Ubisoft DRM Gets Hacked

Apr 25, 2010 by John Jacques

ubisoft-drm-hacked

Barely a week after Ubisoft mentioned that DRM is ‘vital to their business‘, we have proof that people were listening. The people, unfortunately, were hackers.

Ubisoft’s notorious “Online Services Network” requires gamers be always online in order to play games like Assassin’s Creed 2. This obviously has led to much frustration as flaws and errors make legitimate customers wish they’d pirated the game – and turn some into doing it. A new hack has now been unleashed to the internet – and it reportedly removes the DRM entirely.

The hack is credited to a group named Skid Row, who warned other hacking groups that their exploited files have been ‘reverse-safegaurded’ so that others won’t be able to steal their work. Users download a modified game executable that is able to bypass the strenuous Digital Rights Management steps that most have to go through.

Skid Row also left a little note in the readme for Ubisoft themselves:

“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.”

Hackers: 1, DRM: Negative 5.

It’ll be interesting to see how Ubisoft responds to someone fully breaking their DRM, which has been in the media spotlight for some time now – and, once again, not for good reasons.