Ubisoft/Uplay issues (Splinter Cell Conviction)

[duragezic]

I bought Splinter Cell Conviction on Steam 4-5 months ago and finally went to play. I don't really like that I need an account to launch the game, but okay, I try to do it however after the TOS, it says it failed because the Ubisoft services are unavailable. I tried to create it again and it said the user/email was in use. But if I try to log in, it says check user/password.

Now I need support, so I go through their terrible website and see I need an account to even get support! But it's the same issue; I can't login to my account because it's not really there, but I can't create it because it's in use. So I think the only thing I can do is create a worthless Uplay account with another email to ask support for my game account, which supposedly is linked to my game.

Of course I've seen lots of people trash Ubisoft in recent years, and DRM in general, and it's funny because I'm normally defending most of these schemes as they work fine and are almost transparent to me. I have to say this really makes me reconsider at least for Ubisoft. There would have to be an incredible game from them for me to consider buying.

Did I really just get unlucky with the Ubisoft services being down the moment I finally try to play the game? I do want to play it on the other hand it's already been too much of a hassle to get going and now I have to do some BS workaround to even get support from this terrible company!

 

[TheKub]

Not sure if it was yesterday or not but over the weekend they were down for maintenance. I've been running though Assassin's Creed 2 & Brotherhood and they had a note up about it.

I had a similar problem when I was starting AC2 didnt know I had an Ubi account, apparently I created on a long time ago for the forums or something.

 

[BFG10K]

If I was in your situation I’d just crack the game. You’re a legitimate customer that’s entitled to play your game.

 

[TheKub]

If I was in your situation I’d just crack the game. You’re a legitimate customer that’s entitled to play your game.

Not that I disagree with this statement, I will say even when they were down for maintenance they still allowed the game to launch.

 

[Rifter]

If I was in your situation I’d just crack the game. You’re a legitimate customer that’s entitled to play your game.

100% this

 

[chimaxi83]

Went thru this same bs last night with Anno 2070. Same crap with Uplay. Wouldn't let me login using my username, into the game or Uplay site. Site let me login with email, but not the game. Trying to login to put a support ticket got me an error not found. Bullshit.

Went into Uplay account and filled every piece of info out, bday, sex, location, name, etc. Not sure why it mattered because it never did before. Once I did that though, the game logged right in.

The DRM is stupid, really. I was just going to crack but it ended up working at the end.

 

[reallyscrued]

Another vote for 'just crack it'.

Ironic though that these companies' anti-piracy measures end up making legitimite customers circumvent their shit designed exactly to keep them from doing that. Who makes these decisions?

 

[BrightCandle]

When the DRM bites you it normally bites you well enough that you finally understand what everyone was complaining about. Its so frustrating to find yourself with a product you can't run because they treated you like a criminal for purchasing it. The irony of course is if you had breached copyright and downloaded it you'd have a product that worked everytime and at a better price. Its like they want you to download the crack rather than run it "legitimately".

You only really have 3 choices in response to UbiSoft and others DRM:
1) You buy them anyway, helping fund yet worse and worse DRM. They will claim sales are up because the DRM stopped you pirating it.
2) You pirate the games and not suffer the DRM but open yourself up to legal problems in the future and obviously add to those awful stats for how much a game was pirated instead of bought, further justifying development of DRM.
3) You don't play the game. Alas the publisher will take this as a sign that the game was at fault and not the DRM.

The pattern here is that they already decided DRM was what they want and every statistic that tells them people don't like it can be interpreted to require more DRM. Honestly I wish everyone would just do (3), then the publishers that did DRM would die and those that didn't would still be around. Market forces/natural selection. Alas too many people carry on saying "its always worked for me". My response to that is at some point in the future I guarantee it wont work for you and then you'll understand.

 

[Kadarin]

Voting here for "don't buy it in the first place". Don't reward Ubisoft for their bad behavior.

 

[thilanliyan]

I only wanted to play SP for Conviction so I immediately got a crack for it once i found out I had to make a Ubi account to even start the game.

 

[AFurryReptile]

Look on the bright side: you didn't waste any time playing this crappy console port.

Seriously, this game will be a major disappointment if you enjoyed the originals.

 

[duragezic]

Well, I have to update this post to say that my troubles were basically my fault.

I ended up trying a few days after the initial problems, and same issue, until I realized I should try and use the "forgot user/pass".

It turns out that I already had an account. I didn't know that I did and in my master list of passwords, I don't have it listed. It was a bit misleading when I first tried to create an account that I actually already had one. The biggest problem though is this whole Uplay thing which is simply terrible and having to get an account to get support on an inaccessible account is a joke.

I've been playing the game (singleplayer campaign) and it's pretty cool. It is pretty new but it seems a bit dated as far as the engine and overall feel of the game. The original SC games were a bit too stealthy for me so I actually looked forward to this mix of stealth and action, but it may be a little bit lacking in stealth now. Oh well, hard to get the right balance.

 

[mmntech]

They should just rename it NoPlay... you dirty, rotten (potential) pirate.

 

[pw38]

Their servers being down should never prevent you from playing a game you legally purchased. In that case the companies need to have a deal with steam to allow offline play or if their servers are down allow Steam to authenticate. It's ridiculous you can't enjoy a product you paid for because of their issues. I'm amazed at where the games industry is at the moment compared to even 10 years ago.

 

[LurkerPrime]

I ran into the fun of Ubisofts No-Play BS over the weekend. I bought Might and Magic Heroes 6 which was on sale on steam. Well I created my Uplay account (which failed the first time b/c it told me I wasn't connected to the internet), and when I went to enter my CD key for the game it told me I had an invalid key. I tried it a few times, with/without dashes, copied directly from steam, entered manually, etc... until my account was banned for trying too many times. Well apparently after visiting the steam forums and ubi forums, this is a common issue and no one works in ubi or steam support over the weekends. I ended up putting in a ticket with steam requesting a refund, we'll see how that goes.