While it was funny enough to see Ubisoft's great new uncrackable DRM for Silent Hunter 5 getting cracked in less than 24 hours, there's more to it. Ubisoft has created a system making every gamer zombie dependant on their servers and services. Just yesterday remarkably demonstrated when a few people thought it would be more appropriate to take their fight directly to Ubisoft by attacking the servers that validate an install.
The servers couldn't withstand the massive attack, leaving thousands of gamers with legitimate Ubisoft titles unable to play. Ubisoft's servers were running with »reduced service« between 2:30pm and 9:00pm CET and were only fully restored at 1:00am today.
In a bid to downplay the situation, Ubisoft said that only people trying to login were affected. Given that you need to login in order to play the game, Ubisoft was essentially saying that only those who tried to play their games were affected. Well, that's not really good now, is it?
I rather enjoy Gabe Newell's take on this. The co-founder of Valve, developer of such fun titles like Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and the game-selling copy-protection platform Steam, doesn't list piracy as the biggest issue for game developers. Despite the fact that the Steam system has been repeatedly hacked, their games sell just fine and they provide excellent service over the platform. Friends lists, mod-support and good multiplayer support are combined with packet deals, special sales and ads. Quite a good concept I enjoy using myself.
He sais the misconception within the industry was that copyright infringement was conducted by those who wanted to steal material. Newell believes that it is in fact »bad service« that leads people down the illegal route. Looking at the 650 posts [growing] on publisher Ubisoft's forum complaining about the DRM issues of people who actually bought the game...yeah, your system and support are probably perceived negatively, Ubisoft.
The servers couldn't withstand the massive attack, leaving thousands of gamers with legitimate Ubisoft titles unable to play. Ubisoft's servers were running with »reduced service« between 2:30pm and 9:00pm CET and were only fully restored at 1:00am today.
In a bid to downplay the situation, Ubisoft said that only people trying to login were affected. Given that you need to login in order to play the game, Ubisoft was essentially saying that only those who tried to play their games were affected. Well, that's not really good now, is it?
I rather enjoy Gabe Newell's take on this. The co-founder of Valve, developer of such fun titles like Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and the game-selling copy-protection platform Steam, doesn't list piracy as the biggest issue for game developers. Despite the fact that the Steam system has been repeatedly hacked, their games sell just fine and they provide excellent service over the platform. Friends lists, mod-support and good multiplayer support are combined with packet deals, special sales and ads. Quite a good concept I enjoy using myself.
He sais the misconception within the industry was that copyright infringement was conducted by those who wanted to steal material. Newell believes that it is in fact »bad service« that leads people down the illegal route. Looking at the 650 posts [growing] on publisher Ubisoft's forum complaining about the DRM issues of people who actually bought the game...yeah, your system and support are probably perceived negatively, Ubisoft.
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