Denial Of Service Attack Kills Ubisoft DRM

The downtime that plagued PC gamers trying to play Assassin’s Creed II yesterday was the result of a denial-of-service attack, causing one of Ubisoft’s new DRM-servers to become unreachable. But hey, at least no one has hacked the game yet.

Ubisoft’s controversial new digital rights management solution went gone live for both Assassin’s Creed II and Silent Hunter V this weekend, only to go dead for a large number of users shortly thereafter. The DRM system requires users be connected to the internet while playing the game in order for it to function, and many players reported not being able to connect to Ubisoft, which meant they were not able to play.

Yesterday Ubisoft community managers were telling people that the downtime was due to high demand. Now Ubisoft’s Twitter tells a different story.

Apologies to anyone who couldn’t play ACII or SH5 yesterday. Servers were attacked which limited service from 2:30pm to 9pm Paris time

So while there was indeed strong demand, it was artificial demand, created via a denial-of-service style attack that affected at least one of Ubisoft’s servers. From the Twitter:

95% of players were not affected, but a small group of players attempting to open a game session did receive denial of service errors

Hacking attacks on Ubisoft’s new DRM system were hardly unexpected, considering it has already been attacked on a regular basis by fans and critics.

While it may still be alienating players, at least the DRM is getting the job it was intended to perform done, as Ubisoft’s Twitter proudly proclaims.

We’re happy to say ACII & SH5 are withstanding the efforts to crack them. We see the rumours but still confirm no valid cracked versions exist

I’m sure all of the people who were desperately trying to play Assassin’s Creed II yesterday are pleased as punch.