I love all the blog posts that say "don't hire good programmers because they will waste time programming something fun instead of doing work," but of course, in the real world, "doing work" is the much bigger productivity sink. Imagine how much better the game would be if all the resources on the anti-piracy team were programming the actual game instead. Maybe more people would be willing to pony up $60 for the game if it was better.

Ubisoft's DRM is what's hurting the customers. The DDoS (if that is actually what's happening) is just a side-effect, and probably an inevitable side-effect of DRM.

Sure it does. Just like it matters and should affect our responses whether a building was destroyed by earthquake or some dude who sets off a bomb under the building to prove that it couldn't survive an earthquake. Intention, while not everything, matters a hell of a lot. Illegal and malicious actions like these don't serve to punish the companies who use DRM, they just give them a scapegoat to blame. If, like me, you're against DRM, vote with your dollars and stay the hell away from companies who use DRM in their products.

We have this benchmark of "reasonable expectations" for designers of things. Sure, you could whittle endless years away contemplating and preparing for every conceivable eventuality, but we don't expect that of people because that's crazy.

However, we do install security in buildings because we know from experience that every once in a while you'll get a loon trying to blow the building up with a truckbomb or trying to shoot up the lobby. Security isn't perfect, but they perform reasonably in most situations.

We ask our architects to consider disaster resistance in building design because we know that it's plausible that the area may one day be affected by earthquake or some other calamity.

If either security or architects and engineers are found to be negligent of their duties to provide reasonable protections against violent crazy people and/or natural disaster, they are ostracized as seen fit by society. While they didn't cause the earthquake or the explosion, they knew, or should have known, that an earthquake or a violent assault might occur in the building they had designed and/or were assigned to protect.

If they were found to have prepared adequately and still failed, they are generally "let off the hook".

Now, in the case of a highly unpopular, highly publicized DRM scheme, do you think it's reasonable to assume that some out there might be interested in negatively affecting its operation such that people don't buy your game? A lot of people want to gob up the debut. I would say that it is reasonable, and that Ubisoft doesn't get any kind of pass for inability to ward off a DDoS in such a case.

Ubisoft is a big multinational company, publicly traded, with a lot of money. There's no good excuse to let their servers die from either DDoS, non-malicious overload (effectual DDoS), or other standard calamity.

That is irrelevant to the fact that the idiot with the bomb wasn't doing anyone any favors, which was the point I was trying to make in my original comment. I guess I should have omitted the part about "what's harming the consumers" or changed it to "what's directly harming the consumers" to avoid all these knee-jerk responses from the anti-DRM brigade, which incidentally I consider myself to be a part of.

And what if that was DDOS.

Who would you moan about?

Yes, the online DRM is sucky and a stupid idea. But if anybody is DDOS'ing the servers they are sucky and stupid too :)

There are right ways and wrong ways to protest about this.

Let's make this clear: Ubisoft went out of their way to build a system that prevents their customers from playing their game while non-paying customers can play the game.

Yes, I know - MMORPG was simply an example. The main point is that if the content had been worth actual value to the consumer/player then those doing any DDOS would be getting equal flack for their actions.

Im sorry but it seems illogical to condone the idea that DDOS'ing the servers to prove a point as a good one :)

> Let's make this clear: Ubisoft went out of their way to build a system that prevents their customers from playing their game while non-paying customers can play the game.

I think that's a bit mis-representative.

Firstly non-paying customers can't play the game: so far I have not been able to find a crack that works fully. We've done some reverse engineering here at work (and we employ some smart bods who do this stuff to enterprise software) and the summation is "parts might be cracked, but definitely not all yet... ooh look at this bit...". The skid-row crack doesn't work for the whole game just part of it (independently verified). So far as I've read all those yelling "Told ya! It's cracked" haven't actually bothered to try it themselves!

Secondly they went out of their way to build a system that might prevent some customers playing the game. It's a silly, idiotic system they've invented but it should only affect those with dodgy or no internet connection... instead because of DDOS (unproven, and im not sure this is the case) all customers are affected.

They're all idiotic in my book :)