Assassin’s Creed is phoning home after every kill.
SOLUTION: * Plug out your network cable. or (proposed by ThisWickedGame on ubisoft forums): * Add this line to your c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts: 216.98.48.18 localhost This way your internet is still active, but AC won’t be able to contact the server anymore. The IP above will just be redirected to your local machine which is always available. Edit hosts file with * XP: Go to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\ and open the hosts file with any text editor. * Vista: Start › Run, enter “notepad” (without “) and run it as administrator. Open the hosts file via File › Open. You may need to enter another IP; if so, just run Wireshark (see below) to see which IP AC tries to connect to. Remember to quit all other programs which use the internet (Browser, Messaging, etc) before so that you only see traffic generated by AC. PROBLEM: Today AC suddenly freezed about 4 to 5 seconds after every stealth/non stealth assassination. Re-installing DirectX didn’t help in any way. Unplugging the LAN cable however did! So I ran Wireshark to see what exactly happens during this 4 seconds when the PC is connected to the internet. (You can get Wireshark at www.wireshark.org and take a look yourself.) Why the 4 seconds freeze though? Their server (whois.domaintools.com seems to be down at the moment. So what happens? After every kill a piece of encrypted data is uploaded to a Ubisoft server. Your language is submitted too, but plaintext, that is not interesting. Very likely thingsl like …
Tags: after, Assassin's, Creed, every, home, kill., phoning Posted in
August 25th, 2010 at 6:46 pm
keep telling urself that
August 25th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
No, it is a real answer.
If you could chose between once editing a file and unplugging every time you start AC, what would you do?
August 25th, 2010 at 7:29 pm
thats not a real answer,thats called being lazy
August 25th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Because unplugging sucks and re-plugging sucks even more
August 25th, 2010 at 8:59 pm
if u dont want problems just turn ur internet off,problem solved.i mean why do u need it if ur playing? i mean do u really care abouut it,cmon is just a single player and enjoy the game this ruins it,just unplug it trust me
August 25th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
The fact that they log nearly every step you do somehow hurts. Correct behaviour would have been to brief the user that each kill, collected flag, etc is sent to one of their server.
There are different logging servers, so 216.98.48.18 will not be yours. You can find it out with wireshark if you want to.
August 25th, 2010 at 10:44 pm
why is this such a big deal? I’ve never had freezing, and I have nothing against ubi knowning that I kill civilians for fun! hehe
August 25th, 2010 at 11:39 pm
Interesting.
Pirated: Yeah. I remember when I’ve bought Stalker. It didn’t run for one or two weeks or so (until a NoDVD crack was available) because of its copy protection. Same with Crysis and other games
August 26th, 2010 at 12:24 am
Blocking the game via firewall won’t help either, the game will freeze every minute for 3-4 seconds, you will have to modify the hosts file… But it’s rather sad when you have to do these kind of things to play an ORIGINAL game… I never tried the pirated version, but I’m fairly sure they never had this problem. :/
August 26th, 2010 at 12:28 am
Agree.
Some guys in the Ubi forums thought it might be DirectX related (which definitively isn’t true) or because of the Updater. However, removing/renaming the updater didn’t solve the problem either.
Now there is a proof that Ubi really collects data about flags/kills/whatever: In a video I cannot find anymore right now Patrice Desilets mentioned that gamers use to play through the story and _then_ start collecting the flags.
August 26th, 2010 at 12:54 am
Ubisoft just deprived us of Safety and Peace
August 26th, 2010 at 1:23 am
“I think they included this «feature» to help them improving AC2.”
If they do, implement it in a way where the player has the option to disable it. Kinda strange to just send information like that. You would think it would log the behaviors better.
August 26th, 2010 at 2:03 am
Yeah
However, the fact that they know at which time I’m playing AC, which Memory Block and so on
I think they included this «feature» to help them improving AC2. But in what way? Whats the use when they know I just hidden bladed 5 guards?
August 26th, 2010 at 2:09 am
That’s shocking hearing Ubi do something like this. It’s not too serious, though, so w/e. Simply can be fixed by blocking the game with a firewall till the server comes back up.. or just leave it blocked forever, lol.