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.)

I loved Assassin’s Creed.  It was entertaining in its own way, the graphics were stunning, and though the storyline was slightly bland it was not boring.  I bought it on sale on Steam early last year.

I have been quite excited about the sequel.  It’s supposed to come out on the PC next month (it has been out on consoles for a few months already).  From all appearances, they’ve fixed all the problems with the original game’s gameplay, and refined and improved it, until what they had left was pure liquid awesome.

As it turns out, Ubisoft has decided on adding something else to the game: a horrendously draconian DRM scheme.  In order to play Assassin’s Creed 2, you must be online at all times.

What’s worse, if your internet connection drops at any time, for any reason, your game pauses until the connection is restored.  When this happens, Assassin’s Creed 2 will resume at your last checkpoint, which could be anywhere from five seconds ago to five minutes ago (if its checkpoints are spaced anything like the original).

Five minutes might not seem like a big deal.  But what if your connection is flaky?  What if you’re on a weak-signal wireless connection?  It could happen every five minutes.

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.

And all this for a single-player game.

There is absolutely no reason for them to be informed of every moment I spend playing their game.  And even if they do want to know for some reason, the game could simply cache data until the connection comes back, and allow you to continue playing uninterrupted.

Anyway, I really, really hate invasive DRM, and this rates an 8 out of 10 on the “Invasive DRM” scale.  The only way it could be worse is if they installed CD-ROM-checking drivers even if you buy a digital copy.  (Other games are guilty of that.)

As a result, I’ll be boycotting Assassin’s Creed 2 — a game I was really looking forward to playing, at full purchase price — until such a time as they remove these measures.

I preordered Left 4 Dead 2 the other day.  Just throwing that out there.

Also, Tim Buckley (author of the popular Ctrl+Alt+Del webcomic) has articulated quite perfectly my own opinion on the L4D2 boycott.  Two posts of interest, both found here.

A recent Bruce Schneier blog post got me thinking about boycotts.  Specifically, the user “AwesomeRobot” made the following comment in response to another user who said they plan to forever boycott Sony due to the rootkits they put on music CDs in 2005:

Boycotts don’t work unless you say you’ll buy from them again when they clean up their act. What’s their incentive to change if you just say you’ll “never” buy from them again?

I boycott Eidos because of their deliberately poor customer service.  The trouble is, how am I to know when they’ve cleaned up their act, if I never interact with them again?

I boycott 1&1 Internet (my former web host) because… well, because of lots of reasons.  But if I avoid them in perpetuity, how am I supposed to know whether my boycott has worked?

Another thought that occurred to me relates to the infamous Left 4 Dead 2 boycott.  Now, I disagree with them about almost everything, and I’ve always maintained that the only way Valve can meet all their demands is to give away Left 4 Dead 2 as free content.  So, AwesomeRobot’s comment applies here, too: if the only way to please the boycotters is to give them stuff for free, what incentive does Valve have to please them?

Boycotts only work when the target has a possibility of earning money from the boycotters by meeting the boycott’s demands.  In my case, I’ll be keeping tabs on Eidos; if they appear to have improved, I’ll end up buying Batman: Arkham Asylum, and everyone wins.

As for 1&1, personally I won’t be going back, because their service simply isn’t a good fit for me anymore; but if they fix the glaring problems that made me leave, I’ll start referring people to them again (and stop telling people to avoid them like the plague).

So I just realized something sad.  A few weeks ago, I downloaded and played the demo of Batman: Arkham Asylum.  It was released on one console or other a few days ago, and it comes out for Windows in a few weeks, so I was all excited for its release, and I planned to buy it on Steam.  Nothing sad so far, right?

Turns out Batman: Arkham Asylum is published by Eidos.  That’s the same Eidos that I’m strongly in favor of boycotting.  That’s the sad part.

I titled this post “Conflict of interest” because I want to support this kind of game; but I can’t support that kind of publisher.  Thus it is with a heavy heart that I must pass on this otherwise wonderful game.