TorrentFreak

Ubisoft’s Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon is not due for another few weeks but it’s already turning up on torrent sites. The leak, a 3GB file for PC, was reportedly obtained by Russian hackers who exploited Ubisoft’s uPlay game launcher. In addition to enabling access to Blood Dragon which was apparently just sitting there on [...]

The CEO of games giant Ubisoft has revealed an interesting parallel in the company’s business models. Speaking at Gamescom this week, Yves Guillemot said that around 95% of players of the company’s boxed PC games are pirates. Equally, of all players of the company’s free-to-play games who can voluntarily part with cash to obtain a better experience, 95% choose not to pay a dime. Nevertheless, the latter model can be a great opportunity to beat piracy.

Hacker Tavis Ormandy has discovered a serious vulnerability in a well-known PC game DRM system. The Google engineer said that after buying a game from Ubisoft he became aware that its “Uplay” browser plug-in might prove problematic. In the early hours of this morning Ormandy confirmed that the add-on allows remote and “wide access” to machines running the DRM, potentially giving malicious attackers free reign to wreak havoc.

Ubisoft is known for laying the blame for many problems on the unauthorized downloading of its games. Stanislas Mettra, creative director of the upcoming game ‘I Am Alive,’ confirms this once again by saying that the decision not to release a PC version is a direct result of widespread game piracy. However, those who look beyond the propaganda will see that there appears to be more to the story than that.

According to a report from a customer who just pre-ordered the digital deluxe edition of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Ubisoft have just made yet another piracy related screw up. Hot on the heels of their earlier usage of a warez crack to fix Rainbox 6: Vegas 2, the publisher is now accused of downloading their own soundtrack from Demonoid, re-encoding it to a lower quality and selling it to the public.

Last month the gaming giant Ubisoft announced their new über-DRM which requires customers to be continuously online in order to play purchased games. Of course, this DRM was circumvented in a few hours and while downplaying this blunder, Ubisoft fails to see that they’ve only increased piracy.

Last week the gaming giant Ubisoft announced their latest DRM invention. In order to play purchased games customers have to be connected to the Internet at all times. Game developers are skeptical of this new anti-piracy solution, but could it actually be a step in the right direction?