Almost a month ago, I posted about how Ubisoft’s DRM servers for Assassin’s Creed II had gone offline, meaning that nobody who had paid for the game could play it.  The reason Ubisoft later gave for this outage was a deliberate attack on their servers.  But honestly, who cares why the servers went down?  The fact is, Ubisoft’s DRM has a single point of failure, and that point of failure can prevent everyone from playing their legally purchased single-player game.

Well, on March 25, Ubisoft released a third game using their always-connected-internet DRM, Settlers 7.  The following day, users all over the world again started reporting a complete inability to contact Ubisoft’s authentication servers.  As far as I can tell, these problems still persist a week later.

So, Ubisoft, do you still not realize how stupid your DRM scheme is?  You’ve already lost your sale of Assassin’s Creed II to me; I’ve been curious about Settlers, but I won’t be buying that either, for the sole reason that it uses this insane DRM.

Ubisoft, does it matter that pirates can’t play your game, if your customers can’t play either? Do you really not see the problem there?

I’ll state this clearly, Ubisoft, so you can’t misunderstand: for the sole reason that they use this DRM, I will not buy your games, nor will I pirate them.  You cannot blame piracy for not getting my money – you have only your own DRM to blame.

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.