Ubisoft Announce New Form of Game DRM – Game NewsWritten By Roy
Ubisoft have announced that their PC line up will now be using a new form of DRM – instead of having disk checks or SecuROM piracy protection, all Ubisoft games will now only be playable by registering for a Ubi.com account and playing your games online. That means if you want to play the single player mode of Assassin’s Creed 2, you’ll need to logon and stay connected throughout the game in order to access the content. The game will pause if your connection suddenly goes down.
The whole idea sounds a little like Microsoft’s service, Games for Windows Live, which is nearly universally hated by PC gamers for its poor quality. However, even GFWL doesn’t stop you from playing a game if you can’t get online, or pause the game when your net cuts out.
It may seem like a mute point for many people with computers online 24/7, but it’s a dangerous road to travel for many consumers. What are we going to do when Ubisoft’s servers go down? The games that we have purchased will be unplayable. Ubisoft have promised that they will patch any games to be playable offline if the service was ever closed permanently, but considering the only reason that would happen is if the company itself folded, we’re not convinced by that promise.
It feels like Ubisoft have decided that the small (but not insignificant) number of its customers that don’t have regular online access on the PC they play games are not worth their time. It may also mean that millions of people behind restrictive firewalls like university students may also remain unable to play Ubisoft games until they purchase their own internet connection or apply to lift access.
It seems like we’re covering this story every single week, but we feel like we should be giving our coverage to the problem of DRM. Between Bioshock 2, Modern Warfare 2, Starcraft 2 and Bad Company 2 it seems like PC gamers are being cheated out of an experience. As usual it’s a case of legitimate consumers being harmed by piracy. We’re pretty certain hacking groups will find a way around this new form DRM very quickly, while consumers will be stuck with it for the foreseeable future.
The News Release was written by: Roy who produces professional