A few weeks ago I described why I’d be boycotting Assassin’s Creed 2, even though I had (until then) been eagerly waiting for the time I could give Ubisoft my money.
To recap, the reason is that AC2 requires an always-on internet connection to play — and this for a single-player game. People often respond by saying something like “who cares? Everyone has always-on internet nowadays.”
One of my objections was this:
What if you just don’t have an internet connection for whatever reason? What if your ISP decides to shut down your connection for maintenance, or reset your modem remotely, or any number of other things that ISPs like to do which interrupt your connection?
It gets worse. If Ubisoft’s servers go offline, you can’t play. What’s more, if they go out of business entirely, you can’t play ever again.
(Emphasis added.) As it turns out, I wasn’t wrong – you see, Ubisoft’s authentication servers have gone offline. Whether the reason is a deliberate attack, a simple lack of sufficient server hardware, or something stupid like a janitor unplugging the authentication servers, it doesn’t matter – this is a perfect illustration of why I can’t support such idiotic DRM.
Joystiq quoted an Ubisoft employee as follows:
[C]learly the extended downtime and lengthy login issues are unacceptable, particularly as I’ve been told these servers are constantly monitored. […] I’ll do what I can to get more information on what the issue is here first thing tomorrow and push for a resolution and assurance this won’t happen in the future.
First thing tomorrow? I understand that it’s Sunday, and nobody wants to work Sundays, but if you’re going to force this sort of draconian DRM on your customers you’d better make sure it’s not going to fall apart shortly after the game launches. Ubisoft, you’ve got hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of irate customers out there right now who can’t play a game they’ve already paid for, and you want to wait until tomorrow to fix it?
Do I really need to point out that anyone who pirated the game doesn’t have this problem?
Let me repeat: Ubisoft’s anti-piracy tool has exactly zero effect on pirates (it was cracked shortly after release), but as of right now is preventing every single paying customer from playing. Ubisoft, does that make good business sense to you?
Let’s hope this makes them realize how stupid they are so they’ll disable this DRM. Then I’d actually buy it.
(For the record: I have not pirated the game, nor do I intend to do so.)
If it’s new, and it’s for a popular title, you know it’s going to be cracked in days so why even bother implementing the system to begin with? Focus your capital on improving game play, support, sales, and all the other stuff the customers actually want. I just don’t get it.
I totally agree.
Ubisoft commented today that “only 5 percent of customers” were unable to play, and they also claim that pirated versions are incomplete (as in, missing game content). I see no reason to take them at their word on that, but whatever.
They also made this ridiculous statement:
“We worry about our customers and apologize to anyone who couldn’t play [Assassin’s Creed 2] or [Silent Hunter 5] yesterday. All in all, we hope people understand all this is done to preserve the future of PC gaming.”
Preserve the future of PC gaming? Their DRM is killing PC gaming!