I am going to f--king kill Ubisoft!Follow

Seriously!

What pants-on-head ****** came up with the idea of forcing a permanent internet connection onto people in order for them to play a single player game? If you don't have a permanent internet connection, you can't start the game. If your internet connection drops, the game will pause and will only resume once the connection is restored. This is all providing you can actually run the game in the first place.

I have an internet connection. It's stable, it's wired and it's 20 mbit or so. That's why I was able to install the patch for Settlers 7. You know, download and install it from the f--king internet that I'm wired to at this very moment. It's what enabled me to download and install the patch for the Ubisoft Game Launcher. It's what enables me to write this post right this very instant!

So why the bloody hell am I sitting here, staring at the Ubisoft Game Launcher telling me it couldn't connect and that I need an internet connection to play the game? I have a f--king internet connection, you dumb script! How the hell do you think I installed and patched the game in the first place?

After three frustrating tries where the Ubisoft Game Launcher would idle out for 10 minutes while undoubtedly performing various sexual acts on my hard drive, I decided to go online to find the solution. One site says that the release date in UK is on the 26th of March, which is today, but I bought the game yesterday. Why the hell do you release a game before the release date if people can't play it on that day anyway? Not to mention, why can't I log in on March the 26th in the first place?

People are reporting connection issues all over the world, from Australia to France to the US. Ubisoft have been unsurprisingly silent during this entire time, but one person did get in contact with their customer service who suggested he followed three easy steps to make it work:

Step 1: Shut down your firewall and anti-virus.
Step 2: Clear all cached and temporary files.
Step 3: Reboot Windows in Safe Mode, uninstall the game and reinstall it by copying the entire contents of the DVD to your hard drive first. Run the game with firewalls and anti-virus (plus every other background application) turned off.

Come to think of it, I believe there was a fourth step.

Step 4: Put underpants on your head and say 'Blrpblrpblrpblrp' for ten minutes as you notice that a tech guy told you in all seriousness to disable firewalls and anti-virus programs on a computer that requires a permanent internet connection to play the game.

Are they f--king retarded? Seriously, you need a permanent internet connection to play the game and they're suggesting you disable your firewall and anti-virus while playing? Are they mentally ill?

Edit: Post was purely written for venting purposes. Thank you for your time.

Edited, Mar 26th 2010 9:27pm by Mazra

It's Mazra, what else would you expect?

NO, ITS BORING AND ****** NOW THAT UR HERE!!!!

NO UR MOM!!!!



Aye, I've been browsing around the Ubi forums all day to see if there was a fix somewhere. Lots of angry people out there. Even some of the forum moderators are joining in on the Ubisoft bashing.

the funny thing about ubisoft's drm is that if the connection goes down on ubi' end, the users are fncked.

meanwhile, the ****'s been cracked and the pirates are playing worry-free.

Seriously, I hate my life right now.

Deciding to figure out if this was a Ubisoft problem or my end, I put my laptop in a bag and went to my folks' place. Lo and behold, I managed to log on. Except now, NOW, it's asking for the CD-key. Not when I installed it. Not when I ran it the first time. No, I had to log on first.

Why? WHY?! The game doesn't need the disk to run, so naturally I left home without the manual and stuff (who reads those anyway?). Grrrreat. At least I convinced our network admin to double-check the ports and he opened up 21000-29999 (8999 ports, holy crap), so that should have solved my connectivity issue with the Ubisoft Game Launcher. Now I'm anxious to find out if I'll get the same server connection error as all the other people complaining.

Seriously, I'm not a ******* genius, but without reinventing the wheel here, could they not launch a patch that changed the registration to just check once like normal and then save your games to the hard drive instead of some remote server? I'm fairly sure it would fix 99% of all their problems and would cost them next to nothing. Yes, they're more open for piracy, but right now I get the feeling that the pirates are already playing the game(s).

Also, kudos to EA for wanting to charge people money for beta testing demos. I'm fairly certain they just managed to cap the only flag Microsoft doesn't own.

*pop*

Great, all these years in therapy to apply that mental block and now it's just all torn open again. I don't know if the screaming I hear is coming from my mouth, or if it's the sound of my brain trying to claw its way out of my skull.

Worst part about this copy protection is that it's a self-reinforcing downwards spiral. They claim that low sales numbers are due to piracy, so they implement horrible anti-piracy protection, preventing a lot of people from using their products, scaring others to not buy them in the first place. This produces low sales numbers which again leads to more horrible anti-piracy protection, and so on.

When will they learn?

DRM is retarded. I had to set up basically a hack to get C&C first decade because it wouldn't recognize the disc as being in the drive. It has no point as well, it's like in China you could make a new paint but you only expect it to last 3 months because by then others have already copied the formula and are making it in force.

Same here, for the several games I have bought, if they have any stupid crap, I generally get a hacked exe. Some day I might forget to buy the game first. :(

And if people buy the game anyways, the idiots in charge use this as "proof" that DRM is working and they should keep using it.

People don't boycott something by buying it.

Didn't know about the DRM until I got home, unwrapped the box, installed the game and the Ubisoft Game Launcher came out and told me I didn't have an internet connection. I mean, I read the 'requires a permanent internet connection sticker' but I had no idea it was for this. Figured it was in case you wanted to go online for multiplayer.

Anyway, I can log on and play now, but every half hour or so, the game freezes for 2-5 minutes because every single bump in the connection causes the Game Launcher to go nuts. ******* ace.

Sooooo... have the nerds cracked this DRM yet?