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

janh · 03-10-10, 08:40 PM

Quote:

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.

kludger · 03-10-10, 09:58 PM

In my experience working in IT for large scale customer facing websites, it's not unusual for a web application which is not appropriately scaled to handle the amount of release traffic to fail under load and for the folks responsible for it to look to point to a Distributed Denial of Service Attack as a convenient cause by the bad guys, which ironically enough looks just like when all your customers who are hitting you from all over the world and are overrunning your app/server/bandwidth and bringing it to it's knees which then makes them reconnect, try again lather, rinse, repeat, the diversity in source IPs and routes of the traffic becomes the distributed attack.

So I am not 100% buying it that it's really a DDOS as opposed to just poor capacity planning by Ubisoft at the same time that they were releasing two new games that required this always on DRM connection to their server.

Also if indeed it was DDOS there is no excuse for them to not be prepared for it or mitigate it, any large size website nowadays has mitigated the DDOS attack by implementing technology designed to identify the DDOS attack packets and scrub them out of the traffic (i.e. Arbor Peakflow), this scrubbing results in higher latency to the site during the attack, but allows the application/server/site to stay available to customers. This type of DDOS mitigation is usually available as a service from the ISP provider or is also available as devices that can be installed on the hosting site.

So I am not totally buying that this is a DDOS as opposed to covering up for poor capacity planning by Ubisoft, and if it is DDOS they also failed to plan for it despite throwing down the gauntlet against pirates that this DRM was foolproof.

I bought SH5 knowing the annoyance and risks but hoping for the best, and so far I've lucked out that the DRM has been working when I needed to play, worst case if the DRM stops me from playing for long enough to bug me I will be justified in looking for alternative ways to play the game I paid for.

Steeltrap · 03-10-10, 10:32 PM

To Brag and Steve:

You're both correct. I took Brag's comment to be expanding on my comments.

In answer to his question at the end: no (which is why I haven't bought it, even though my machine is several levels beyond requirements in terms of ability).

UnSalted · 03-10-10, 10:45 PM

There is one attitude I find very hard to understand. Why people on here would happily purchase a product that was designed badly with a large number of serious bugs and still be thankful that Ubisoft sold them a piece of crap based on "oh well, once our buddies figure out how to modify the crap out of it things will calm down and we can play it' baffles me.

I would love to hear some of you good people at a return counter in a clothing store after being told "So the pants have a big hole in them...just get a friend to patch them and quit complaining. You should be grateful we're still making pants for people like you."

Turbografx · 03-10-10, 11:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnSalted

There is one attitude I find very hard to understand. Why people on here would happily purchase a product that was designed badly with a large number of serious bugs and still be thankful that Ubisoft sold them a piece of crap based on "oh well, once our buddies figure out how to modify the crap out of it things will calm down and we can play it' baffles me.

I would love to hear some of you good people at a return counter in a clothing store after being told "So the pants have a big hole in them...just get a friend to patch them and quit complaining. You should be grateful we're still making pants for people like you."

Yeah, it is an unusual attitude to say the least.

Steeltrap · 03-10-10, 11:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnSalted

I would love to hear some of you good people at a return counter in a clothing store after being told "So the pants have a big hole in them...just get a friend to patch them and quit complaining. You should be grateful we're still making pants for people like you."

Somewhat invalid due to the sheer number of manufacturers. The quality of the items are, in part, a consequence of the competition: if the pants made by A are crap you'll take them back then shop at B. You can't do that as readily if A is the only manufacturer.

I do agree with the general hypothesis that accepting poor quality at release makes poor quality releases inevitable. So long as companies are shielded from consequences of poor quality (i.e. people keep buying regardless of it) AND it's more expensive to produce better quality, companies will tend to continue with the poor quality. Why change if they don't need to and they make more money?

03-10-10, 09:58 PM	#2
kludger Swabbie Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 5 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	In my experience working in IT for large scale customer facing websites, it's not unusual for a web application which is not appropriately scaled to handle the amount of release traffic to fail under load and for the folks responsible for it to look to point to a Distributed Denial of Service Attack as a convenient cause by the bad guys, which ironically enough looks just like when all your customers who are hitting you from all over the world and are overrunning your app/server/bandwidth and bringing it to it's knees which then makes them reconnect, try again lather, rinse, repeat, the diversity in source IPs and routes of the traffic becomes the distributed attack. So I am not 100% buying it that it's really a DDOS as opposed to just poor capacity planning by Ubisoft at the same time that they were releasing two new games that required this always on DRM connection to their server. Also if indeed it was DDOS there is no excuse for them to not be prepared for it or mitigate it, any large size website nowadays has mitigated the DDOS attack by implementing technology designed to identify the DDOS attack packets and scrub them out of the traffic (i.e. Arbor Peakflow), this scrubbing results in higher latency to the site during the attack, but allows the application/server/site to stay available to customers. This type of DDOS mitigation is usually available as a service from the ISP provider or is also available as devices that can be installed on the hosting site. So I am not totally buying that this is a DDOS as opposed to covering up for poor capacity planning by Ubisoft, and if it is DDOS they also failed to plan for it despite throwing down the gauntlet against pirates that this DRM was foolproof. I bought SH5 knowing the annoyance and risks but hoping for the best, and so far I've lucked out that the DRM has been working when I needed to play, worst case if the DRM stops me from playing for long enough to bug me I will be justified in looking for alternative ways to play the game I paid for.

03-10-10, 10:32 PM	#3
Steeltrap Grey Wolf Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Sydney, Australia Posts: 818 Downloads: 3 Uploads: 0	To Brag and Steve: You're both correct. I took Brag's comment to be expanding on my comments. In answer to his question at the end: no (which is why I haven't bought it, even though my machine is several levels beyond requirements in terms of ability).

03-10-10, 10:45 PM	#4
UnSalted Machinist's Mate Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 130 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	There is one attitude I find very hard to understand. Why people on here would happily purchase a product that was designed badly with a large number of serious bugs and still be thankful that Ubisoft sold them a piece of crap based on "oh well, once our buddies figure out how to modify the crap out of it things will calm down and we can play it' baffles me. I would love to hear some of you good people at a return counter in a clothing store after being told "So the pants have a big hole in them...just get a friend to patch them and quit complaining. You should be grateful we're still making pants for people like you."