Ubisoft probes sudden rash of hijack attacks on gamers' accounts

Ubisoft is investigating a recent spate of hijackings of gaming accounts belonging to users of its Uplay platform. Complaints about account hijacking flared up around 30 December, leading to numerous posts on support forums. "There is no one at Ubi manning the support system, and the DRM requires access to your account," one …

[LarsG]

What a clever ruse to get people to join Facebook.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it annoying that Facebook has almost become a de-facto solution for some useful facilities (including an identity that can be used to login across websites), when it isn't operated for the benefit of its users.

I've given it a wide berth, and hope that down the line some of the core functionality is replaced by an alternative controlled by its users. Using monoply laws to force interoperability of data and contacts would probably be required to get to this point, though, given FB's critical mass of users)

[Giles Jones]

Lets not forget that Microsoft proposed something similar that nobody took up, the Passport system.

At the time everyone said it was a bad idea, hackers getting access to the passport would have access to every site you use with the Passport.

Funny how that argument seems to have gone away.

[NoneSuch]

Hated being forced to use UPlay to play games and I refused to buy any game requiring UPlay due to this. Glad I didn't.

[Tom 38]

Easy solution

Join my boycott of Ubisoft. No more issues with any of their shit.

[Captain Scarlet]

Re: Easy solution

Yes but what about everyone else, there are to many developers that now require you to sign in and many have the cheak to then say we need to apply an update even though Steam is supposed to sort it out >_<

>Right click< >Remove Game<

Feel bad because of having no chance of a refund.

[JimmyPage]

The day a site mandates using Facebook to log in

is the day I stop using it.

[ecofeco]

Re: The day a site mandates using Facebook to log in

Same here.

[Swarthy]

Wait, What?

"...One of the biggest problems with PC gaming is the amount of logins required to play the games - anyone purchasing Ubisoft's Far Cry 3 through Steam will still need to load UPlay to play it. It's quite possible that password reuse is rampant in gaming circles right now, which certainly doesn't help."

Did I read this right, that you need a Steam , UPlay, and Bob knows what other passwords to get through the DRM, and he's saying "Naughty, naughty" to the players for re-using passwords? How about an actual, good User Interface to establish credentials once (or twice, if two-factor auth is needed) rather than having the player login multiple times.

[NumptyScrub]

Re: Wait, What?

quote: "Did I read this right, that you need a Steam , UPlay, and Bob knows what other passwords to get through the DRM, and he's saying "Naughty, naughty" to the players for re-using passwords? How about an actual, good User Interface to establish credentials once (or twice, if two-factor auth is needed) rather than having the player login multiple times."

Because a Single Sign On would mean that only one company gets all the juicy full name, address, email address, credit card etc. information to resell on for increased monetisation of game playing resource. Ubisoft won't stand for being cut out of that revenue stream, so they create their own account required to play their games.

This is not even new, EA have been doing it with Origin for ages (Spore was the first I fell afoul of, but probably not the first). Including now with their premium titles on XBox (e.g. Mass Effect 3); you can link your XBox account with an Origin account (which leaves out the multiple login bits, to be fair) but they still have all sorts of unneccesary * this field is required to fill out to create the Origin account in the first place.

It also allows them (EA) to milk second users of the £15 required to play one of their games online; you only get one free code with the purchase of a new title, and second hand purchasers need to cough up for a new code for their Origin account before the game will aloow them to play multiplayer (even if they have a paid up XBox Live account). Ubisoft probably now want in on some of that action too, so expect to see this start to become more common across platforms.

[ecofeco]

Re: Wait, What?

What kind of IT person are you?! You must ALWAYS blame the user!

After all, what expertise and degrees do they have in designing interfaces?

/sarcasm

[Anonymous Coward]

ubisoft are scum

they will make you pay over the odds for poor quality games. they hate you

[MCROnline]

I think...

If they put the same thought and effort into security that the pour into DRM then perhaps their system wouldn't have been compromised.

[KjetilS]

Re: I think...

It looks like they *do* put just as much thought into their security as their DRM. Not very much, that is.

[Louis Buxey-Softley]

I had my account stolen

Luckily i got my account back in an hour by moaning on there facebook page.

Seem a coincidence but its the 2nd time i have purchased a cd key from mmoga.com, and 2nd time an account has been stolen.. first origin now uplay... mere coincidence? MMMmmm

[Robert Helpmann??]

Problem Defined

To make your Uplay account more secure, link Facebook.

The idea that you should use FaceBook to increase the security of your online gaming experience really says it all. Not that I am hugely surprised as we are talking about games designers, not folks who think in terms of security much beyond what DRM gets them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubisoft deliberately lets its gamer profiles become corrupt and does nothing about it!

DRM and security are one thing... But what ABOUT when Ubisoft deliberately lets its gamer profiles become corrupt and does nothing about it? Case in point :-

DRIVER: San Francisco.

The Ubisoft support department has no link to Ubisoft Developers. So in short, Ubisoft support teams are impotent!. All they can do is log it as a known error, whilst claiming it only affects a handful of users-- pathetic! Sure they offered me a new serial number. But that requires a brand new account and email to be set-up... AND of course this gotcha :-

YOU LOSE ALL PROGRESS IN THE GAME!

I was at Level 40-- the max, so this is more than a pain!!! I'm not a huge gamer though, so this isn't the end of the world. But the thing is there's no real alternatives for a bit of virtual driving R&R for me, because I find Forza too unresponsive, and the Need For Speed series too blurry. I so miss the Xbox 360 PGR (Blur) series! The team: Bizarre Creations left the games industry permanently last year. RIP BC!

[Raumkraut]

You can sign up any time you like

> If you have a Facebook account attached you can always go back to uplay.com and take your account back because the user cannot unlink this account.

So you'd better be damn certain you want to associate your gamer account with Facebook.

[Ian 70]

Re: You can sign up any time you like

What frightens me more is that when it's stolen if they link it to their Facebook account what happens? Apparently it can't be unlinked to give it back to you.

[Crisp]

Re: the user cannot unlink this account.

But what if I want to sell my game on the second hand market?

[LT.Rusty]

Hey, my account got hijacked today!

So yeah, my account got hijacked by one of those playbay email addresses today. You'd think that maybe - just MAYBE - some of the dog-humpers at Ubi would have thought to block email addresses from that domain from doing any more account changing? Just a thought?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubisoft = Arsehole Company = with SHIT customer support.

The support system?

"Complaints about account hijacking flared up around 30 December, leading to numerous posts on support forums. "There is no one at Ubi manning the support system, and the DRM requires access to your account," one victim, who tipped us off about the problem, told El Reg."

When my passwords got fucked up, in spite of some 10 emails, to all sorts of people in all sorts of departments, after their support forums DID NOTHING, so I could play my Chessmaster in their forums, which was a part of the deal, that came with BUYING THE GAME........

I just said, "Well fuck you UBISOFT"........

I have been so traumatised by the experience that I keep forgetting where I put that damned game DVD......

I even found better online chess sites than the Ubisoft one.

LOL

Profiting on the game? No more sales = Not.

I hope people start getting even with this company and their sleazy marketing practices....

Satan - because she knows all about big holes.

[Andy 70]

Uplay

i most most displease about having to install yet another bloody game client front end account info scraper. had i known i needed some poorly built 'going to be ignored in a few years' custom front end; i wouldn't have bothered with far cry 3

just like i gave masseffect3 a miss and a couple of other EA titles that are "origin exclusives"

the time i'll "log in with my facebook account" is the time that satan will go skating to work.

[ecofeco]

Oxymoron: cloud security

Yep, the "cloud" is a brilliant way to keep your information safe!

Not.

[adam payne]

I don't want to use Uplay and I won't buy their games if they continue to push this. To me Uplay is just another copyright protection scheme.

I remember the fun I had trying to get Rainbow Six Vegas 2 to work on my PC. After three weeks of emails going backwards and forwards to their support department they gave me a crack to remove the copyright protection that was causing the problem.

[Jediben]

£30, security and your privacy is a small price to pay

To stay on the right side of a faint grey line!