Some Ubisoft Games Not Playable on My Birthday

Ubisoft will be transitioning servers on February 7, and because a number of Ubisoft games have DRM linked to Ubisoft’s servers, those games will not be playable.

Some of Ubisoft’s most recent games, including Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and Driver: San Francisco, will not be affected.

“Ubisoft will be transitioning the hosting of many of its online services from a third-party data center to a new facility,” said the company. “During the transition, some Ubisoft services and online games will not be available. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience. This move ultimately will help us improve the maintenance of our infrastructure and deliver better uptime and greatly improved services for our customers.”

Here’s the list of games that won’t be affected during the transition:

• Anno 2070 -- PC
• Assassin’s Creed: Revelations -- OnLive, PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
• Driver: San Francisco -- OnLive, PC, PS3, 360
• The Settlers Online -- Web-based

Here’s the list of games that will be affected during the transition:

• Assassin’s Creed -- Mac
• Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 -- PC
• Might & Magic: Heroes VI -- PC
• Splinter Cell: Conviction -- Mac
• The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom -- PC
• The Settlers -- Mac

It’s unclear how long the server transition will take, with Ubisoft asking players to to follow its Twitter account.

None of this would be a problem if Ubisoft's games didn't have DRM, obviously.

Origin service is down at the moment, I just purchased Battlefield 3 for 'hopefully' a LAN I'm going to tonight... the client doesn't see the games on my account 'any of them'. Origin twitter account is just spamming the 'We apologize for the inconvenience and we're looking into it. Thanks for your patience.' crap.

So... similar to this I guess, very very lame and affecting current games I bought right now and want to play right now.

I like how Patrick slipped his Birthday in there too.

I just have to keep wondering, "What exactly is the DRM doing that they need to keep it up?".

If the person wanted to pirate the game, they could have easily done so since I'm sure there are cracked versions of all of those games by now. So.. about the people who are playing it now, what is the DRM keeping them from? Putting it up on a torrent? Because it's already there anyways.

That's what I get for bringing logic into this though. Sorry Ubi, I like your games, but I'm not going to support anti-consumer practices.

Goddamn Ubi stop sucking

Shameless plug of Patrick's birthday. I like it.

Ha Patrick asking for presents.

Anno 2070 -- PC

Thank fuck for that! I'll be able to carry on my playthrough. Ubi do like to make good things hard to do don't they?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

I got you something (its a ton of LA Looks Hair Gel)

And they wonder why people pirate their games.

happy near birthday Pklep! Maybe they'll release Pushmo 2 for your birthday instead!

Does that mean that the Mac ports of those games aren't just the PC versions wrapped in Wine, and there are seriously specific Mac/PC DRM servers?

I probably wont be around on the 7th so I'll say it now.

Happy birthday Patrick :)

now that the future birthday salutations are done with I shall share my view on this matter.

meh. that is all.

Way to slip your birthday in there, Patrick. I'm sure it's also an accident that three of those game links just happen to point to your Amazon wishlist. Nice try.

@patrickklepek said:

• The Settlers Online -- Web-based

Ubisoft must regard this game very poorly, not even using the game's actual name, just some online settlers thing...

P.S. the game is horrible.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

So Kleptok is finally gonna turn 21 now?

It's creepy to wish happy birthday to someone you've never met / doesn't know you / never will either and especially address him by his first name and act like you've known him forever. This is actually one of the thing that is creepy about giantbomb's community.

well the dialogue from within has been far too passive to put any kind of serious pressure on companies like ubisoft, at least to an extent that could potentially impact sales and curtail many of the decisions governing DRM impositions like these in the first place.

so moan all you like, but every purchase made, however apathetic, clears the path that much more for future inconvenience.

So first they make us connect arbitrarily to their systems to play our games, then they take them offline with the claim that it's to make their bad service slightly less bad.

@Draxyle said:

I just have to keep wondering, "What exactly is the DRM doing that they need to keep it up?".

As an always online DRM they game basicaly keeps reporting to their servers every few seconds.

I hate you ubisoft,pirates have a better version then the customer them self.

Happy Birthday Patrick

Hey...February 7th is my birthday. And Patrick is my name. The fuck you trying to pull, Klepeck?

Happy 14th birthday Patrick!

jk MUCH LOVE

Trashy Patrick articles get trashier.

If frustrating but not much you can do, just hope Ubisoft has learnt from this and future games will be better.

Hell, right now I'm having a hard time accessing steam due to the client crashing on launch 80% of the time and if it gets past that it crashes after 5 minutes. All online DRM systems have trouble, not just Ubisoft (although there's isn't great).

*sighs* your freaking birthday advertisement slammed into gaming "news" does not amuse me.

Welcome to GiantBlogs.

I swear after Jeff's "Butthurt Rage of Star Wars" Blog. The only things that are making me stay on this site is Brad and Vinny. /manlove

*sighs* your freaking birthday advertisement slammed into gaming "news" does not amuse me.

Welcome to GiantBlogs.

@sofacitysweetheart said:

Trashy Patrick articles get trashier.

Those few days where players are unable to play the games they legitimately bought are going to be infuriating. I suffered through similar circumstances when I tried playing Assassin's Creed II (PC) during Ubi Soft's server maintenance.

Bad move, Ubi. Though, I guess they wouldn't care much since they don't make the bulk of their profit off of PC.

It's almost like Ubisoft wants you to pirate their games, considering how they punish you for buying them. I nearly bought Anno 2070 on Steam. Luckily I noticed the Ubi DRM when scrolling to check the file size. Only 3 installs if you buy it, unlimited if you pirate. Not being a pirate, I just passed on the game. Was really looking forward to it though =(. Also, happy birthday Patrick!

Patrick, having a news story important to the state of the industry happen on your birthday seems kind of appropriate. My birthday however is when Max Payne 3 is releasing which is appropriate because I love Max Payne, unless its terrible and I spend the night in tears...

And they wonder why people pirate their games.

Random downtimes based on the whims of the game company?

What is this, World of Warcraft?

Oh no! What if I accidentally tried to play Might and Magic: Heroes VI on that date! Oh wait. That will never happen. Because Heroes VI is, at best, an interesting set of ideas.

Kinda unfair that the other topic got closed, since this one was posted after...

I heard that Anno 2070 will in some way be affected, could somebody perhaps clarify this?

I'd really like to start playing it soon

@mandude: wait a second. are you telling me that when forum members post the same news that the staff posts after the fact gets closed on?

Oh geez. That is unfair..thought this site was all about contributing.

@Klei said:

It's creepy to wish happy birthday to someone you've never met / doesn't know you / never will either and especially address him by his first name and act like you've known him forever. This is actually one of the thing that is creepy about giantbomb's community.

Theres no wrong in being cool dudes and congrats people .... the world (interwebz) needs more nice people around dont you think? :)

@Aetheldod said:

the world (interwebz) needs more nice people around dont you think? :)

QFT

@Sinful: I kinda wanna send a PM about it, but I'm not sure if it'd be a dick thing to do...

One thing that worries me. What happens when they decide to take down the servers? Will I be able to play my games in 20 years that I payed for? Maybe they can remove the DRM with an update when the time comes?

I still play my NES games from time to time hell I even play on my Vectrex so I'm pretty sure I want to play some old school Xbox 360 games in the future :)

@SerHulse said:

I heard that Anno 2070 will in some way be affected, could somebody perhaps clarify this?

I'd really like to start playing it soon

The Ubisoft page states that it own't be impacted. However, even at its best, Anno 2070 has it's own host of ridiculous DRM problems that have been preventing people from being able to play it (or in some cases, to review or benchmark it).

This article just reminded me of how many recent Ubisoft titles that I don't have...

Happy Birthday, Patrick Duder! Your shameless plug did not go unnoticed.

@Sinful: I kinda wanna send a PM about it, but I'm not sure if it'd be a dick thing to do...

@Sinful said:

@mandude: wait a second. are you telling me that when forum members post the same news that the staff posts after the fact gets closed on?

Oh geez. That is unfair..thought this site was all about contributing.

As the author of said post, I assume the intention is to keep the conversation contained in one spot, instead of fragmenting it (and I would guess that if a forum post pre-dating a news article had significant conversation already going on, it wouldn't be locked - but I'm just guessing about that part). Plus, you don't get to buy Patrick Klepek a present, in the forum thread.

@Napalm said:

@mandude said:

@Sinful: I kinda wanna send a PM about it, but I'm not sure if it'd be a dick thing to do...

You can ask, but I can tell you why: it's because an article also exists as a forum post, and we generally don't let two posts of the same topic go on. That's why you will usually see one locked and says, "refer to X topic as that discussion already exists."

Which (and as I posted in a reply at the same time as yours) makes complete sense so we can make the most of a single conversation. However, it is kind of silly wording to say "this discussion already exists", because that wording suggests that the one being linked to pre-dates the one being locked, when it doesn't. But that pertains more to the execution than the intent (and the intent is perfectly sound).

Looks like a bunch of old games on Mac or games I'm not interested in. 
 
The DRM they use is stupid though.