Ubisoft Connect broke again but Valve fixed it in Proton Experimental

Brand and product launchers add nothing of value to the consumer experience. Absolutely infuriating that backward companies like Ubi and EA, or game-specific franchises like Rockstar, Frontier or Blizzard require them and think this is a good idea. It's just a thinly veiled excuse for telemetry, cross-product marketing and/or DRM.

Not gonna lie, if a game forces a launcher, there's an incredibly high chance I'll refund it instantly.

It is possible to trick Ubisoft Connect not to update it. In %PROGRAMFILES(X86)%\Ubisoft\Ubisoft Game Launcher\version.txt it is enough to modify the version to the current one. In this case from 10894 to 10906.

It is possible to trick Ubisoft Connect not to update it. In %PROGRAMFILES(X86)%\Ubisoft\Ubisoft Game Launcher\version.txt it is enough to modify the version to the current one. In this case from 10894 to 10906.

FYI, / is the directory separator, \ is the escape character. Even windows finally caught up to that.

[quote=ShabbyX]

FYI, / is the directory separator, \ is the escape character. Even windows finally caught up to that.

Oh, thank you! I didn't know that. I haven't used Windows for 23 years. I got that information from pcgamingwiki.

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Store:Ubisoft_Connect#Client_data

[quote=trinukso]

FYI, / is the directory separator, \ is the escape character. Even windows finally caught up to that.

Oh, thank you! I didn't know that. I haven't used Windows for 23 years. I got that information from pcgamingwiki.

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Store:Ubisoft_Connect#Client_data

I am actually a contributor of pcgamingwiki

Ubisoft Connect? More like Ubisoft Inept, amirite?

This is the one problem I have with Proton, that other companies can break it, and it falls on Valve to fix it. I have trouble believing this will be sustainable over the long-term.

Yeah, I noticed last night. I spent my whole night working on software upgrades, finished and "ahh... game time". I went to play some Far Cry 5 Arcade and Ubibooby got an update. After it restarted, it downloaded another update, which resulted in its demise. It would start to draw the outline of a little window and stall there.

I physically deleted it, verified integrity of game files to force it to re-up runtimes etc. The original Ubisoft client worked to download the updated client. Same thing though, a second update and after that the client wouldn't launch. Again no error message, just the outline of a window and no launch.

I was hoping Valve was going to commit something today.

Hm, how would I do this if I run e.g. Anno 1800 in Lutris? I currently use the `lutris-GE-Proton8-12-x86_64`.

This is the one problem I have with Proton, that other companies can break it, and it falls on Valve to fix it. I have trouble believing this will be sustainable over the long-term.

Other companies don't break anything but their own shitware. It's trial and error programming on Windows. Silly, bloated, fragile Chrome browser UI's wrapped in shame, these game store clients.

Epic game client: Never for me

Don't buy shitware.

Far Cry 5 was the last Ubisoft game I ever bought, because of things like this and that was a long time ago when I used Windows for such games.

I refunded Assassin's Creed Odyssey due to Ubisoft activation problems (which Ubisoft said wasn't their problem) and never bought another again. I was tempted to try again, but they wanted $79 for a 5 year old game, which was insulting. Also insulting, since I couldn't play their games I wasn't using it, and I got an email saying they were going to delete my account and all my property if I didn't jump through their hoops. Now, I had nothing bought directly from them (only stuff tied to Steam account and older Ubisoft games that predate the client) so I didn't have much to worry about, but that's intolerable.

It's only been in the last year or so that Far Cry 5 Arcade mode has worked. Ubisoft is garbage. They used to be one of my favourite game companies too, back around 2008'ish before they went off the rails with DRM (Assassin's Creed 2 in 2009 was the end for me)

It isn't Proton that's the problem. Besides, that's fixable by more than Valve.


Last edited by Grogan on 2 August 2023 at 5:59 pm UTC

Hm, how would I do this if I run e.g. Anno 1800 in Lutris? I currently use the `lutris-GE-Proton8-12-x86_64`.

Either wait until Proton-GE syncs with valve again and update, or, if you have Lutris 0.5.13+ you should be able to choose Steam's Proton Experimental as a Wine runner in Lutris. It should show up in the drop list in the game's Runner Options (may want to enable Advanced view so you can see all the fields)

Ubisoft Connect? More like Ubisoft Inept, amirite?

I suddenly exhaled from my nostrils

By the way, if anybody is interested:

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/wine/commit/2ce886d2ccd9073df2e1c174ba4969bf061b3c9f

ntdll: HACK: Enable WINE_SIMULATE_WRITECOPY for UplayWebCore.

dlls/ntdll/unix/loader.c

env_str = getenv("WINE_SIMULATE_WRITECOPY");
    if (env_str) simulate_writecopy = atoi(env_str);
+   else if (main_argc > 1 && strstr(main_argv[1], "UplayWebCore.exe")) simulate_writecopy = TRUE;
    else if (sgi) simulate_writecopy = !strcmp(sgi, "1608730") /* Dawn of Corruption */
                                       || !strcmp(sgi, "1680700") /* Purgo box */
                                       || !strcmp(sgi, "2095300") /* Breakout 13 */
                                       || !strcmp(sgi, "2053940") /* Idol Hands 2 */
                                       || !strcmp(sgi, "2176450"); /* Mr. Hopp's Playhouse 3 */

Now that's a hack if I ever saw one. Look how they did it, adding a separate else (the line with the + has been added) for the name of the executable instead of by appid. It may have to be only for that .exe because this can cause problems (hence, it's never enabled by default)

What "simulate write copy" does is emulate how Windows loads dlls into memory more closely. Windows will load a dll into memory and then all applications use the same copy. HOWEVER, if the application modifies the dll in memory, then Windows will create a copy. Some applications CHECK this condition to see if it's already been modified and will fail if the info they get is not valid. These applications need Wine to emulate this behaviour.

If I'm understanding this correctly, WINE_SIMULATE_WRITE_COPY should be the same as this Wine Staging environment variable

STAGING_WRITECOPY=1

However, they might not be appropriate to add to launch options as it's possibly only UplayWebCore that should have it.


Last edited by Grogan on 2 August 2023 at 10:35 pm UTC

I just did a new Proton-TKG build with that committed and Ubisoft Connect and the game launched correctly on first go.

When I play that tonight, I'm going to pretend every headshot is Ubisoft :-)

What exactly does Ubi expect and what does wine do instead?

Hm, how would I do this if I run e.g. Anno 1800 in Lutris? I currently use the `lutris-GE-Proton8-12-x86_64`.

Also, another thing you could try is to just add that environment variable to the game configuration

WINE_SIMULATE_WRITE_COPY=1

As a key/value pair in Lutris, you'd add it like this. It's a bit odd in how the dialog works, which is why I'm showing the screenshot. I just picked one to demonstrate, I don't really use that for EA App.

Scroll down to Environment Variables and click Add. Enter the key WINE_SIMULATE_WRITE_COPY in the left field and click away from it to make sure it's stored (It's easy to lose the text and have to enter it again lol). Then do the same with the value 1 in the right field. Save the settings.



That may be all you need to do. It's possible other executables might not work (the hack is specific to UplayWebCore.exe) but my guess is that it should be fine to set that environment variable for the game session.


Last edited by Grogan on 3 August 2023 at 12:50 am UTC

Was the reason for the issue related to the launcher being updated against newer Windows API like apps? Often Microsoft pushes updates to their software tools which break compatibility with Linux.

Also, another thing you could try is to just add that environment variable to the game configuration

WINE_SIMULATE_WRITE_COPY=1

Just tried this with Anno 1800 and unfortunately I still get the same behavior (transparent window with supposedly uconnect trying to launch) and log entry:
 
lutris-wrapper: Anno 1800
Started initial process 6745 from gamemoderun /home/drcox1911/.local/share/lutris/runners/wine/lutris-GE-Proton8-12-x86_64/bin/wine /home/drcox1911/Games/anno-1800/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Ubisoft/Ubisoft Game Launcher/UbisoftConnect.exe uplay://launch/4553/0
Start monitoring process.
gamemodeauto: 
fsync: up and running.
wine: RLIMIT_NICE is <= 20, unable to use setpriority safely
Initial process has exited (return code: 0)

still get the same behaviour...

Well, Glorious Eggroll is no slouch, there's a new one (7 hours old) you can extract and drop in.

https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/wine-ge-custom/releases/tag/GE-Proton8-13

These are builds intended for Lutris.

On my system, the location to put that in would be

$HOME/.local/share/lutris/runners/wine

I've also heard of it being somewhere like

$HOME/.var/app/net.lutris.Lutris/data/lutris/runners/wine <--- Steam Deck, PopOS! (probably fatpacks)


Last edited by Grogan on 3 August 2023 at 6:13 am UTC

This is the one problem I have with Proton, that other companies can break it, and it falls on Valve to fix it. I have trouble believing this will be sustainable over the long-term.

Well it's the same thing with proton we are all relying on valve not getting bored and pulling the funding. But I think we are safe hell they funded proton when steam deck wasn't a thing and now there are more than a million units sold. All running Linux can't see valve getting bored of the extra cash rolling in.

But that's kinda the point of proton developers who had zero intentions of doing a Linux version do not have to pay a penny for a Linux version. it's all down to valve to fund fixing issues in proton. If a game gets borked after an update well buyer beware right you are playing on a unsupported platform.