Hacker Group Claims Real Ubisoft DRM Crack

[addeB]

Lets raise the jolly roger! Ubisoft really pissed off a lot of people with that DRM. It stopped legitimate users from playing and pc users had to wait for months after the console realise just so Ubisoft could use their DRM in AC2. See every one who hates pirates, pirates do help people?

 

[Spiner909]

Well, good. You get greedy, you get hacked.

 

[LiftYourSkinnyFists]

Ubisoft didn't think it through hard enough, that's why I can buy AC2 for less than 30 and it's not that old :l

 

[Irridium]

While this is the first traditional crack that has surfaced (And it is legit- Skidrow is tied for first as the leading cracking group), the game has been completable for weeks, albeit though server emulation, which is a little tricker than normal to set up.

I would like to point out the legit customers are STILL suffering through this horrible inconvenience, while everyone that was going to pirate it have only been delayed by this. Sure, Ubi gets a few more sales (VERY few), but realistically, pissing off all your customers, loosing gamer good will, and putting ridiculous amounts of cash into creating an inventive new DRM scheme can't possibly made it up, considering they will have to keep the servers running 24/7 FOREVER in order for people to continue playing the game. Not to mention the fact that it probably lost them more sales then it got them, considering the bad reputation the game has gotten as a direct result of this.

And for future games also, many people like myself won't touch a Ubisoft game while this DRM is still intact, this includes consoles.

Yeah. I'm with you on that.

Shame to, cause Red Steel 2 and Conviction look cool...

 

[Earthmonger]

Well to be honest, Good on them.

I hate Ubisoft for this.

Aye, so true.
I don't have copies of either affected game, legal or otherwise, but at least I'd now consider buying them if I can remove the DRM bullcrap.

This. Now that there's a crack, I might actually consider buying AC2 and giving it a shot. Sad but true.

 

[Ancientgamer]

The redeemable thing here is it can remove the DRM from legit versions of the game. People may still pirate it, but that seems like a silver lining to m e.

 

[Seldon2639]

Ironically, I expect the PC sales for AC2 will have jumped now that people know that they can remove the obnoxious DRM.

in a perfect world that is exactly what would happen. But no, they'll instead just pirate the entire game and either sales will be the same, or sales will drop. Gamers use this argument all the time, "Pirates aren't consumers and not every pirate copy is a lost sale" but it works in the other way that people who weren't going to buy the game at launch aren't going to buy it now either.

Yes, anyone who doesn't buy the game at launch is a lost sale.

Wait, what?

I think the point was that people aren't going to go buy the full game, then crack the legitimate copy.

They're going to pirate the game, and crack it, and steal

 

[Joe Deadman]

Man DRM like this turns vicious bands of pirates into Robin Hood and his merry men.
Seriously Ubisoft way to try and kill king Rich- err I mean make customers hate you.

 

[Galad]

I love the "dicking around with warez site" part when this site has done 100s of piratebay.org stories.

Reporters don't have to dig in torrents and warez sites themselves to retell a story from another site and offer their take on it.

 

[Abedeus]

Who cares they hacked it? I've been playing AC2 with a server emulator for about a week.

So, good for them, but too late.

The deed is about a month old actually, and works with no problems.
So if you have a crappy internet connection, now you can buy it, because there is a way to play it.

Nope, not a month old. About a week. There were cracks, but they were all useless.

 

[Xanadu84]

They have something that removes DRM from legit copies? Wow...that makes the game almost worth buying. I would consider it if I wasn't dead set against giving money to people useing this DRM. But it is interesting that pirates, cracking the DRM illegally, and likely much to Ubis chagrin, will actually boost sales.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

It took a month and a half to break the unbreakable pirate proof code, code which has basically prevented legitimate users from enjoying the game a lot of times.

It might have taken a little longer, but this shows just how pointless this round of DRM was. Pirates: 1 Ubisoft: I think we may well be into minus figures now.

It is losing battle, isn't it? The next unbreakable pirate proof code will be even more "user friendly" (sarcasm, obviously) and will fall in a similar fashion.

 

[oppp7]

I just buy consoles...

I guess this is good? If I was Ubisoft I wouldn't have called it a DRM and just made it that cloud compression... thing... where the graphics and such depend on the server. Of course, then there'd be lag and disconnects, but at least then the peoples wouldn't be mad at the Ubisofts.

They just wouldn't buy the game. Which sorts of defeats the point of DRM.

Personally, I think the revenue gained from impatient potential pirates will be tiny compared to revenue lost, both actual and potential, from the amount of gamers they've pissed off now and in the future with this DRM.

Ya, but like I said, it wouldn't be because Ubisoft was being paranoid and punishing everyone. They could just say they were trying something new to help people.

 

[Seldon2639]

I hope all the people part of skid row end up homeless with ubisoft dancing on there money from a copyright violation lawsuit.

I'm not sure its a copyright violation to disable DRM.

It might violate the EULA, but if they explicitly say they aren't doing it for money, then most courts will end up viewing it the same way other cheats/mods for games are viewed.

That is to say, it has no legal ramifications what so ever.

Well, in American Federal courts that handle copyright violations anyway, I don't know about French courts... (But if Skid Row aren't French Citizens, can they be dragged to a French court over DRM? I doubt it.)

Disabling DRM in and of itself, on a legitimately-bought product, wouldn't create liability (it could violate the EULA, but... Eh). But, whether they explicitly say "we're not doing it for money" or not, their actions create liability. In the same way that if I copy a DVD five million times and give it away, I'm still liable for copyright violation.

Even if not done for profit, any product which uses another entity's intellectual or physical property (including code, business method, logo, music, video, or pictures) and which doesn't fall under the fair use provisions of copyright protection, is an actionable violation of copyright.

You're misstating the distinction drawn for mods, cheat, parodies, and other 'fair use' of copyrighted material. Basically, if I use an existing copyrighted material to create my own unique product on top of, that's fair use. I can parody, satirize, modify, ect. I can take a book, and write a fanfiction. I can take a game and mod it. I can take a song and parody it. I can't take a book, and rewrite it word-for-word, before releasing it on the internet.

Fundamentally, a big part of the difference is in whether the original work competes with the copyrighted work. So, a fanfic of Harry Potter doesn't compete with the Harry Potter series. A mod of doom turning it into Mario competes neither with Doom nor Mario, so it's fine. A cracked/torrent/pirated version of a game directly competes with the original (copyrighted) game, and is not sufficiently distinct from the original product as to count as fair use.

Skid Row can, should, and god-willing will be smacked down for helping people steal property.

Finally, it'd depend on where Skid Row is located. If they're located in America, we have reciprocity with almost all of Europe, and most of Asia. So, if a French court heard and ruled against them, it could easily be domesticated in America, and apply to them.

 

[Seldon2639]

They have something that removes DRM from legit copies? Wow...that makes the game almost worth buying. I would consider it if I wasn't dead set against giving money to people useing this DRM. But it is interesting that pirates, cracking the DRM illegally, and likely much to Ubis chagrin, will actually boost sales.

I doubt it. I'd bet that Ubisoft won't see a spike in sales from this crack. We'll see a spike in pirating of the game, but I'd bet very few of those sales translate into dollars going into the pockets of the people who actually made the game.

For all of our grand ideological talk about how we'd put up the money if companies didn't have DRM, we have a chance to show them that we really can be responsible. If we meant our rhetoric about how DRM drives paying customers away, there would be no further pirating of the game now, and a huge spike in sales as people can buy the game and crack it.

Who wants to give me the Vegas odds?

 

[ilion]

Funny,... now ill buy the game, I really will. I love assassins creed.

 

[Darktau]

The steam underground community had this fully cracked over 4 weeks ago, (I have the game for 360 already so leave me alone ) that has been confirmed to work 100% lol.

 

[bz316]

This was inevitable. DRM is always ultimately cracked. The only thing Ubisoft's DRM was destined to do was screw over legitimate users of the game.