It took awhile, but Skid Row, the legendary hacker group, has finally defeated Ubisoft’s misguided DRM protection scheme. Last night, a version of Assassin’s Creed II was uploaded by the hackers and unlike previous attempts, this latest attack on Ubisoft’s DRM has met with complete success.

The hack itself removes the DRM entirely and is being claimed by a consortium known as Skid Row. It requires users to download and install a modified version of the game’s executable file to their computers. These modified game files, alongside a crack that can be applied to a retail version of the game, were uploaded to various file-sharing sites late Tuesday evening.

Attached to the “readme” file that comes with the hacked content (which can be found here), Skid Row alerted other hackers that the group’s methods were safeguarded against reverse-engineering in order to fend off competing hacking groups and Ubisoft itself.

Skid Row also left a note for Ubisoft directly, telling the company to spend less time on its DRM and more on the actual game play:

“Thank you Ubisoft, this was quiete [sic] a challenge for us, but nothing stops the leading force from doing what we do. Next time focus on the game and not on the DRM. It was probably horrible for all legit users. We just make their lifes [sic] easier.”Prior to Skid Row’s release, there has been a hack that emulated the back and forth of Ubisoft’s DRM servers to the game. However, it did not work for all users or localizations of the game. In the readme file, Skid Row claimed its new solution “cannot be compared to that.”

Source: CNET

More Digital Rights Management (DRM) anger is brewing within the gaming world, as the Community Manager for Command & Conquer has attempted to clear up any confusion about EA’s DRM plans. EA_Apoc is trying to make the argument that C&C 4 will not ship with any DRM schemes, but then goes on to say that players will need to be connected to the Internet if they want to play, which includes solo play. Last time I checked, forcing me to be online is a way of managing my digital rights, hence the quaint little acronym “DRM”.

Hey everyone,

I noticed a number of you had questions concerning the back of our box, so I figured now is a good time to remind you of how the installation/online works

First thing to be clear about, Command & Conquer 4 has NO DRM. Zip, zero, zilch, none. We already made this clear.

Second, you do not need the disc in the machine to play Command & Conquer 4, however the following is how it works:

-AFTER you install Command & Conquer 4 with the disc on your machine, when you try to LOGIN at the Launcher for the first time, it will ask you for your serial key. You will enter in your serial key to activate your Master EA Account. The serial key, like in our past games, can only be activated for 1 master account. You cannot install multiple EA Master accounts on one serial key. You can create multiple Commander Personas however, so if you and your brothers each want your own Persona account with experience, etc, you can do that. Just has to be under the same Master EA account as in our past games.

-You can install the game from the disc as many times as you want on any machine. Re-install, etc.

-You do not need the disc in your machine to play. Your EA account just needs to have been activated by your serial key. After that, you can play Command & Conquer 4 on ANY MACHINE that has it installed. All you need to do is login.

-To play Command & Conquer 4, the computer needs to be connected to the internet. We’ve always made that clear as well.

So there ya go, no DRM, no disc in the drive necessary, just activate your account with your serial key and presto, you’re ready to go. It’s actually much easier than before.

-APOC

LOGORAMA was the winner at this year’s Oscars, taking the award for best animated short, a well-deserved win as LOGORAMA is brilliant from top-to-bottom. If you haven’t seen the short film, I have embedded it below. Video game publisher Ubisoft was so impressed with the work they have signed the directing duo of Francois Alaux and Herve de Crecy to create a short work for the recently announced Ghost Recon: Future Soldiers. Unlike their prize winning LOGORAMA, the Ghost Recon will movie will not be animated.

The film will be setup as a prequel to the game and will hopefully benefit from a rather sizable budget currently pegged at $10-million, which isn’t chump change. Adding another layer of quality is Tim Sexton, who will be writing the script. Mr. Sexton is best known for writing the screenplay for the science-fiction movie Children of Men.

Source

[Oscars 2010 Mejor Cortometraje] – Logorama

Ubisoft’s misguided and universally despised Digital Rights Management system proved itself a complete failure over the weekend, depriving rightful owners of Assassin’s Creed II and Silent Hunter 5 the ability to play the very games they paid for.  It would appear Ubisoft’s servers failed, an event everyone knew would happen sooner or later as a perfect illustrative example of DRM nonsense that harms no one but the paying customer.

Ubisoft, is all this bad press really worth these daily articles? Can you truly say you’ve sold more copes of Assassin’s Creed II and Silent Hunter 5 because of your new DRM scheme? Or have you pushed away even more customers and alienated loyal fans? It’s not too late to call the whole thing off and return to creating stable, relatively bug-free games that merit a purchase.

Over the weekend, two statements were issued from the UK Community Manager:

Ubi.Vigil (UK Community Manager): I don’t have any clear information on what the issue is since I’m not in the office, but clearly the extended downtime and lengthy login issues are unacceptable, particularly as I’ve been told these servers are constantly monitored.

I’ll do what I can to get more information on what the issue is here first thing tomorrow and push for a resolution and assurance this won’t happen in the future. I realise that’s not ideal but there’s only so much I can do on a weekend as I’m not directly involved with the server side of this system.

Ubi.Vigil (UK Community Manager): Due to exceptional demand, we are currently experiencing difficulties with the Online Service Platform. This does not affect customers who are currently playing, but customers attempting to start a game may experience difficulty in accessing our servers. We are currently working to resolve this issue and apologize for any inconvenience.