's good you'll pay for it. Sure, some people will pirate regardless, but in general if a game is really worth it then you'll purchase it yourself. Same with movies, music, etc. For example, the very first time I played Age of Empires it was a friend's copy (the first real PC game I ever played). I loved it, made sure to save up for it, and purchased every single "Age of" title since that time. Same thing with Call of Duty - played the original at a LAN and loved it. Made sure to buy it, put roughly 1,500 gaming hours in to CoDUO (with about 2/3 of that online) and purchased every CoD game since (including the recent fail in the series). Thousands of hours worth of gaming for a few hundred bucks. Good value in my mind.
bozo01 Mar 28, 2010 9:07 PM	@Master Shrive Age of Empires was the first real PC game I played too. I've bought every AOE game as well including Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds which is AOE2 with Star Wars units and buildings. Oh,and this thing about trying before you buy is why demos were invented. If you want to know whether you should buy a game or not, play the demo over and over and over. I've done this with Batman Arkham Asylum and I still want to buy it.I tried to do it with Crysis too only the low frame rate started to get annoying. I just couldn't get myself to lower the settings, it just looked too good...
sirtrancealot Mar 29, 2010 11:03 AM	Can you even still get Demo's for Consoles like the wii tho? I remember back in the day using the Playstation 1 Demo disks with a variety of games back in the day, but I can't say i've seen anything similar in recent years
Nchalada Mar 31, 2010 9:38 AM	Unfortunately, with most demos these days, they're buggy, are missing content that should be there (ie wall textures from Bee Movie Game demo, to name one(was for the kids)) and just not "fun" enough to even consider the purchase of the game the demo's promoting.

Comments have been disabled on this article.

Latest Competitions

Thermaltake kicks off your gaming year with a BANG
Thermaltake has started off the new year with a bang by giving away a Tt eSport Theron Laser mouse to not one or two, but TWENTY lucky Atomicans!

Atomic Magazine

Issue: 133 | February, 2012

Atomic is a magazine aimed squarely at computer enthusiasts, gamers, and serious PC upgraders.

Every month we bring you the latest reviews of new technology and PC components, in depth features on everything from overclocking to console hacking, and gaming previews and interviews.

What's in this issue?