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.