Ubisoft Revive DRM Servers After DDoS Attack

News
By Marcus Yam
published

The DRM servers come back just in time to greet the new North American Assassin's Creed II PC gamers.

Today is a big day for Ubisoft, as Assassin's Creed II is launching for gamers in North America. Those who have been playing since last week's release in Australia and Europe can attest to that it hasn't been a completely smooth ride with the Ubisoft DRM servers being attacked.

It seems that Ubisoft is pulling itself together in time for the last step Ezio has to make into the new world. The game publisher tweeted in the early hours of Tuesday morning:

Login servers were partially reestablished at 10pm CET and fully restored at 1am CET. The attack affected only those trying to login

To those of you who pick up Assassin's Creed II during the day, please let us know things work out!

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
49 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Parsian
    i have boycotted it just because of DRM
    Reply
  • babybeluga
    Ugh, the DDoS attackers need to stop being so lazy... They might as well go out and get a job if they let this golden opportunity slip by...
    Reply
  • Major7up
    I refuse to buy any game that has such a DRM scheme as this. Will not be purchasing ANY Ubisoft games from here on out until they change this practice. I canceled my pre-order when I heard about the DRM.
    Reply
  • BallistaMan
    Well, that was embarrassing for them.
    Reply
  • FloKid
    LoL, wowo. Ubi is going to loose as much money protecting the DRM as they would from pirated software... I didn't know those games were that good hehe. But PoP is cool though.
    Reply
  • rand_79
    but its cooler to say we lost 1billion nonexistant sales to people in 3rd world countries that wouldnt buy it anyway.

    than it is to say we lost 500million $ in sales to people boycotting our over zealous drm schemes.. that didnt stop the hackers anyway.
    Reply
  • MitchMeister-
    The best part is that the groups that release hacked versions have got around nearly all DRM's that companies have developed so far. I have seen torrents from multiple companies on "certain" websites that apparently work, and are supposed to be DRM protected. All this is doing is wasting developers money, spending more money to develop DRM that turns off a great majority of gamers, which gets hacked in a week or less anyways. Waste of time and resources, and ends up hurting the developers more in the end IMO.
    Reply
  • XD_dued
    DRM = Digital rights management

    How about the rights of the consumer? :)
    Reply
  • Major7up
    MitchMeister-The best part is that the groups that release hacked versions have got around nearly all DRM's that companies have developed so far. I have seen torrents from multiple companies on "certain" websites that apparently work, and are supposed to be DRM protected. All this is doing is wasting developers money, spending more money to develop DRM that turns off a great majority of gamers, which gets hacked in a week or less anyways. Waste of time and resources, and ends up hurting the developers more in the end IMO.And that is exactly why I refuse to endure such a poorly conceived DRM scheme. It results in a unnecessarily poor consumer experience for those who legitimately buy the game and support their asses. Why endure all that when I could play a pirated version worry free...this DRM has driven me to pirate a game I would have otherwise paid for! In other words, they are generating negative revenue (as far as my purchase would have gone!) and poor consumer opinions.
    Reply
  • waffle911
    Three months from now:
    Three rough months for Ubisoft have led the developer to pull the plug on the whole ordeal.Ubisoft has announced that the rising operating costs of its validation server has surpassed the revenue brought in by sales of the games that are affected by the DRM method introduced just three months ago. Ubisoft cites sluggish sales, heightened DDoS attacks, and the successful cracking of their DRM within one week of its U.S. debut as reasons for this troubling development. Ubisoft has issued a statement that they plan to pull the plug on the validation server by the end of this month, and will be withdrawing from the PC gaming market altogether. No word as of yet on whether an official patch will be released to allow affected games to operate without contacting the validation server.

    COMMENTS

    sumguy413:
    Good riddance. Worst. DRM. Ever.

    133754UC3:
    Who needs an official patch? The pirates have cracked it wide open and it's already been floating around DRM-free for almost 3 months now.

    nubbin637:
    I wish developers would stop leaving the PC platform for consoles exclusively. This is so lame. And what about us honest users who bought this game legitimately? Are we being left out in the rain because the stupid DRM made the game easier to pirate than to buy? It was bad enough I couldn't play without being connected to the internet, but now I won't be able to play even when I am connected? I want my money back. Total ripoff.

    uberh4xx0r:
    Umm, this is news? We all knew it was gonna happen. It's not like Ubisoft has even made a worthwhile PC game in the past… well, ever. Not really such a big loss methinks.

    OtherDude42:
    uberh4xx0rUmm, this is news? We all knew it was gonna happen. It's not like Ubisoft has even made a worthwhile PC game in the past… well, ever. Not really such a big loss methinks.Because it's totally not like they spent so much money trying futilely to protect their games from piracy to actually make games worth buying. If it weren't for the pirates, methinks they would have had some extra money to make a halfway decent game, yeah? No, wait, you're right. Ubisoft PC games have been pretty crappy for a while now, even before this whole DRM SNAFU.
    Reply