Ubisoft have finally listened to gamers and pulled the most controversial DRM we have ever seen to date.
Some time ago in a galaxy not so far away, some execs at Ubisoft hit on, what they thought, was a brilliant idea. Let's insist that our games phone home every time it played, that way we can be sure the games are not pirated. While this sounded like a good idea to keep the pirates at bay, the problem was that it stopped legal owners who didn't have an internet connection from playing it, even on single player games. If Ubisoft's servers, or their internet went down, then players couldn't play. Worst of all? If it is 5 years down the line and Ubisoft decides to shutdown their servers, then none of the legal owners will be able to play their games again.
Ubisoft games came with this stupid DRM system earlier last year with Settlers 7 and within a couple of days the pirates already cracked the infamous DRM anyway.
There where several small annoyances with these periodic online DRM checks for the legit game owners and it was that the game would pause or freeze as soon as the internet connection was lost. A valid internet connection was also required to validate the install, each time the game is launched.
A patch was recently released for select titles like Splinter Cell: Conviction and Assassin’s Creed II removing the security measure, and Ubisoft confirmed it will continue to do so on a ‘case-by-case’ basis. But don’t think they will admit defeat. Ubisoft still stands by the implementation of the program, saying, “from the beginning we said that we might choose to patch out games at some point.†Which is basically Ubisoft babble for “we finally got sick of receiving all that hate mail and getting bashed constantly.â€
Ubisoft had earlier announced that they would not be using DRM with their new real time strategy game, RUSE.
Some time ago in a galaxy not so far away, some execs at Ubisoft hit on, what they thought, was a brilliant idea. Let's insist that our games phone home every time it played, that way we can be sure the games are not pirated. While this sounded like a good idea to keep the pirates at bay, the problem was that it stopped legal owners who didn't have an internet connection from playing it, even on single player games. If Ubisoft's servers, or their internet went down, then players couldn't play. Worst of all? If it is 5 years down the line and Ubisoft decides to shutdown their servers, then none of the legal owners will be able to play their games again.
Ubisoft games came with this stupid DRM system earlier last year with Settlers 7 and within a couple of days the pirates already cracked the infamous DRM anyway.
There where several small annoyances with these periodic online DRM checks for the legit game owners and it was that the game would pause or freeze as soon as the internet connection was lost. A valid internet connection was also required to validate the install, each time the game is launched.
A patch was recently released for select titles like Splinter Cell: Conviction and Assassin’s Creed II removing the security measure, and Ubisoft confirmed it will continue to do so on a ‘case-by-case’ basis. But don’t think they will admit defeat. Ubisoft still stands by the implementation of the program, saying, “from the beginning we said that we might choose to patch out games at some point.†Which is basically Ubisoft babble for “we finally got sick of receiving all that hate mail and getting bashed constantly.â€
Ubisoft had earlier announced that they would not be using DRM with their new real time strategy game, RUSE.
