Shocking: Ubisoft’s new DRM scheme has failed

Bobby Miller 9 Mar, 2010 at 4:02pm ET Article published in Gaming

Owners of Assassins Creed 2 on the PC were denied the ability to play the game Sunday when Ubisoft’s DRM (Digital Rights Management) servers went offline, making it the latest example of DRM technology screwing legitimate consumers. This issue solidified fears with Ubisoft’s new ‘always connected’ DRM approach, as it seems the the outage was caused by an attack on the servers.

Assassins Creed 2 is one of the first games released by Ubisoft to utilize their new method of DRM protection. Players must be connected to the internet at all times while playing the game, or else the DRM will prevent them from running the game. Such a method has raised many concerns from gamers, as little was known about what would happen if Ubisoft’s DRM servers went down or were compromised. Sunday afternoon, the world had its answer.

Early Sunday, the DRM servers went down, and gamers were not able to play Assassins Creed 2, regardless of their internet connectivity. The outages lasted for the remainder of the day. According to a report by Eurogamer, Ubisoft claimed that the outage was a result of an attack on the Ubisoft DRM servers. Furthermore, Ubi.Vigil, community manager on the Ubisoft forums, made this statement on the matter:

I don’t have any clear information on what the issue is since I’m not in the office, but clearly the extended downtime and lengthy login issues are unacceptable, particularly as I’ve been told these servers are constantly monitored.

Reports from Ubisoft state that the DRM servers were back online by Monday afternoon, and gamers could once more play the games that they legitimately purchased. Multiple accounts on Twitter suggested otherwise, as it appeared some gamers are still having troubles playing the game at the time of this writing.

To make matters worse, the Ubisoft community forums were experiencing intermittent down time early Monday. Though no official statement has been released, one might assume that the forum downtime could be related to the DRM server attack and downtime. It seems as if a hacker or a group is trying to make a very bold point about DRM and fairness to consumers with a DoS attack.

While legitimate consumers of Assassins Creed 2 have been denied the ability to play the game, pirates who obtained the game illegally were able to play. This is a very clear example of one of the major problems with DRM in games today: Pirates often have the superior gaming experience. Until game developers stop implementing such asinine DRM protection methods, this case will not be the end of the DRM story.

Comments

9 Mar 2010 ~ 4:09pm kryyst For what it's worth, unless Assassins Creed II's DRM protection has been cracked it hasn't failed yet. It's only a failure when pirated copies are working and legitimate ones aren't.
9 Mar 2010 ~ 4:14pm ardichoke When the DRM servers go down, only pirates will play video games.

Do companies seriously think these DRM measures are going to make people less likely to pirate their games? If anything, it makes people more likely to pirate since they are reducing the gap between ease of piracy vs. ease of purchase. By making a legally purchased game more difficult to play using stupid DRM methods like this, game companies make piracy a more attractive option. Way to go Ubisoft.
9 Mar 2010 ~ 4:16pm ardichoke

kryyst wrote:

For what it's worth, unless Assassins Creed II's DRM protection has been cracked it hasn't failed yet. It's only a failure when pirated copies are working and legitimate ones aren't.

This is exactly what happened kryyst. The DRM has already been broken, pirated copies continued to work with the DRM servers down because they don't actually phone home.
9 Mar 2010 ~ 4:16pm _k Isn't this almost exactly what happens with steam games when you lose internet connection?
9 Mar 2010 ~ 4:17pm ardichoke Depends on the game _k_. Most of the games will still function in "offline mode," or so I've found.
9 Mar 2010 ~ 4:21pm kryyst Sorta. But ultimately if the game can't be pirated because of the DRM and the DRM pisses off people the only thing it will do is kill sales. Which will further erode consumer confidence in any other products that use the same DRM copy protection.

Regardless of all of that this kind of DRM situation is not a good thing. Though it's not surprising to see it. After all MMO's are effectively the same level of security they only work when their servers are online. Just wait a little longer until games are delivered as a service and none of your games will work when there is a break in the connection.
9 Mar 2010 ~ 4:22pm kryyst Wasn't aware they cracked the DRM (haven't kept track since most of my gaming is exclusively on 360). So yeah, I retract my statement the security measure has failed. Go Pirates!
9 Mar 2010 ~ 4:39pm _k Yes most of them do but I have been in a situation where stuff screws up and it trys to reconnect and messes everything up and you cannot get it back into offline mode, that is ultimately what I am referring to.
9 Mar 2010 ~ 4:47pm Grimnoc Whine more.
9 Mar 2010 ~ 4:48pm ardichoke Ah, I've never experienced that specific sequence of events before. I digress though, I'm not exactly a fan of having to ping a server to play a game that I've purchased. I still use Steam though because they at least offer a service in return, namely, the ability to reinstall as many times as you want anywhere you want and always have a copy of your game without having to keep track of media. I'll accept some DRM, if I get something in exchange, what I can't stand is overzealous DRM that offers no benefit to the consumer in return.
9 Mar 2010 ~ 5:56pm Snarkasm I don't really think it's fair to call it a failure if the cause of players not being able to use the game was an attack from outside the organization. That's like saying you failed to see me in person today - it wasn't your fault, I was actively avoiding you.

This kind of DRM isn't good for anybody, but I don't know if dicking with tons of peoples' games is the right way to drive your point home. If I was one of those game owners, I'd be livid that somebody else that wasn't EA/Ubi fucked with my game time.

Of course, I'd probably be a bit livid that the DRM servers weren't better protected from an attack, and then I'd eventually come to the point of boiling rage over having to check in at a server anyway.

So yeah, we've come full circle.
9 Mar 2010 ~ 6:49pm ardichoke It's a failure to create a single point of failure which can cause all your actual customers to not be able to use the product they paid to use. The fact that it was an attack that took it offline is irrelevant. It could just have easily been a fiber cut or various other outages. The real failure here is that Ubisoft is essentially punishing people who buy the game by tethering them to this system which could fail for any number of reasons at any time.
9 Mar 2010 ~ 7:17pm pigflipper My question is this:

I like to periodically go back and play my older games, sometimes 5-10 years after they were released, so if the game is reliant upon a server to authenticate to in order to play, what happens when the company folds? Or they decide the servers need to be used for a newer game?
9 Mar 2010 ~ 9:16pm ardichoke You have to crack your legally purchased game to not need the DRM server.
9 Mar 2010 ~ 11:16pm pigflipper So, I have to illegally modify my legally purchased game, therefore breaking all kinds of laws, just to play it?

Wow, sounds like a class action lawsuit waiting to happen.
9 Mar 2010 ~ 11:27pm CB

pigflipper wrote:

So, I have to illegally modify my legally purchased game, therefore breaking all kinds of laws, just to play it?

Wow, sounds like a class action lawsuit waiting to happen.

But it's not because according to the EULA, you are only leasing a license to use the software until they say otherwise. They can legaly retract your license at any time.
9 Mar 2010 ~ 11:36pm Winfrey Yeah, it sucks when steam sometimes inexplicably prevents you from playing a game. The much hated "game is not available" message is pretty frustrating sometimes (i.e. last wednesday when steam wouldn't let me play TF2).

I like a lot of what steam does and it has come a long way. It's tremendously more useful than the giant ball and chain that Ubisoft has added to AC2. But if given the option to buy from steam or say gog.com, I pick the latter. It's DRM free approach along with great support is so far the best situation to me.

DRM seems to be spiraling downward into a pit of despair. I intend to continue that by not supporting horribly invasive and useless DRM with my hard earned cash.
9 Mar 2010 ~ 11:50pm CB AC2 is on Steam. Did those customers have trouble playing?
10 Mar 2010 ~ 12:16am NiGHTS 3rd party DRM, regardless.
10 Mar 2010 ~ 1:53am CB What possible reason would they have to include the DRM on the Steam version. I don't think any other games do that.
10 Mar 2010 ~ 2:02am mas0n I can't speak for AC2, but jumping through the clusterfuck of DRM for my copy of GTAIV that I bought on Steam took literally 1 hour and I never played. That's just one example, but yeah. Non-Valve games purchased through Steam are still often burdened with additional DRM.
10 Mar 2010 ~ 3:09am Snarkasm Bioshock also had SecuRom DRM in it when it was released on Steam. A lot of big games leave it in there.

And EA and Ubi have said that in the event of the need to take the server down or if the company goes under, they'll release a patch for the game that allows offline play - which just gave the crackers fresh hope, as it means it was easily patchable. Lo and behold, it was cracked in a day.
10 Mar 2010 ~ 10:28am Cliff_Forster I had major issues with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. clear sky when it first came out. Got a throw in copy with some hardware I purchased and the DRM presented some installation problems that were eventually rectified, but it left a negative impression on me just the same.

I wish more PC developers would just implement Steam into their disk products.
10 Mar 2010 ~ 12:55pm UPSLynx GTA IV was the absolute worst example of DRM on a game that I have ever come across. Like Mas0n, the game took me an hour to install, and it resulted in more time troubleshooting and dealing than I did playing the effing game. What an absolute mess.