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 Ubisoft’s servers, the exploit caused uPlay to think that users already owned other games.

According to Gameranx, this enabled titles to be downloaded for free and played offline without DRM.

Discussions currently taking place on Russian forums indicate that Ubisoft have still not fixed the problem.

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For example, the first implementation of the DRM in the PC version of Driver: San Francisco required users users to be permanently connected to the Internet to play, although user backlash meant that the company backtracked on the policy.

What has become apparent in recent times through this and similar experiences is that DRM only hurts paying customers and does little to stop pirates from releasing hassle-free versions of Ubisoft games online. But with DRM or without, according to Ubisoft piracy levels are massive.

Speaking with GamesIndustry International editor Matt Martin at Gamescom this week, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot indicated that piracy levels of their standard ‘boxed’ games is currently sitting at between 93% and 95%.

Representatives for Ubisoft have complained bitterly about piracy in the past, and have openly blamed it for the company choosing not to release games to the PC market. Interestingly though, there is another way.

Guillemot says that the free-to-play model (F2P) has been a great tool for Ubisoft to market their products to areas of the world where piracy of PC games is at such a level that turning a profit has proven impossible.

“We want to develop the PC market quite a lot and F2P is really the way to do it,” Guillemot said. “The advantage of F2P is that we can get revenue from countries where we couldn’t previously – places where our products were played but not bought. Now with F2P we gain revenue, which helps brands last longer.”

The Ubisoft CEO said that the F2P framework is a good way to get closer to customers, hopefully with a view to enticing them to make the optional and hopefully repeating payments the model needs to survive. Interestingly, the percentage of people who pirate Ubisoft’s boxed products matches almost exactly with the percentage who chose not to pay in the F2P model.

“On PC it’s only around five to seven per cent of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it’s only about five to seven per cent who pay anyway, the rest is pirated. It’s around a 93-95 per cent piracy rate, so it ends up at about the same percentage,” Guillemot said.

Although the choose-not-to-pay crowd is large, good revenues are still available. As revealed by Electronic Arts last year after it targeted South Korea with FIFA Online, F2P can prove lucrative, even more so than traditional models.

“We gave the FIFA disc away free,” CEO John Riccitiello said. “But, instead of charging people for software, we charged small payments within the game: 5p for injury updates, 10p for a new strip. We found that 10 per cent of all Korean households downloaded FIFA online and the consumer paid us more online than they would have done buying the game in a store.”

A short list of new Ubisoft F2P games can be found here.

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But all too often DRM hits the headlines when it either fails to do its job or generates unintended side-effects that cause headaches for legitimate users. Today could be the start of a very big headache indeed for Ubisoft and people who have purchased the company’s games.

According to hacker/researcher Tavis Ormandy, the Uplay DRM system designed and operated by Ubisoft could be opening up the company’s customers’ machines to a whole world of hurt.

“While on vacation recently I bought a video game called ‘Assassin’s Creed Revelations’. I didn’t have much of a chance to play it, but it seems fun so far,” Ormandy wrote on the Full Disclosure mailing list yesterday.

“However, I noticed the installation procedure creates a browser plugin for its accompanying Uplay launcher, which grants unexpectedly (at least to me) wide access to websites. I don’t know if it’s by design, but I thought I’d mention it here in case someone else wants to look into it.”

Just 24 hours later Ormandy was back with a worrying update.

“I got it working,” he wrote. “I submitted it to Ubisoft via the online form.”

What Ormandy appears to be suggesting is that once hackers understand how this vulnerability works, websites could incorporate an exploit into their designs which could then allow them to gain access to a Ubisoft game-player’s PC. The sky’s the limit with this kind of opening – software installs, keyloggers, bots or other malware all become possible.

A list of games running Uplay DRM can be found here – they include some huge names such as the Assassins Creed series, Call of Juarez: The Cartel, Driver: San Francisco, Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic, and all the Tom Clancy games.

TorrentFreak contacted Ormandy for comment and we will update this article with his comments when they come in.

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The first demos of the game were well received by the gaming community and as a result many PC gamers asked Ubisoft to release a PC version as well. This is not going to happen anytime soon though.

PC gamers shouldn’t “bitch” about it, ‘I Am Alive’ creative director Stanislas Mettra said in a recent interview. In his commentary Mettra insinuates that many of the people who are asking for a PC release are in fact going to end up pirating the game.

“We’ve heard loud and clear that PC gamers are bitching about there being no version for them,” Mettra told incgamers.

“But are these people just making noise just because there’s no version or because it’s a game they actually want to play? Would they buy it if we made it?”

The creative director argues that it might not be worth the effort porting the game to PC because of widespread piracy.

“It’s hard because there’s so much piracy and so few people are paying for PC games that we have to precisely weigh it up against the cost of making it. Perhaps it will only take 12 guys three months to port the game to PC, it’s not a massive cost but it’s still a cost. If only 50,000 people buy the game then it’s not worth it,” he said.

Indeed, it’s undeniable that game piracy is an issue for developers, but the question has to be asked to what extent piracy has been a factor in the non-release of a PC version.

Talking to Digital Spy Mettra reveals that not all the blame can be put on pirates.

“This is basically the second version, especially designed for XBLA and PSN in mind, knowing that we had to design something really unique, really different type of game experience, but we knew we had to push some levels that aren’t compatible with mass market gaming experiences,” Mettra said.

In other words, for this version a PC port wasn’t ever the plan, and it’s doubtful that pirates are solely to blame for that. It is of course good to use as an excuse, especially for a game that was originally announced in 2006, has suffered several setbacks since (including development by two different studios) and one that underwent a “total re-engineering” only last year.

The piracy blame-game is an interesting choice too, particularly coming from Ubisoft. The company was previously exposed using pirated music and cracks to support their games.

Luckily, not all people in the gaming industry blame piracy for all their troubles and misfortunes. Valve co-founder and managing director Gabe Newell, whose Portal 2 sold more copies on PC than on any other format, has a refreshing take on how to approach the issue of piracy. According to him, game publishers should compete with it.

“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue,” he said recently. “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”

For now, however, Ubisoft is taking the “no service” approach to ‘I Am Alive’ and actually killing PC piracy dead in its tracks, but sadly in the most cynical way possible.

Instant update: There goes Ghost Recon: Future Soldier too

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In addition to two new single player maps, two extra multiplayer characters and a new skin for the Ezio character, it’s also packaged with a map of Rome, behind-the-scenes video and the game’s soundtrack. But there’s a more interesting extra too. Reddit user ‘plginger‘ already downloaded the soundtrack and immediately noticed something unusual, as illustrated by the screenshot below.

In the comment column it clearly reads “Encoded by arsa13″ – and arsa13 is a member of the semi-private BitTorrent tracker, Demonoid, who uploaded the Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood soundtrack to the site more than 4 months ago.

But maybe ‘plginger’ is messing around, and retagged the files he downloaded from Demonoid for the lulz? While it’s possible, it seems unlikely. When arsa13 created his original torrent somehow a track was left out. The missing track is called Apple Chamber and, perhaps not coincidentally, the same track in the first screenshot above is the only one not tagged ‘arsa13′, suggesting it came from a separate source.

While arsa13 uploaded FLAC files which were ripped from AC3 files included on a console bonus DVD, it appears that Ubisoft have not only used these torrented tracks as a source, but reduced their quality down to MP3.

This latest event seems to be deja-vu all over again for Ubisoft following its 2008 usage of a so-called ‘No-CD’ crack from warez scene group RELOADED to fix its game Rainbox 6: Vegas 2. The publisher is yet to offer an explanation.

Can there be any better endorsement of BitTorrent, that people find it easier to access their own content through a torrent site than via their own internal methods?

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The new plans were welcomed with skepticism by fellow game developers and the majority of gamers. Instead of hindering piracy the DRM only restricts legitimate customers from playing the game how and where they want, most people agreed.

A survey among members of the Subsim community regarding the DRM on Silent Hunter 5 shows that, if anything, the new DRM is putting off customers from actually buying the game. Only 15% of the respondents said that the DRM wouldn’t affect their plans to buy Silent Hunter 5, while 85% said they would delay or cancel their purchase until a DRM-free version becomes available.

From these responses it could be concluded that many potential customers would prefer to use a DRM-free (pirated) copy instead of the legitimate product, which is the opposite of what Ubisoft wanted to accomplish.

Silent Hunter 5 was released on Tuesday and just a few hours later a cracked version of the game was published on many file-sharing sites. Ubisoft, worrying that DRM-haters would download the game illegally, quickly responded to the news about the cracked DRM and released a statement in which they downplay ‘the issue’.

“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,” Ubisoft quickly responded.

While many downloaders report that the game works just fine, Ubisoft’s statement does hold some truth because in their view the game is obviously ‘not complete’ without the DRM. At this point it is not entirely clear what else could be “missing” in the cracked version, but that is beside the point.

The bottom line is that their revolutionary DRM invention was cracked in a matter of hours, and although the crack might not be perfect yet, it will be eventually. The end result will be that the pirated version of the game will be more appealing and less restrictive than the actual retail product. Thus, the DRM is encouraging and increasing piracy instead of putting a halt to it.

It looks like Ubisoft has made a massive mistake with their strong focus on DRM. In fact, the time and effort spent on fine-tuning the DRM would have been better spent on game development, so that they didn’t have to release a patch with bugfixes a day after the game was released.

Let’s hope Ubisoft quickly comes to its senses and releases another patch that removes the needless DRM from the game.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

As with most DRM, Ubisoft’s new anti-piracy solution needlessly hurts legitimate customers. Pirates will always find a way around the access restrictions and will be able to play the game offline without running into trouble. Because of this, Ubisoft’s plans were welcomed with skepticism among fellow game developers.

Gaming magazine Develop has asked several gaming industry figures what they think about Ubisoft’s new DRM. While some are against it and others showed support, the overall sentiment is that DRM itself is not going to stop piracy.

Gusto Games’ Luke Maskell is the most outspoken of them all. “I’m firmly against Ubisoft’s announcement, I think it’s a huge violation of privacy and is only punishing the legitimate customer; the pirates won’t have to worry about being online as they’ll find a way around pretty sharpish,” he commented.

Maskell was not the only one with reservations though. Adrian Hirst, Managing Director at Weaseltron, also stressed that the danger of DRM is that the pirated copy turns into a more desirable product than the retail version.

“Previous draconian attempts at copy protection have only served to outrage our very customers. Copy protection that makes the cracked copy of the game more appealing to the customer than the genuine one threatens to turn them away from purchasing at all,” he said.

Most of the other gaming insiders that were interviewed agreed with this assessment. DRM will only hurt the game if legitimate customers have to face more restrictions than those who choose to download a copy illegally.

“I don’t believe that online DRM on it’s own will ever stop piracy – your game will simply have that functionality stripped out by various hacking groups,” Ben Ward of Bizarre Creations said. “The only way that DRM will be accepted by consumers is if it is delivered inside a service which brings tangible, real-world benefits with it.”

Others were less outspoken against Ubisoft’s new DRM but everyone noted that it will be counter-effective if it’s too obtrusive or cumbersome. To us at TorrentFreak, these different opinions clearly suggest that for a long time the digital entertainment industry has chosen the wrong path to counter piracy.

Instead of trying to add more restrictions to the products they sell to customers, they should add in extra features for those who pay for the product. UbiSoft actually made it half way already by adding several advantages for players who play online, but they’re not quite there yet.

Logged in customers who play Ubisoft’s new games online will be able to save it remotely, so they can continue playing the game on other PCs. Continuing along these lines the company could easily include other benefits and extra features for online players. If they then drop the requirement to play online, they might actually have a superior product compared to the pirated version.

In the end it’s all about finding a way to frame or sell DRM as an advantage instead of a restriction.

The music streaming application Spotify is a great example of how ‘DRM’ can be an advantage. Spotify users can only access music when they’re logged in, which is the ultimate DRM. Still, no one has even brought this issue up because the service offers so many advantages over most other legitimate and illegitimate ways of enjoying music.

If those in the gaming and other digital entertainment industries start thinking in terms of adding benefits for paying customers instead of useless restrictions to keep pirates out, they would have a lot more satisfied customers. Perhaps even more importantly, they could sell a lot more products.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Faced with technical issues surrounding the DRM on the PC version of Rainbow Six Vegas 2, developer Ubisoft made a ‘fix’ available. Unfortunately, it became clear that far from being their own code, the patch was actually a ‘No-CD crack‘ created by warez group, Reloaded.

Getting caught pirating in an attempt fix broken anti-piracy measures was probably a step too far for Ubisoft, so it has taken the radical step of removing the DRM from the PC retail version of its latest ‘Prince of Persia‘ game.

Posting on the company’s forum, Ubisoft community development manager Chris Easton announced the move.

“You`re right when you say that when people want to pirate the game they will, but DRM is there to make it as difficult as possible for pirates to make copies of our games. A lot of people complain that DRM is what forces people to pirate games but as PoP [Prince of Persia] PC has no DRM we`ll see how truthful people actually are.”

But does Chris really expect that dropping the DRM will be a success? How ‘truthful’ will people be when it comes to not pirating the title?

“Not very, I imagine,” he adds.

One user of the forum responds, “Did anyone here mention how devs blame piracy for everything these days? If the game sucks to begin with, they blame piracy. If they don’t have money or are just lazy to make a decent PC port…they blame piracy.” He finishes up with a common statement – If you make a good game, people will buy it.

“Well this time we’ve got a good game with no DRM so there really is no reason to pirate it, right? We should expect good sales because there’s no reason to not buy a copy,” notes Chris, although he doesn’t seem that confident overall.

“I’m fairly skeptical as it’s an easy answer given by a lot of people why they pirate games but if you’re going to buy this game instead of pirating purely because of no DRM in the store version, then if I ever meet you in real life I’ll happily shake your hand and buy you a drink.”

Just recently, developer 2D Boy released their ‘World of Goo’ without DRM. It was heavily pirated, but sales were high enough to make the project worthwhile. At the time, TorrentFreak spoke with Kyle Gabler from 2D Boy who told us that he believed that their customers realized that the company was trying to do “the right thing” which they hoped would translate into a certain amount of goodwill.

If the backlash linked to the terrible DRM included with Spore is anything to go by, Kyle might be on to something and time will tell if Ubisoft’s experiment pays off too. In the end, games always will be pirated, with or without DRM, and there is no reason to believe that piracy increases when there is no ‘protection’. In fact, it only annoys legitimate customers who bought the game.

TorrentFreak will count the downloads and report back in a little while…..

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The situation revolves around that oddest of characters, Direct2Drive (D2D) – an online games store, owned by IGN, selling games over the Internet as protected downloads. Game code is modified to prevent the standard retail DRM from inhibiting game play (as there is no actual disc to check for) with Trymedia activation utilized instead. More importantly, since the code around the DRM has been modified and changed to a different system, regular patches from the game developers can’t be used. Instead, patches must be reworked by D2D to accommodate these changes. These changes are not always quick, a point D2D does try and defuse in its FAQ.

Thus we come to Rainbow Six: Vegas2 (R6V2) which, since its release in March, has had three patches released for it. The third, 1.03 provides a lot of changes, including new play modes, so legitimate purchasers of the game were eager to try it. The problem is, those that bought it via D2D can’t use it. This is the problem inherent in DRM. Those that buy the product are the ones affected, not those the DRM is designed to defeat.

After lots of complaining and attempts to fix things themselves, one Ubisoft employee found a solution. A zip file was uploaded to the help/support site, named “R6Vegas2_fix.zip”.

If D2D users patched to 1.02, then replaced the EXE with this one, they could then update to the new patch. However, someone ran a hex edit and it appears the fix was not Ubisoft code but actually a ‘no-cd’ crack released by the Scene group RELOADED, as shown here.

Since then, the zip file containing the fix has been pulled from the Ubisoft support site, so we’re unable to verify. The game’s community is as baffled by this as everyone else. Since the claimed origin of the fix, 10 days ago, there has been no word on it officially from Ubisoft, beyond a ‘Community Manager’ who states

We’re looking into this further as this was not the UK Support team that posted this, however if it is an executable that does not need the disc I doubt it has come from an external source. There’d be very little point doing so when we already own the original unprotected executable.

As soon as we find out more about this we’ll let you know.
_________________
Ubi.Vigil
Community Manager
Ubisoft UK

Although it is not unknown for a Scene release to be used to ‘fix’ a retail product, it’s certainly rare to have that fact promoted. That the ‘no-cd’ patch works, might have some relation to how brutal the Scene is when it comes to the quality of their work, especially in games. Whilst this is a validation that the Scene isn’t as bad as the lobby groups would have you believe (they fixed the game, and did it for free) you can bet that Ubisoft won’t be smiling at E3, and that they, and Direct2Drive, will continue to use DRM to annoy and inconvenience paying customers.

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