Great, now I have to deal with DoS attacks to play my game?

[janh]

Originally Posted by NZ_Wanderer

I seen quite a few posts regarding the "so-called" DOS attacks on the UBI servers, but has anyone actually wondered if this is just yet another "excuse" by UBI because it cannot handle/manage its own servers?

Seems to me, since the release of SH5 all UBI has been doing is releasing excuse after excuse..

1) There was the one that the game wasn't really hacked cause there was content missing in the torrent one (disproved from what I seen elsewhere)
2) There was the sudden patch after this "hack" was released which was "supposed" to stop the hacked version (if it wasn't really hacked (1) then why the patch?) (and besides the 1.1 patch was on the torrents from what I hear almost as soon as it was released by UBI)
3) There was the "so-called" dos attacks (strange how they happened suddenly when a lot of people started going online all at once)

And I think there were other things as well, but my mind is a blank atm.

Maybe my information is wrong, but it does seem a little suspicious to me, that UBI is just trying to cover up the biggest blunder ever made by a game publisher......

Though independent confirmation from a 3rd source (other than information relayed through other media channels) would of course be desirable, I doubt that Ubisoft would dare to lie about this. This appears to have reached such a scale throughout the SHV and ACII communities and other gamer magazines/sites just reporting about this OSP drama, that it surely wouldn't be helpful if Ubisoft would be now be caught putting out misinformation, no matter for what reason. Their surely will try to protect their credibility, or what is left of it. However, I question how they determined the 5% figure -- do they have real-time feedback from all the stores and online shops as to how many copies really left the shelves? Hmmmh...

Although I am afraid that this is for them likely only a sideshow. I spent a while stuying the 2009 annual corporate report for investors and stockholder at www.ubisoftgroup.com (see http://www.ubisoftgroup.com/gallery_.../1042/2139.pdf and http://www.ubisoftgroup.com/index.php?p=142&art_id= and http://www.ubisoftgroup.com/gallery_.../1042/2184.pdf ). And contrary to what someone here wrote ealier, only 9% of sales are from the PC market. So even if ACII as a non-niche game fails, and Siedler etc. too, I don't think they will be impressed too much by this. Given the fast (almost exponential) and impressive growth of Ubisoft sales and revenues within the past decade, I would think even the loss of the whole 9% PC market sales would not impact their overall performance presently so much.

However, this business performance lets me wonder where the pircacy there really is. What do the expect to earn? Is 1.06 Mrd Eur not enough for but 6000 employees (2009 figure)? Or do they expect that in true every American, German etc. sits at home and secretly plays SHIV, causing hundreds millions of lost sales (of an initially so perfect, innovative and bug free program)? Maximizing RoI and shareholder returns at all costs, and at the cost of the consumer (money is a conservation property; who will pay the bill?). Someone remember what happened to the banking business recently -- are there any similarities??? Just a thought.