Why Assassin's Creed 2 DRM is the future

Gladiator

Gladiator

New member
I personally think always on DRM is a step in the wrong direction, but it is the first step towards pirate proof single player games, this is why.

If you read between the lines when UbiSoft were discussing why AS2 hasn't been fully cracked yet, you would of noticed they spoke about storing single player data in the "cloud", meaning your save games and progress would not be stored on your local machine, so whenever you restore a save game, its going to be from a remote location. This means the game can still easily be cracked for the purpose of playing the game without the original DVD, but you would never be able to save your progress.

If a remote server is being used just as a storage location, it would be easy enough to redirect calls to the remote location and save progress locally.

By definition, storing information in the cloud means using hosted database services, if this is what Ubisoft is doing, then it means all logic still needs to exist on the client, and eventually someone will be able to figure out the database structure and emulate it locally.

If UbiSoft were smart, they would of opted for a more SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) approach, where the client send bits and pieces of progress related data and the logic of assembling this information into an actual game checkpoint is done on the server for retrieval later.

Therefore emulating this kind of structured communication with current technology is very difficult. It's going to take a while for programmers to come up with suitable frameworks for emulating the server side logic. Server side logic is the reason why most crackers never break the online gameplay feature of most games, because it would take too long and too much time to emulate the server side behavior.

Ubisoft has now challenged crackers everywhere to start emulating this behavior, when they succeed, the only question will be whether they are willing to do it again for the next game.
 
I still say the MAJOR drawback on this kind of DRM is what's been proven last weekend. The UBISOFT servers were down, whether it was due to attack or just plain stupidity is not the issue, the issue is that they were down and NO ONE could play the game they paid for. If it happened once, it will happen again. Write that down.
 
Yeah I read on Gamespy that they got hacked? I guess there are a lot of annoyed people out there I am sure.

Personally I can somewhat understand this move, and I am sure in the future ALL games will need a permanent net connection to play. At the moment it is painful, especially for us lowly South Africans :p
 
Neo said:
I still say the MAJOR drawback on this kind of DRM is what's been proven last weekend. The UBISOFT servers were down, whether it was due to attack or just plain stupidity is not the issue, the issue is that they were down and NO ONE could play the game they paid for. If it happened once, it will happen again. Write that down.
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Well, to be fair: It does state on the box that a permanent internet connection is required. So its to be expected that there might be some bumps along the way. Steam also had its flaws on launch, but once it was sorted, its been running very smooth. This whole notion of single player seems to be going the way of the dodo, in the future everything will be online.

I've yet to buy Assassins Creed 2, but I do plan on buying it sometime in the future once they sort out the issues.
 
I was able to finish Assassin's Creed II after the mess where they got attacked on Sunday. With that day excluded, I played Saturday and Monday to Wednesday having no other problems and the experience was smooth. Beyond the 3-5 seconds the "Logging in..." window pops up when you start the game, assuming your internet connection is stable, you won't notice its there.

But Sunday does highlight the problem with this kind of service. You are at the whim's of Ubisoft, but not only them, any group willing to inundate the servers with requests and effectively bring them down. In the case that Steam was under a similar attack, you could keep on playing your games in offline mode. Its a little less secure though as the Steam DRM doesn't require that it can look over your shoulder constantly and anally probe you while you play.
 
In a world with always on NEVER down internet where servers are crash proof and DDoS proof, then yes it could be the future of pc gaming DRM.
 
Isengard said:
In a world with always on NEVER down internet where servers are crash proof and DDoS proof, then yes it could be the future of pc gaming DRM.
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Thats a perfect world, our world isn't unfortunately, as much as i hate to say it, but this type of DRM will save the PC gaming industry from collapse, we actually need it, scary times.
 
Gladiator said:
Thats a perfect world, our world isn't unfortunately, as much as i hate to say it, but this type of DRM will save the PC gaming industry from collapse, we actually need it, scary times.
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Actually what we need are people buying games instead of pirating them, that will save PC gaming.
 
Isengard said:
Actually what we need are people buying games instead of pirating them, that will save PC gaming.
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Nope, game creators need to addopt to piracy and try and hit coin out of it instead of trying to stop it. By that things like in-game advertizing, selling addons to games which can only be purchased online from the creators and so forth. There is millions of ways to make money out of a game. As long as they try and only generate revenue from sales of the client I forsee fail. Then I hear them saying console games are the future, this when console games are pirated just as much if not more than PC games.

I personally buy games for the Box. If it's a cool design and it would look cool on my shelf then I buy it. If not, why buy it?. O and when I need an original key for online gaming :p
 
O just another thing.

In the game clients, the DRM works with online authentication. Some Pirate groups have already found a way to create a "remote host" on their own machines making the DRM think it's authenticating when in fact it didn't. This however I read is still in very early phases and it's a very timely excersize.

DRM is not the answer, it's just damn annoying. There is no way they will ever stop piracy unless they start charging subscriptions to play <insert game of choice>. Now this is by far a worse thing to do for any game that is not an MMO...

I still think they should start embrasing pirates and pull them in slowly with other ideas on titles. Let's say they lose R 300 on a game client but make R 100 out of them selling an add-on as an example. R 100 which they never had is better than nothing. That or just create MMO's with online servers which provide awesome back-up and service so that no other EMU server can stand up to it and you have a winner. Look at WoW as an example. Or online shooters like Battlefield and so forth.
 
Gladiator said:
I personally think always on DRM is a step in the wrong direction, but it is the first step towards pirate proof single player games, this is why.

If you read between the lines when UbiSoft were discussing why AS2 hasn't been fully cracked yet, you would of noticed they spoke about storing single player data in the "cloud", meaning your save games and progress would not be stored on your local machine, so whenever you restore a save game, its going to be from a remote location. This means the game can still easily be cracked for the purpose of playing the game without the original DVD, but you would never be able to save your progress.

If a remote server is being used just as a storage location, it would be easy enough to redirect calls to the remote location and save progress locally.

By definition, storing information in the cloud means using hosted database services, if this is what Ubisoft is doing, then it means all logic still needs to exist on the client, and eventually someone will be able to figure out the database structure and emulate it locally.

If UbiSoft were smart, they would of opted for a more SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) approach, where the client send bits and pieces of progress related data and the logic of assembling this information into an actual game checkpoint is done on the server for retrieval later.

Therefore emulating this kind of structured communication with current technology is very difficult. It's going to take a while for programmers to come up with suitable frameworks for emulating the server side logic. Server side logic is the reason why most crackers never break the online gameplay feature of most games, because it would take too long and too much time to emulate the server side behavior.

Ubisoft has now challenged crackers everywhere to start emulating this behavior, when they succeed, the only question will be whether they are willing to do it again for the next game.
Click to expand...

Nice long story that has some good points but HAVE YOU PLAYED THE GAME , I think not if you did you would know that you have the choice to either save online or on you PC its a option in the settings of the Ubisoft launcher .

The one thing you are right about thou is that this is the Future , the DRM is unintrusive ...I have to admit at first I hated it ...but I got a ton of free stuff from Ubisoft because of the server problem they had which they did fix it was due to the volume of users (LEGIT USERS ) authenticating at the same time.
 
Venom said:
Nice long story that has some good points but HAVE YOU PLAYED THE GAME , I think not if you did you would know that you have the choice to either save online or on you PC its a option in the settings of the Ubisoft launcher .

The one thing you are right about thou is that this is the Future , the DRM is unintrusive ...I have to admit at first I hated it ...but I got a ton of free stuff from Ubisoft because of the server problem they had which they did fix it was due to the volume of users (LEGIT USERS ) authenticating at the same time.
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What free stuff and how did you get it?? Is this only if you had that issue??
 
Are they going to do this every time their server goes down? They'll bankrupt themselves in short order if hackers decide to go after them.

And here's my other issue. What happens if Ubisoft goes out of business. What happens if, in 5 or 6 year's time, they decide to stop supporting the game? What if they decide keeping authentification servers up when they would rather have them available for newer games goes against their best interests?

Suddenly that nice shiny box and disc becomes worth less than the materials its printed on.
 
shadowfox said:
Are they going to do this every time their server goes down? They'll bankrupt themselves in short order if hackers decide to go after them.

And here's my other issue. What happens if Ubisoft goes out of business. What happens if, in 5 or 6 year's time, they decide to stop supporting the game? What if they decide keeping authentification servers up when they would rather have them available for newer games goes against their best interests?

Suddenly that nice shiny box and disc becomes worth less than the materials its printed on.
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They could easily disable the DRM then. Remember, the DRM is going to get cracked, Ubisoft expects this. The whole point of this new DRM is to delay the crackers so that people that don't want to wait to get the game have to buy it. And it's working as they had planned. Ubisoft has modified their DRM in the past (done with Anno 1404), I don't see them not modifying to disable the 'always on internet' requirement when they decide to stop supporting the game.
 
They sent me a mail .
I was one part of the group that had authentication problems .
They sent me a AC Lineage DVD , a code for extra content when it becomes available .
all because I bought the Limited edition of the game so :woot:
 
By requiring an internet connection for a game to INSTALL is OKAY, but to require that connection to always be on is somewhat ridiculous, I like gaming on the move, and an internet connection is not always available, what then? Am I supposed to just not play what I've paid for? I personally think that this DRM from UBISOFT was a failure...........
 
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