Many have thought that Ubisoft's DRM servers were a bad idea withgames not being playable without a steady internet connection. However, if the game cannot connect to the server to verify authenticity, there's a bit of an even bigger problem there.

An attack from hackers occurred sometime last night on the servers Ubisoft uses for DRM certification, disabling users from playing at all or encountering incredibly long login times for Assassin's Creed 2. It was originally said that the servers had gone down from "exceptional demand".

A representative from Ubisoft has issued a response to the crash when it first occurred for a very unhappy group of gamers:

"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 was very skeptical on the effectiveness of this DRM system Ubisoft implemented and with this crash occurring, it may be time for other publishers, as well as Ubisoft, to start examining their piracy protection programs and have them not be as reliant on something like a constant internet connection. And now that the servers have been shown that they can be hacked, Ubisoft needs to think of something new quickly or they may end up losing a large sum of their PC clientele.

Every gamer wants the same thing: For the game he purchased to just work when they want it to. Yes, we cannot anticipate hardware malfunction on our part, but a hacked server is a far different experience than just red-ringing. I'm just saying.

Source: Joystiq, VideoGamer