Oh dear. Rock, Paper, Shotgun report that Far Cry 3's servers are currently down. We've had a quick look ourselves and yes, it looks like Uplay's throwing a tantrum.
While Ubisoft have dropped their previous always-online DRM requirement, the Uplay launcher will still default to booting the game in online mode. If you launch without a connection, there's no in-game prompt to switch over to offline mode, causing menus to load blank and your character to become stuck to his current spot.
The trick is to tell the Uplay launcher to go offline before you start the game, at which point it will load with all the features you'd expect. Like movement.
To reiterate: oh dear. Uplay hasn't exactly enamoured itself to PC gamers, for years acting as the poster child for a needlessly punishing DRM system that would pause your game whenever your connection dropped. While Far Cry 3 is still playable, the fact that there's no easy way to swap between the modes in-game means that for many, their first experience will be, once again, Uplay acting as a restrictive obstacle between them and the game they bought.
Ubi are aware of the problem, and have tweeted to say : "We're very sorry for the server issues affecting Far Cry 3 on PC and are working as fast as possible to restore the service."
Tom Francis rather enjoyed his time turning wild game into fetching backpacks in our Far Cry 3 review . Admittedly that was back before the servers were being hammered by players excitedly loading their launch day purchase.
