This is over on Rock, Paper, Shotgun:
We barely need to say anything here (but we will), as where we’re going we don’t need words. We only need righteous fury. PC Gamer have experienced the controversial new Ubisoft DRM first-hand, in the PC build of Assassin’s Creed 2. We already thought the paranoid new copy protection was pretty bad, requiring as it did an online check everytime you played and giving you a hard time if you tried to launch it offline.
What we didn’t think – what we didn’t believe they’d be mad enough to do – was that it’d kick you out of the game if your net connection dropped for any reason.
Or, as PCG’s Tom Francis rightly observes, even if Ubi’s servers happen to have a funny turn. (A troubling precedent for which has already been set by EA – Alec experienced something similar yesterday, when Bioware/EA’s servers suffering extended maintenance meant all his Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 DLC was deemed unauthorised, which in turn prevented him from loading any savegames which used that DLC. The point being: don’t punish your customers because you’ve screwed up).
I'm well past believing this has anything to do with piracy anymore. No rational human being believes that problem is solvable.
This is about sticking it to the used game market. You cannot resell your game - or rather, the buyer will not be able to play it - and you cannot sell your Ubisoft account. It's all right there in Ubi's "online services platform" FAQ.
Sadly, Ubi is likely to implement the same DRM with Splinter Cell: Conviction and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. I've said this a million times: if you buy these games, you're supporting this nonsense. Full stop.
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