DRM strikes again?
Watch Dogs has launched today but it hasn’t been smooth sailing for the highly-anticipated open-world title. According to Ubisoft it appears that the authentication servers for its digital distribution service Uplay has been malfunctioning.

The game’s Twitter account informed gamers of the issue earlier today stating, “We are experiencing issues with the authentication services. Players may experience long delays when trying to login in-game.” Later, on Ubisoft’s forums, it was explained that Watch Dogs is currently seeing “an exceptional increase of activity.” The company went on to say that it has taken measures to limit the impact on its servers but admitted that the servers “are not responding as fast as usual.”

Many players on the PC platform have been experiencing these issues on both Uplay and Steam (the Steam version requires a Uplay account). However, the issues are also affecting other Ubisoft titles, such as Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag, which use Uplay’s authentication servers. Some console gamers are even running into the same issues according to an Xbox Live status update.

This is not the first time Ubisoft, a company known for its use of draconian DRM, has had trouble with its Uplay service. Back in 2012 a Google engineer discovered a rootkit in the client that could be exploited by hackers. In addition, the service had made older games unplayable and even required a persistent internet connection for its offline mode at one point.

Unfortunately, Ubisoft did not provide a timeframe for when the server issues will be resolved.