DICE and Ubisoft suffer from serveritis over the weekend as servers for AC2 and BFBC2

[Rossa AU]

Servers and video games......you have got to love to hate them right? On the up side they provide a solid "host" for a match, unlike other games that use P2P (Person 2 Person) hosting; because as we all know, P2P hosts don't always have a stable connection or an ability to not rage quit when losing. On the other hand, what if those servers have issues? Go down due to maintenance or another issue all together? Well on the weekend 2 separate devs had servers go down; leaving what was probably millions of people very angry.

So, let's start with Ubisoft. For those uninitiated, Ubisoft recently added a new DRM to their recent PC games. This DRM needs a constant internet connection to the game's servers, even when playing offline and not having any need for internet connectivity. No doubt this was created to combat piracy right? Well it is reported pirates have already cracked this DRM for the 2 games that currently utilize it (Silent Hunter 5 and Assassin's Creed 2); even though a tweet by Ubisoft confirms otherwise. It appears that this downtime was not just simple overload though; it seems the servers were "attacked". Ubisoft report that "Apologies to anyone who couldn't play ACII or SH5 yesterday. Servers were attacked which limited service from 2:30pm to 9pm Paris time", and later to say "95% of players were not affected, but a small group of players attempting to open a game session did receive denial of service errors". It's nice that Ubisoft is trying to combat piracy with a new DRM system, but are all these issues really worth it? And what will happen when the day comes that the game's servers need to be turned off permanently due to lack of players? We can only hope for an update that bypasses the DRM at that point.

But it seems that Ubisoft are not the only dev with serveritis, as DICE's Xbox 360 servers for Battlefield Bad Company 2 went down over the weekend. When you look at the twitter for BFBC2, you may just think "oh it's just maintenance that's taking a little longer than expected", well it seems you would be wrong as the interwebs are reporting it's due to overloading of the servers. DICE have been reporting figures like "400% more peak time traffic than any other Battlefield title to date"........soooo let's get this straight......DICE are reporting much more peak traffic, and the servers weren't prepared for it so they overloaded right? Well considering the Xbox360/PS3 DEMO was download by millions of people in the first 5 days alone (around 2.5 million), how could they not see this coming? God only knows.

Either way let's hope both Ubisoft and DICE learn from this, and try their best not to have it happen again....oh wait i spoke too soon....Ubisoft just reported more attacks on their servers *sigh*. Ubisoft has also confirmed 1 more game to support their new DRM, Splinter Cell: Conviction, we shall wait to see if they get their act together before then so the headache caused by attacks now, isn't still happening in April when SC is set to release.Back to Article

[SirGeo]

That would sh|t me.. why don't they have a "backup" plan if something like this happens? where they can divert the users or have extra servers kick in?

If that was my business that went down like that, i'd be out of a a job for not "anticipating" what happened...

[Vince Grella]

Servers>>>>>>>>>p2p

Youve got to realise that there will always be issues with mass internet servers. The database at my uni goes down quite frequently for a couple of hours each time and youve seen incidents where xbl has gone down and vice versa with psn.

P2P is just crap and hopefuly is rolled out in the years to come.

[Rossa AU]

Originally Posted by Vince Grella

Servers>>>>>>>>>p2p

Youve got to realise that there will always be issues with mass internet servers. The database at my uni goes down quite frequently for a couple of hours each time and youve seen incidents where xbl has gone down and vice versa with psn.

P2P is just crap and hopefuly is rolled out in the years to come.

I agree that servers are better, but only if there is minimal lag....if it's in the US on some shitty connection then it's pointless obviously.

The ideal online game would be Servers in all the major territories around the world (USA/Europe/Asia/and possibly an AU&NZ one as well).........that way you have it all covered, most people would be happy. On top of that you need to be able to pick the region you search in. So say you live in AUS and you search for a match on the local servers, but you can't find a match....you go search in the asia servers or something without any hassel. And to top it off you need to implement a P2P hosting system for when the servers go down so you can keep playing matches till the servers go back up. (or in EA's case if the servers ever get permanently shut down because of lack of players, or whatever other reason there may be)

God only knows when that would ever happen.....but if it did it would make allot of people happy, including me

[Vince Grella]

We pay 100 bucks a year for live.

PC gamers get free servers and we are paying for p2p. Where the heck is our money going?

i could never ever recommend the xbox live platform over something like the free client steam.

[Linkwick]

Originally Posted by Vince Grella

We pay 100 bucks a year for live...

$100 for Gold for a year? I don't pay more than $50.

It's a catch-22 - you trade off "better" connections (well, unless you're playing with locals...) for semi-regular downtimes for maintenance (and problems). Either way, there's always gonna be people pissed off when there's problems.

[Pando]

I'll admit the servers for BFBC 2being down has been annoying, as soon as I get to actually play a game I forget all about it .

[Vince Grella]

Originally Posted by Linkwick

$100 for Gold for a year? I don't pay more than $50.

It's a catch-22 - you trade off "better" connections (well, unless you're playing with locals...) for semi-regular downtimes for maintenance (and problems). Either way, there's always gonna be people pissed off when there's problems.

the common idiot (same type who worship apple) goes down to their eb and pays 99.

I spose if i lived in america it would be more worth it. Im done with xbox live for good when my sub expires end of march.

[Rossa AU]

Originally Posted by Vince Grella

the common idiot (same type who worship apple) goes down to their eb and pays 99.

I spose if i lived in america it would be more worth it. Im done with xbox live for good when my sub expires end of march.

Well it's the fault of the common idiot for not doing their research and finding a website like this, or this, where you can get a 12 month for under $50

Either way i am happy to pay that a year because Xbox Live is still a brilliant service, yes the weak point is matchmaking, but we live in AUS, lag will always be an issue, i don't see why most people can't deal with it lol (ignoring the fact of servers). Other than that i love XBL and think every $$ i spend a year on it is worth it 100%