Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Of D-R-M And D-U-MB

Well.

From The Escapist (posted on Sunday):
At around 8am GMT, people began to complain in the Assassin's Creed 2 forum that they couldn't access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games. Fast forward ten hours and it seems that the problem still hasn't been resolved, despite the assurances from a Ubisoft representative that the servers were 'constantly monitored.'

"I don't have any clear information on what the issue is ... but clearly the extended downtime and lengthy login issues are unacceptable, particularly as I've been told these servers are constantly monitored," said 'Ubi.Vigil', adding, "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." 

But wait. Why did this happen? According to Ubisoft, here's the reason:
Due to exceptional demand, we are currently experiencing difficulties with the Online Service Platform. This does not affect customers who are currently playing, but customers attempting to start a game may experience difficulty in accessing our servers.

Oh, so your early sales of games with the most restrictive DRM in history (seemingly) so exceeded your expectations that you couldn't service the demand?

Today's answer, though, is different from yesterday's answer:
Ubisoft then clarified this morning that its limited service was due to its servers coming under attack. "95 percent of players were not affected, but a small group of players attempting to open a game session did receive denial of service errors," said the publisher in its official Twitter account.

Let's see.
1. Fabricate an answer out of sheer panic if something happens that you promised would never happen. Check.
2. Change the answer to something that makes you look less culpable. Check.
3. Invent a number to minimize the problem. Check.
4. Demonstrate to everyone that you have absolutely no idea what you're doing. Check.

Let me get this straight: in less than a week, this DRM has already been hacked AND the servers have gone down? Onward, into the fog!

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