Why not? Everyone loves it when our crazy comments page numbers thing kicks in. Ubisoft have taken their senses and posted them into outer space. Responding to the public outcry for more draconian, inconveniencing copyright management, they have replaced Starforce and announced their new PC-only DRM system. One that requires you be permanently online in order to be able to play. The attempt to sell this new system begins with what it doesn’t do. There’s no CD check, and there’s no installation limits. A good start. And then, GameSpy reports enthusiastically, it will support cloud saving. Well, I love cloud saving – it’s something Valve promised ages ago (although with sadly little movement since). When I choose to use it. Which with this DRM, the current reports suggest, you cannot. The price we pay for not requiring the CD in the drive, and for being able to install a game we’ve legally bought on as many machines as we want, is to be permanently online when playing Ubi games. It will authenticate itself online each time you load it, and then save remotely every time you save. This is, to stress, a game perhaps bought in a shop. So from now on, beginning with Settlers 7, potentially all Ubi PC games will require you to check in with them to let them know you’ve started playing their game, and then tell them every time you save, send them all the data in doing so, and then say bye-bye when you’re done playing for that day. Shack News received some clarifying information from Ubisoft. They explain that they will apply patches should they ever remove the servers behind the games. They also explain that if your connection drops while playing, the game will pause while it tries to reconnect, and then will apparently allow you to carry on without the internet. They don’t say whether it will be impossible to save if you do, however. They also say in the same notes that, “you will need to have an active Internet connection to play the game, for all game modes.” So this is a little unclear. This seems like such a bizarre, bewildering backward step. Of course we haven’t experienced it yet, but based on Ubi’s own description of the system so many concerns arise. Yes, certainly, most people have the internet all the time on their PCs. But not all people. So already a percentage of the audience is lost. Then comes those who own gaming laptops, who now will not be able to play games on trains, buses, in the park, or anywhere they may not be able to find a wifi connection (something that’s rarely free in the UK, of course – fancy paying the £10/hour in the airport to play your Ubisoft game?). Then there’s the day your internet is down, and the engineers can’t come out to fix it until tomorrow. No game for you. Or any of the dozens of other situations when the internet is not available to a player. But further, there are people who do not wish to let a publisher know their private gaming habits. People who do not wish to report in to a company they’ve no affiliation with, nor accountability to, whenever they play a game they’ve legally bought. People who don’t want their save data stored remotely. This new system renders all customers beholden to Ubisoft in perpetuity whenever they buy their games. Clearly publishers are terrified by piracy. While none of the major publishers has ever produced any evidence to support the claims that piracy decreases their sales, they clearly think it does, and are trying to do anything they can to prevent it. Their ultimate goal – to make more money from sales – is in our favour too, of course. We want more PC games, and we want them now. So if publishers aren’t willing to invest in the medium because of piracy fears, we’ll lose out in a big way. But sadly these peculiar, Big Brother-esque approaches do not seem close to the right way to go about it. Perhaps Ubi will react to public outcry. Perhaps a more sensible version can be created, one that offers an offline mode for those who play games offline, as with Steam. A solution that’s designed to make games accessible to those who legally purchase them. I really hope so. Update: Just noticed two other things. Firstly, this new DRM also prevents the option to resell your game. There are implications here. Secondly, this rather remarkable wording in the FAQ: Why is Ubisoft forcing their loyal customers to sign up for a Ubisoft account when they don’t want to give their private data and only play single player games? We hope that customers will feel as we do, that signing up for an account will offer them exceptional gameplay and services that are not available otherwise. It is the year 2138. Since the terrible conclusion of the great war between Simon Cowell’s X-tremes and Charlie Brooker’s Tweetonauts, humanity has been at peace. And, for the first time in 131 years, the PC gaming website Rock, Paper, Shotgun passes an entire week without mentioning DRM. That’s then, but this is now – and UbiGate continues apace. Yesterday, seemingly cracked versions of Silent Hunter 5 and Assassin’s Creed 2 appeared. Ubisoft have since responded to say these DRMless versions are not complete, backed up to some extent by various forum comments observing that the SH5 scene release can’t make it past the first mission. Other comments claim otherwise. What’s a poor website to believe? “You have probably seen rumors on the web that Assassin’s Creed II and Silent Hunter 5 have been cracked. Please know that this rumor is false and while a pirated version may seem to be complete at start up, any gamer who downloads and plays a cracked version will find that their version is not complete.” Which reads a bit too broad to be convincing enough by itself – we’ve requested further official comment, but in the meantime, here’s a selection of comments from a variety of popular filesharing sites which I’m not fool enough to link directly to here: This is not fully cracked. The game needs a permanent online connection to net with a valid serial and DOWNLOADS the missions as you play through the campaign. This is not currently downloading the missions. I imagine this will still work fine when some we get all the mission files? Hmm…it seems to be working just fine for me…I d/l the game and then the 1.1 patch….I mounted it, then installed it without a hitch and then applied the 1.1 patch and crack.I then started the game directly from the crack and am currently on the 2nd mission of the campaign…seems to be saving just fine…I exited the game and then started it again and it was right where I left off and showed my next mission objectives….seems fine so far and gonna continue later tomorrow and see how things go… Game NOT fully CRACKED! Using the profile name gets you past the tutorial, and lets you start the first mission (even that doesn’t work for everyone). That’s as far as you get though. The missions for the most part are stored on Ubisoft’s servers. I guess someone is going to have to buy a legit copy and play through the game before a fully functional crack can be created. Hopefully these are the only tricks Ubisoft has up it’s sleeve. This crack is incomplete and probably should be nuked. There’s still an awful lot of contradiction, in other words. Of course, it’s possible that any or all of the more strident comments on Torrent sites are telling porkie-pies on behalf one side or another, but I’ll leave it to crazy IP hunters to work out if there’s anything odd going on there. Meanwhile, we’re told this is what people trying the Assassin’s Creed 2 crack are experiencing: Largely speaking, it looks like Ubisoft might currently be right on this one, even if they’ve not provided supporting evidence of their own. Interesting to hear the repeated user assertions that the game downloads mission files as it requires them, which if true is presumably the key to how the DRM system works. It may be that a 100% successful crack turns up once someone’s played one of these games to completion and has the complete set of files, or it could be that important pieces are auto-deleted once used. Either way, this looks like a canny way to deal with 0-day piracy, even if its long-term effectiveness is less sure. It’s a bit rich, frankly, that a game you buy on a disc has to go and download a ton of stuff as soon as you run it, but then that’s scarcely uncommon practice – as anyone who’s bought a boxed Valve game or MMO in the last few years will know. This hideously uncomfortable journey clearly isn’t over, despite yesterday’s apparent resolution. What fresh horror awaits us? Rumours indicate that Ubisoft's brand new anti-piracy DRM system has been compromised on the same day the first game to use it went on sale. Submarine simulator Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic, and indeed the day one patch that fixes many fundamental bugs, have both been hacked, with the most up-to-date version of the game currently circulating torrent sites and Usenet. While the effectiveness of the crack has yet to be confirmed, if the DRM has been circumvented, it represents a massive failure on Ubisoft's part for its products to be protected from unauthorised copying. The DRM system itself is based on the idea that the player's PC is always connected to the internet. While you're online and authenticated with Ubi's servers, the game operates proceeds as normal. However, no connection means no gameplay: should you lose your connection, you're unceremoniously booted from the game. What happens when you reconnect may differ depending on the game you are playing. In Settlers 7, the action resumes from the exact point where you lost your connection. In Assassin's Creed 2, the game had sent you back to the last checkpoint. However, Ubisoft has just issued an update which ensures the same rules as for Settlers apply. Critics have lambasted the system owing to instabilities in home connections, the unstable nature of the internet itself, along with the possibility that Ubisoft's own servers will experience downtime at some point. Supporters of the system like the fact that there are no limitations on activations or the amount of PCs that the game can be installed on, and the disc does not need to be kept within your drive. The ease with which the system has been disabled is sure to worry Ubisoft. Silent Hunter 5's protection is apparently circumvented by replacing an executable file with a patched replacement, similar to just about every other PC 'crack' out there. The piracy group responsible for the hack says that in addition, turning off your internet connection or else not using Ubisoft's specific game loader is enough to get the game running DRM-free. While the hacking groups can rightly claim victory in the first battle, we can be sure that Ubisoft will be studying the nature of the assault on its new system with a view to improving it for future products. Sign in Connect with Facebook New in town? Create an accountForgotten your details?version: v.1.1 US Changes in v1.1 Bugs and issues - Update to the leader boards data security - Now torpedo Officer's abilities upgrades work properly - Fixed the promotion points issue for crew in multiplayer - Fixed a bug where the player will lose the flak gun & hydrophone upgrades if he upgrades the conning tower - The depth control is now working properly - Corrected an angle readout when the user manually adjust the angle - Add visual feedback when the user uses a crew ability - Now difficulty settings is kept in campaign after the game has been restarted Silent Hunter 5 Mods- Fix a bug where the shortcuts for the abilities are not working when using some keyboard models - Fix a bug where the camouflage of the submarine didn't apply to the conning tower - Fix a bug where only 1 Flak gun was upgraded - Now submarines have the correct icon representation on map - Fix a bug where the user will receive the defeat screen after completing the campaign with major victory - Now the external camera works on the realistic mode. Silent Hunter 5 Cheats- Fix a bug when talking to the Watch Officer - Fix a bug when Macro objective can no longer be completed. - Fix a bug when having the hull integrity below 20% at the end of the campaign will destroy the submarine rather than complete the campaign - Fix a bug when the user cannot use the attack/observation periscope in certain conditions - Fix a bug on Windows Vista when installing the game under a standard user account Game play and others - Fix a bug when the U-boat does not take damage from AMCs - Now ships sunk in an area specified by the shape will update the specific Macro objective - Fix a bug related to the objective condition on the mission The Fate of U-110 - The direction of the enemy locked ships no longer appear in the TAI - Fix a bug where the texts on the map were overlapping Descargar juegos psp gratis formato iso. - On the mission The Cornered Giant the user can no longer complete the mission without sinking any ship - Fix a bug with German voices and voice over subtitles - Frame rating improvements when the user enters the bunker - Fix a bug on load/save where some objectives will not be completed Online - Fix a bug when long freeze occurs when a client tries to join a session - Fix a bug when title remains stuck on synchronizing saved games menu - Error message appears after redeeming the wallpaper reward. - Fix a but when there was a significant delay regarding the availability of redeemed rewards in game - Now Uplay window and taskbar tab have specific icons - Fix a bug when the user gets a confirmation message instead of notification one - Incorrect mouse behavior when returning to Main Menu from Uplay - Several errors appear after buying the two historical missions. - Error message appears after redeeming the wallpaper reward. - Fix a bug on German version when value is not translated in the Uplay achievement window - Fix a bug when improper message displayed when another user logs in on the same account Report problems with download to [email protected]
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