Since Ubisoft announced that it was planning to require a constant Internet connection for all those interested in picking up its upcoming title on the PC, players have been wondering about what would happen if the servers the French publisher used for authentication would go down all of the sudden.

Players found out the answer to this particular issue on Sunday when the Ubisoft servers went down and when those looking to play some Assassin's Creed II were unable to do so.

The problem seems to be significant enough that the servers were still down early in the morning today. The company has not said whether the problems lie with the servers themselves or whether there is an attack coming from the outside targeting the authentication servers. Silent Hunter V is also affected.

Ubi.Vigil, who is a community manager for Ubisoft in the United Kingdom, replied by saying that “I don't have any clear information on what the issue is since I'm not in the office, but clearly the extended downtime and lengthy login issues are unacceptable, particularly as I've been told these servers are constantly monitored. I'll do what I can to get more information on what the issue is here first thing tomorrow and push for a resolution and assurance this won't happen in the future. I realise that's not ideal but there's only so much I can do on a weekend as I'm not directly involved with the server side of this system.”

An announcement made shortly after the thread with the authentication popped up states that “Due to exceptional demand, we are currently experiencing difficulties with the Online Service Platform. This does not affect customers who are currently playing, but customers attempting to start a game may experience difficulty in accessing our servers. We are currently working to resolve this issue and apologize for any inconvenience.”

The bad news is that the exceptional demand listed comes only from Europe, as the PC version of Assassin's Creed II is set to arrive on March 9. Players might experience more issues later during this week. Let's hope that Ubisoft manages to fix the issues and allow customers to fully enjoy their game without any limitation.