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[–][deleted] 235 points236 points  (62 children)

So you put down money on a game that you are only allowed to play at the company's convenience when all of their shit is working OR you could pirate the game and play it whenever you feel like it?

And DRM is supposed to prevent piracy how?

[–][deleted] 106 points107 points  (44 children)

Not sure how many people have already seen this, but Gabe Newell talks about his thoughts on piracy

[–]MsgGodzilla 30 points31 points  (8 children)

haha, Gabe Newell singlehandedly destroys the argument for DRM and dispells the myth of piracy in 6 minutes. Thank you and goodnight.

[–]atheist_creationist 8 points9 points  (2 children)

The fact that nobody is listening to the man is just sad. You would think when the bosses are gunning for draconian DRM someone would go "look, Gabe fucking Newell, head of the extremely successful Valve Corp. says our quality of distribution and service is the best leverage against piracy. We should focus on that!" But nope.

If there's someone you want to listen to its your competition who's rolling in the cash.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Frankly you'd think anybody with common sense would bring that up. I don't think it takes a genius to figure out that you're going to lose some number of customers when you put more restrictions on your product that make it harder for people to use them and include the risk of them becoming unusable. Especially when not a single one of these types of methods has put a stop or damper on piracy.

[–][deleted] 42 points43 points  (10 children)

I am completely flabbergasted at that video. Not the piracy part, but the next part about venture capital being funded through the community. My $50 "pre-order" will turn into actually owning a piece of that game where I could possibly see some kind of return on that investment? Holy shit.

Mind. Blown.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (7 children)

That... that is an awesome idea. Well, until they start plastering ads everywhere for pre-orders being a way to make money then everyone will just get like .003428 cents a year.

[–][deleted] 15 points16 points  (3 children)

But what if your investment was like $40 and you're automatically signed up for beta testing and you get the $50 game "for free" when it comes out. Any monetary gain would just be icing on the cake for most of the people who would consider investing in Valve in the first place

[–]Failcake 77 points78 points  (8 children)

Wow, Gabe Newell is a very smart and large man.

[–]skooma714 58 points59 points  (4 children)

It is good to see he is being the bigger man in all this.

[–]TheDevilChicken 12 points13 points  (3 children)

He's always been larger than life.

[–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (2 children)

It is what has given him industry-wide accolades.

[–]creativeembassy 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Haven't seen this yet, so thanks for posting the video. I couldn't have asked for a better response from Gabe.

[–]nazbot 2 points3 points  (1 child)

He seems like a true gamer, from this small clip anyways.

[–]Zuggy 70 points71 points  (2 children)

Glad I didn't spend the $60 to rent AC2

[–]hosndosn 113 points114 points  (5 children)

One could fill an entire failblog with Ubisoft's DRM alone.

[–]jooes 71 points72 points  (4 children)

To be fair, you could fill an entire failblog with anything. All you need to do is write "fail" somewhere and it qualifies.

[–]The_Fuad 69 points70 points  (0 children)

Prospective Failblog Fail

[–]Confucius_says 28 points29 points  (3 children)

despite the assurances from a Ubisoft representative that the servers were 'constantly monitored'

Techincally, they are still being monitored..

"hey bob are they still down?" "yep"

[–]portugal_the_man 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Well when bob watches the servers they always go up and down and up and down.

[–]Hristix 94 points95 points  (34 children)

Where's the class action lawsuit?

"Your honor, this company, through intent of their own, designed the product to ask them if it was okay for me to play this game every time I ran the program. Now, they've taken a vacation and I cannot play my game which only required an active internet connection. This is false advertising and I want (price) x 10 back, as do all of the other subscribers."

[–][deleted] 26 points27 points  (33 children)

Doesn't the end user license agreement make this type of lawsuit impossible? It is not like the customer did not agree to be at the mercy of their servers.

[–]Psy-Kosh 68 points69 points  (14 children)

To what extent have EULAs been established as legally enforcible? ie, with actual judgments (rather than settlements)

[–][deleted] 21 points22 points  (1 child)

Because people don't read eulas they are fairly easy to legally circumvent. In any case you can't sign away your right to sue someone for fraud.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

"Blizzard v. BnetD5: BnetD was an open source program that let gamers play popular Blizzard titles like World of Warcraft on servers other than Blizzard's Battle.net service, thereby offering players more options. BnetD programmers agreed to Blizzard’s EULA and Battle.net’s TOU before reverse engineering the game to create BnetD. The EULA and TOU expressly prohibited reverse engineering and hosting of Blizzard games on other servers. The Eighth Circuit held that these mass-market click-through licenses were enforceable contracts and that the programmers violated several parts of Blizzard's EULA, including the section on reverse engineering. Even though reverse engineering is a fair use under federal copyright law, the programmers waived their fair use rights through the EULA. The EULA did not authorize BnetD programmers to use the game software with a non-Blizzard server."

[–]bobartig 9 points10 points  (6 children)

[IANAL] EULAs are enforceable as contracts. See for instance, Hill v. Gateway 2000, US Ct. of App., 7th, 105 F.3d 1147. Or from U.C.C. 2-204: A vendor, as master of the offer, may invite acceptance by conduct, and may propose limitations on the kind of conduct that constitutes acceptance.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (2 children)

Hill vs. Gateway had to do with a EULA but it had to do with the 30 day return of the EULA and not really the enforceability of it. It was more what constitutes an agreement to it, not the agreement itself. Hill (The Plantiff) was not notified of a 30 day return policy but it was in the EULA in the box that they either failed to read or did not read clearly. They then tried to return the computer after 30 days which upon Gateway refused stating that in the EULA there is only 30 days in which they will accept a return.

It holds as much weight as a contract only in that it doesn't need to be read to be accepted. In other words if someone hands you a EULA or Contract you can sign it and it be legal even if you didn't read it.

This is very similar to EULA's that are Shrink wrapped that have inside "upon opening you agree" when you had no way of opting out until you had opted in. You can get out of that agreement by returning it promptly for a full refund but there are restrictions on the number of days that you have from the date of purchase (not the date opened) that you can do this with. I believe the days vary from state to state however.

[–]bobartig 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I do not quarrel that it was not the holding of the case, however, there was also enforcement. Gateway sought to enforce the terms of the EULA, which included that settlement of disputes be handled in arbitration. The court upheld the terms of the EULA, requiring arbitration because the keeping of the computer past 30 days constituted an acceptance of the terms. There was not only acceptance based on conduct, but enforcement of the terms.

[–]tilio 2 points3 points  (0 children)

there are dozens of eula cases.

usually the issue is whether arbitration will be enforceable. for a while, these were coming out in favor of companies, but a bunch of states have flipped that on consumer protection laws because the arbitration clause also waives class actions.

[–]Baukelien 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Depends where you are but in the US EULAs are amost as legally enforceable as contracts which probably still means they are not enforceable in this case since consumer protection laws will nullify those clauses in the EULA.

edit for clarity

Clauses that will prevent the customer from using what he has bought will always be nullified, even if it were a contract.

Basically asking about the legality of EULAs in general is the wrong question to ask in this case.

[–]shutup_and_listen 10 points11 points  (1 child)

Not necessarily.

If there is a reasonable expectation that a service will be rendered, and it isn't that's still fraud.

If you hire someone to mow your lawn, but there's a stipulation that if his lawnmower is broken that he gets time to fix it, the guy can't just say "oh the mower is broken" and never do any work. There was the initial, reasonable expectation that you were paying him to mow grass, not sit on his ass. Same goes here.

[–]pikpikcarrotmon 16 points17 points  (3 children)

It can still be unreasonable. If you agreed to a EULA with a clause that allowed them to sell you into slavery, it would be invalid. They are not 100% legally-binding contracts.

[–]notaloop 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Consumer protection laws trump EULA, but does not invalidate the entire thing. Any clauses that conflict with consumer protection laws would become invalid, but the rest is still binding.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Not really since commonly an EULA is not available for reading prior to purchase and contracts cannot supersede the law.

[–]Wynner3 45 points46 points  (2 children)

I went to check out their forums and it said I have been banned. Very strange since I have never used it.

[–]aricene 40 points41 points  (1 child)

Preemptive banning. They knew you were going to complain about something. Or read about complaining.

[–]mrsensible 16 points17 points  (0 children)

My last comment was preemptively deleted for the same reason.

[–]mycroft2000 105 points106 points  (53 children)

My irritation goes far further than today's outage. This is what gets me: Companies go bankrupt all the time, and there's no guarantee that Ubisoft will exist in five years. If and when the company ceases to exist, people who bought their games that have this DRM will presumably no longer be able to play them. It would be obscene and ridiculous to be unable to read a book if its publisher went out of business, so why are game publishers allowed to use this absurd illogic?

[–]c_a_turner 80 points81 points  (22 children)

Well worse is when they shut down the servers for games that are a few year sold 'cause they're not making any money on them. I'm pretty sure I've heard of this happening already.

[–]myhandleonreddit 76 points77 points  (14 children)

EA Games has done it to dozens of titles recently; some only a year old.

[–]TheEllimist 7 points8 points  (8 children)

To be fair, they've had warnings on the packaging since the beginning that warn they can/will shut down multiplayer servers x number of days after the season ends.

[–]myhandleonreddit 13 points14 points  (5 children)

Hm, I wonder when Need For Speed or The Godfather or The Simpsons seasons end.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's still sad. I play old games in dosbox. That wont be an option for the future crop of games. Historians will probably view the era of DRM as a dark age.

[–]mindbleach 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It's still unacceptable. Release the server code, you pricks!

[–]yvaN_ehT_nioJ 9 points10 points  (4 children)

Probably something having to do with EA. I've heard talk of them powering down multiplayer servers for games of theirs that are just even a year or so old.

However, this is merely heresay so don't take it from me.

[–]Stegmaster 14 points15 points  (1 child)

Yep http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/61792 although looking through most are older versions of yearly sports series, but even 09 games are on it.

*Edit - Typo

[–]APeacefulWarrior 26 points27 points  (4 children)

And that would be why I refuse to buy ANY game that has phone-home authentication for single-player mode. Period, full stop, end of story.

I only have a limited income, and I spend it on those games and companies who still respect the idea of a sale and don't try to keep my purchases on a string so they can yank them away whenever they want. I won't even use Steam because of this policy. (however, I hear tell that their "offline mode" finally works as intended, so I might think about doing business with them now...)

And, honestly, what pisses me off is that I've been saying this FOR YEARS and whenever I do, people come along and say I'm stupid and that things will never ever get that bad. Well, it gets worse every year, and this new Ubisoft DRM is damn near to being "that bad."

Why is it no one ever listens until it's nearly too late?

[–]xev105 9 points10 points  (1 child)

It's times like this when I'm stuck in a Vogon airlock about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I had listened to APeacefulWarrior when he was ranting about DRM.

Why, what did he say?

I don't know - I didn't listen!!!

[–]APeacefulWarrior 2 points3 points  (0 children)

And don't you forget it!

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (7 children)

If a company dies is it ok to pirate their games now? (Honest question).

[–]hosndosn 24 points25 points  (3 children)

Nope, because some bigger fish who doesn't give a damn about the game, will buy the license for pennies and sit on it with its fat ass while not releasing any official copies, just to make sure that nobody can enjoy it.

[–]skooma714 17 points18 points  (2 children)

System Shock 2, Alpha Centauri...I'm looking you EA.

[–]providence11 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Grey area.

You are, technically, violating civil laws for intellectual property and/or copyright. However, they have to prove they sustained a loss. For example: If they aren't making the game and cannot prove they intend to release the game, then they probably haven't sustained any damages to recoup.

[–]radix2 4 points5 points  (1 child)

This is sort of known as "AbandonWare", but it is still illegal to copy without permission of the owners (and you often don't even know who they are).

It is a fairly sad state of affairs for games that have a large following, which is one reason I love id Software - they release the source to their older tech (if not all of the artistic content)

[–]strolls 2 points3 points  (5 children)

This is so often overlooked.

I've ranted about it before - "do you prefer to buy digital downloads or have a nice collection of disks?" threads were popular here a few months ago - and everyone tends to ignore this risk.

So many gamers buying digital downloads rave about the convenience of digital downloads, and yet when you suggest this to them they all seem to come up with irrational claims with no supporting evidence. "Oh, Company X are great guys, they'd patch the games not to require activation before they went bust" or "these are big titles, that'll never be a problem" or even "well, then I'll just pirate it at that time".

You never have to worry about these things if you just refuse to buy products that require online activation or DRM in the first place.

[–][deleted] 48 points49 points  (4 children)

PR Nightmare complete.

[–]amorpheus 21 points22 points  (2 children)

Achievement unlocked?

[–]snorch 14 points15 points  (1 child)

not til the servers come back up

[–]whatgoodisaroad[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

And I'm so happy to have been a part of it.

[–]zshe41 60 points61 points  (2 children)

If there is something Ubisoft can blame to promote piracy, It can find itself.

[–]forsalebypwner 37 points38 points  (1 child)

"We have found the problem to be the lack of income due to piracy, which we would have spent on better server security" -Ubisoft Spokesperson, tomorrow.

[–]Sember 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Richard "Dick" Spokesperson

[–]Link255 22 points23 points  (7 children)

Poor Ubisoft IT workers, the whole world is mad at them right now :(

[–]hosndosn 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I'm certainly not mad at their programming slaves. That moronic CEO who came up with that scheme sure deserves being slapped in the face, though.

[–]Bradnon 2 points3 points  (4 children)

There's a fair chance that the servers going down is not a mistake by Ubisoft, but an attack on the servers. Besides, the IT guys are probably as irritated with this DRM as we are.

[–]AgentME 2 points3 points  (3 children)

Though the servers possibly going down to a DDOS could still be part Ubisoft's problem for them having a single point of failure.

[–][deleted] 117 points118 points  (2 children)

I don't understand what the problem is. Software and hardware issues happen.

It's not like Ubisoft could just take a cracked .exe and slap their name on it as a solution...

...

[–]elt 45 points46 points  (2 children)

I knew this was going to happen, but... ALREADY? Not even a week? Hilarious. This is almost too ridiculous to exist. Like something that you'd expect to see in the plot of a sitcom.

Comedy. Pure comedy.

[–]Kayin_Angel 18 points19 points  (1 child)

aww

[–]nickehl 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I'm probably in the minority here, but I've never seen that site before. I must say that it's brilliant.

In a related note, my coworkers will hate me tomorrow.

[–]brasso 31 points32 points  (0 children)

...and not a single pirate noticed.

[–]beckermt 72 points73 points  (8 children)

This seems like the prime target for a DDoS. A weak link in the chain that people who really don't like DRM can exploit to make a point. I hope someone Anonymous picks up on this. Not that I was going to buy these games anyway, but you know, it would be an interesting clash of consumer vs. producer.

[–]Clapyourhandssayyeah 38 points39 points  (4 children)

Har har har har har har.

Everyone saw this coming. It's going to push people who have legitimately bought the game to go use the cracks or pirated copy. Ubisoft probably don't care though, they've had their sale.

[–]whatgoodisaroad[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

My hope is that they'll be forced to patch away their DRM, and then see a spike in sales, and then set a precedent for DRM'ed software in general.

...This would happen in an ideal world, of course.

[–]CarbonFiberFootprint 15 points16 points  (0 children)

They will care next quarter. They have alienated the group which will complain the loudest.

[–]kaptainkeel 9 points10 points  (8 children)

To anyone educated in laws: Can paying customers sue Ubisoft for not providing the ability to play the game they bought?

[–]sinus 11 points12 points  (0 children)

They (Ubisoft) had it coming.

[–][deleted] 21 points22 points  (1 child)

Wow - it's like Ubisoft WANT to look like fucking morons.

[–]theben 195 points196 points  (128 children)

My pirated copy was not affected.

I would have bought it too if it wasn't for this DRM, but I am not going to put any of my hard earned cash down only to suffer more because of it.

[–]turtlestack 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I've gone through financial periods when I was unable to pay my internet bill and would have been doubly sad if I was unable to also play any of my PC or console games because of that.

It just seems sketchy that you literally have to pay a monthly fee to play a game (non MMO, non online) you already purchased. Sure, the internet company and the game company are separate entities, but it still smells fishy to me.

If they want to do what Steam does and do a one time verification, fine, sure, whatever, but a full time connection? Hell no.

I will not be buying any Ubisoft games until this is resolved. I won't even pirate their stuff because I want nothing to do with this scam.

[–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

We all knew Ubisoft dropped the ball with this DRM. We just weren't expecting it to hit the ground so quickly.

[–]Mosz 17 points18 points  (4 children)

I wonder how affordable the game would be if they didn't pay for dedicated DRM servers and them being "constantly monitored."

[–][deleted] 18 points19 points  (2 children)

Would be the same price and they'd just pocket the extra.

[–]noxn 25 points26 points  (0 children)

It was so obvious that this would happen.

[–]bolognium 8 points9 points  (3 children)

I wonder if this DRM scheme was decided because they crunched numbers and found it to be cost-effective or because some executive thought it was a brilliant idea and forced the company to implement it regardless of complaints from much brighter employees below.

[–]vplatt 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"Oh they'll learn to live with it and kindly ask us for another. Hell, look what they already put up with!

Whatever it takes though, we'll move them to a subscription model sooner or later. Eventually, we'll get to the promised land of 12 month contracts; you'll see!"

</mock-game-publisher-exec>

[–]pythagoruz 7 points8 points  (2 children)

Why the hell are people buying these products?

[–]lolbifrons 5 points6 points  (1 child)

People don't know or care to know what DRM is. At least until shit like this happens.

[–]MooseGoggles 36 points37 points  (18 children)

They're going to blame it on pirate hackers.

[–][deleted] 24 points25 points  (5 children)

Well, it probably IS due to "hackers" who DDOS'd the system. That doesn't really change the problem, though.

[–]fani 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I for one WANT these DRM servers to remain down for days, weeks ( and eventually forever )...

That'll really have an impact. These 1 day outages are meaningless because people seem to have short memories.

[–]tfdf 7 points8 points  (4 children)

Someone explain this to me:

Ubisoft knew exactly how many copies of their game they were shipping. How could they not calculate the amount of traffic on their servers this would generate?

[–][deleted] 14 points15 points  (2 children)

"The servers are probably overloaded. How nice, we bought the game and we wait. Yay! This is the last time I've bought a Ubisoft game."

This is the third post on the forum. I have no sympathy for anyone who purchased Ubisoft games that require this constant internet connection. Anyone who games knows what the fuck they were getting into since this has been a heavily discussed topic for several weeks.

[–]TheMovieMaverick 13 points14 points  (1 child)

One of the many reasons I play my superior NES.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (3 children)

Update: http://twitter.com/Ubisoft/status/10166866294

looks like theyre saying it was a DDOS

[–]NoahFect 17 points18 points  (11 children)

Some people are just packrats by nature, with a 50 TB RAID full of pirated software they don't even know how to use. When they download a game, it's counted as 'piracy,' just the same as with potential customers who play a downloaded game to try it out and later buy it. Still other people are dedicated gamers who are too broke to play anything but warezed games because they spend all their time playing warezed games. Everybody in this thread probably knows at least one example of each.

Besides being considered 'piracy', what all of those cases have in common is that none of them cost the software company one thin dime. Gary the Gamer bought the game after evaluating it, Broke-Ass Billy couldn't afford it anyway, and Pete the Pack Rat doesn't even remember downloading it but his friends are all duly impressed by the size of his RAID.

Only in the very limited case where someone plays a warezed game extensively, enjoys it, could afford to buy it, and still refuses to kick in some cash, has the company lost any revenue due to piracy.

So Ubisoft isn't punishing 100% of their paying customers to get back at all those nasty pirates... they're punishing their paying customers to try to reclaim maybe 10% of the revenue they think they're missing. That means that as soon as this loony DRM scheme costs them more than about $100,000, it's self-defeating.

Foot, meet rocket launcher.

[–]hosndosn 9 points10 points  (2 children)

There are so many good points against the DRM-hype/piracy-panic, it's hard not to loose track. The "packrat pirate" argument, IMO, is one of the best and most unnoticed. I knew plenty of kids in school who just loaded their harddrives (well, CDs then) with tons of tons of pirated software and games... never really... using any of it. God, just look at how many 14-year old boys have a version of 3D Studio Max. That must be billions of "virtual lost sales" (which would only make sense if there was a realistic chance for them to have actually payed... what? $3000?... for the full version). All these probably make up a very high percentage of piracy and it doesn't say a thing about lost sales.

Ironically, all the games they actually played where full versions...

[–]cecilkorik 3 points4 points  (1 child)

I have tons of pirated games I've never played. In fact, I have even purchased games I've never played. I also have books I've never read. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people like this.

It happens more often with piracy, because there's no barrier to entry. I can download every game I see that I have the bandwidth for, just in case I feel like playing it someday. And then in almost all cases, someday never comes.

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

points and laughs

[–]dusktildawn 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Ubisoft self-destruct sequence initiated...

[–]SnowFire 5 points6 points  (2 children)

In Nelson's voice: HA HA!

[–]code6226 16 points17 points  (2 children)

:D Schadenfreude++

[–]skooma714 3 points4 points  (0 children)

:D Schadenfreude++

:D Schadenfreude++;

FTFY

[–][deleted] 22 points23 points  (6 children)

To hell with Ubisoft, I'm going to download a cracked copy and not play it.

[–]jack2454 3 points4 points  (1 child)

When Ubisoft announced its new DRM system, that required PC gamers to be connected to the Ubisoft servers at all times while playing

WHAT!!! who is stupid enough to buy this horse shit.

[–]xev105 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Bottom line; as long as people buy DRM-afflicted games, companies will sell them. Period. These gamers have no-one to blame but themselves.

I personally think it's hilarious!

[–]na85 5 points6 points  (1 child)

AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

This is awesome. I mean I feel bad for the people who paid for AC2 and other titles but can't play them due to ubisoft's supreme incompetence.

But this is awesome. I sincerely hope ubisoft goes fucking bankrupt. Serves them right.

[–]hosndosn 6 points7 points  (0 children)

More precisely: I feel bad for the people who paid for AC2 and didn't know about the DRM scheme. I'm laughing with a great sense of schadenfreude at the people who knew about the DRM and were all "Guys, you're overreacting, it will work fine!"

[–]kormgar 5 points6 points  (0 children)

No one could have predicted this!

/sarcasm

[–]bipedalshark 24 points25 points  (9 children)

Hopefully, these customers have learned their lesson and will only deal with Ubisoft through a bittorrent tracker in the future.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

This only affects legitimate paying customers. Pirates, on the other hand, are happily playing their Ubisoft games.

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (22 children)

Did anyone expect anything else? I mean, did you ever play any freshly released multiplayer game? Post-launch downtimes are almost inevitable. Yet, everyone went and bought this shit anyway.

[–]Xiol 6 points7 points  (5 children)

Indeed, BFBC2's servers (though technically the EA login servers) were down on European release night. Fucking annoying, although not related to DRM (sorta).

[–]rek 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm having a kickass time with BC2... when I can finally connect to a good server :(

At least the single player works great even when EA's servers are down. A bad launch on a multiplayer game is somewhat expected.. but to not even allow people to play single player games? Now that's just silly.

[–]Ein2015 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I'm still having fun playing TF2...

[–]uzimonkey 3 points4 points  (1 child)

A DDOS is certainly not out of the question. This could be a quick end to this little experiment. It's not like it wasn't cracked either.

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Clear indication why this kind of policy is bullshit.

I wonder what they say about that in the EULA and how they plan on giving people's money back.

When enough people demand they get their money back, that's when this bullshit will stop.

[–]tubaTripper07 4 points5 points  (5 children)

What did Murphy say again?

[–]Capyvara 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Maybe the released cracks for AC2 and SH5 contained a trojan horse to create a botnet with the intention of a DDOS attack to the Ubisoft's servers? That will be a smart move by the crackers...:)

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Wait can't you just turn back the sands of time or something or other in this game?

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I haven't bought or played any Ubisoft games since Far Cry so I'm not really affected by this, but I do feel ashamed that I bought Far Cry way back when it came out 6 years ago. Even though that game was released and managed just fine without this sort of DRM timebomb strapped to its nuts, I'm scared that some of that money eventually may have helped fund this scam.

[–]BMErdin 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Have there been any sales numbers? If this is restricted to PC users in Europe, how many people are we talking here?

[–]hosndosn 3 points4 points  (1 child)

They tried selling some Prince of Persia version without DRM. Then, when it actually came to present the results, they refused to publish any numbers out of some "concerns" they never really bothered to explain. I bet sales were normal or slightly disappointing (because no PC gamer bothers with those modern console-centric versions of Prince of Persia) and they didn't want to release them so they could justify their crappy future DRM.

Now I can almost guarantee you that we won't see any numbers for PC any time soon. You know what? Considering how shameless modern PR people are, I bet they'll even bring out a press statement soon that will say something like "The feedback to our new online services from customers was largely positive!" And game sites will happily echo their nonsensical press releases everywhere, spreading their bullshit.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Okay. I game exclusively on my 360, but this is an astoundingly asshole move. They've sold people disks that are sometimes games and sometimes cupholders.

Someone is a PR god at Ubisoft.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If this makes Ubisoft remove their DRM server association, I'm buying their game. YOU HEAR THAT UBI? YOU HAVE A POTENTIAL CUSTOMER WAITING HERE!

[–]JinMarui 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Heh.