Given that Ubisoft requires such restrictive DRM, many of their games won’t be playable next week, including in single player mode, because of a server move.
Tom Clancy’s HAWX 2, Might & Magic: Heroes 6 and The Settlers 7. The Mac games that will be broken during this period are Assassin’s Creed, Splinter Cell Conviction and The Settlers.
Any game that makes use of Ubisoft’s Uplay software will also be affected. If your game has been activated previously, then offline play will still be possible – though online won’t be – but if you’ve not activated yet, you won’t be able to play single player either.
Ubisoft informed its customers through a letter.
Starting February 7, Ubisoft will be transitioning the hosting of many of its online services from a third-party data center to a new facility. During the transition, some Ubisoft services and online games will not be available. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience. This move ultimately will help us improve the maintenance of our infrastructure and deliver better uptime and greatly improved services for our customers.
What is confusing is that moving servers is a simple task. I recently performed such a move with no downtime at all. In Ubisoft’s case, it would be a bigger task, but it’s still achievable with no more than 10-15 minutes downtime while the DNS migrates instead of Ubisoft’s claim of unknown downtime.
If Ubisoft would see that these DRM restrictions aren’t needed at all, there wouldn’t be such problems. Ubisoft will continue to take the cheapest, stupidest route to accomplish their tasks because they don’t care about their customers. They only care about the bottom line. As long as there are millions of people who put up with this sort of behavior from companies, don’t expect this sort of asinine behavior to change any time soon.
It seems like I’ll be destined to play old games only as it is getting sickening the lengths game publishers are going to install DRM into their games.
From rockpapershotgun:
On Monday we reported the strange discovery by Guru3D that something so simple as changing your graphics card could use up an activation on Ubisoft game, Anno 2070. Ubisoft have confirmed to us that this is how they intend the DRM to work.
“While it’s correct that copies of Anno include three activations and that changing hardware may trigger the need for reactivation, the vast majority of Anno customers never encounter this scenario. On the rare occasion when a customer does need additional activations, Ubisoft customer service is available to quickly resolve the situation, and we encourage those customers to contact us directly so that we can ensure they are able to continue to enjoy their game.”
The Tages system means you can install your copy of Anno 2070 on three separate PC configurations before it will refuse to work.
Though Ubisoft says fixing things is just a simple phone call away, it isn’t. This is exactly how Ubisoft wants it and this is DRM the wrong way. Yet again, legitimate customers are being penalized.
EA’s digital distribution system, known as Origin, will be required on all PC editions of Mass Effect 3, physical or digital. This means that it will likely never come to Steam, causing many to vow to never purchase the game.
You may be wondering why it’s not on Steam. Well, this is what EA’s explanation is:
Steam has adopted a set of restrictive terms of service which limit how developers interact with customers to deliver patches and other downloadable content.
We are intent on providing Mass Effect to players with the best possible experience no matter where they purchase or play their game, and are happy to partner with any download service that does not restrict our ability to connect directly with our consumers.
What EA is saying here is that they want to sell downloadable content (DLC) directly to their customer. If they allow Mass Effect 3 to be available on Steam, then they wouldn’t get all the money from the DLC. This is against Valve’s TOS. All EA games have their own, custom-built, in-game store. This is what is against the new TOS and why EA games that have DLC are not going to be available on Steam.
Since Steam does a good portion of the advertising, there’s nothing wrong with them wanting a piece of the sale. They brought the sale to the developer and it is only good business to pay them for that service. For EA to demand they keep all the money from a sale is a dickish move. That’s the real reason they don’t want their games on Steam.
Everyone knows my feelings on such tactics. I already don’t purchase EA games because of Origin. Given the fact that they’re huge SOPA supporters, I won’t ever purchase, download, or play another EA game.
