All Future Ubisoft titles come with FAIL.

[BravoDrie]

I buy game, install, then crack it anyway, cause I hate swapping CD's between games.

 

[RoosTa]

What s*** is that! I pay for a game, I have a right to enjoy the game and not be screwed by DRM when trying to play a game. This is not a privelage, this is my right as a consumer. Rather support the indie gamers than big studios exploiting the market. A while back there was quite a bit of discussion about the publishing houses buying up the development studios, how it would affect pricing eventually. Well, I think thats becoming more of a problem than piracy to the consumer.

Thats the problem, its catch 22. If there was no piracy, there would be no DRM in the first place. You have to admit that piracy is out of control, so companies are taking action to prevent it. I highly suggest you go read that article, its so far the best written article that explains all the factors involved in piracy and why especially the PC gamers should be concerned.

In the end, its all trial and error. Unfortunately, we are the guineapigs. In an attempt to do research on piracy, Ubisoft released Prince of Persia without any form of DRM. Guess what. People continued to pirate it. Ubisoft took note that of that, so now they invented a stronger DRM by focusing its affects in gameplay.

Should we be happy about DRM? Of course not. But let's be clear about the chain of cause and effect here: piracy has forced increasingly intrusive DRM upon us. No-one likes it, but it's here to stay so long as people pirate things rampantly under a range of excuses. If you want to be outraged about DRM, direct a lot of that anger towards the pirates who've made it necessary.

Update: As expected, given the continued hysterical misinformation regarding DRM, the dramatic increase in PC game piracy, and the failure of the DRM-free approach in recent games such as Prince of Persia (see previous page), Ubisoft has announced in early 2010 that it is taking a new approach: all games, whether single or multiplayer, will now have to be run in constant online mode, requiring an Internet connection for ongoing verification of the game during gameplay.

They also further wrote an article about AC2's DRM:
http://www.tweakguides.com/AC2_1.html

Bear in mind however that without a doubt, this protection system has been forced upon us solely due to rampant piracy of PC games. My PC Game Piracy Examined article provides all the relevant facts if you're interested. Single-player PC games in particular are now pirated to such a degree that without protection, they are simply not viable for release on the PC platform anymore. All offline methods of protecting single-player games simply do not work.

Like it or not, in the face of rampant piracy, some form of effective protection or DRM is an inevitability for many types of PC games, especially offline-only single-player games, and is here to stay. Steam is one solution, but I've warned that it isn't necessarily the cure-all that some people would like to believe, and still has notable drawbacks. The various DRM methods must evolve to the point where they are both more effective at reducing day-zero piracy, and also less intrusive and problematic for legitimate users. Gamers can assist in this process by making sure that only verified and truthful information regarding these systems is discussed. Hysterical misinformation is not the appropriate approach and will only lead to either more intrusive DRM or worse - as we see in the next section as the article draws to a conclusion.

Sadly, this is the truth whether you choose to believe it or not. Either we support the developers by buying their games with DRM or we stop playing the games all together. Piracy should not be an option, by pirating those people are contributing towards the problem.

Edit: A last quote I found highly facinating, because it struck home:

The Culture of Piracy

In researching this article I read literally hundreds of articles, studies, forum posts, blog posts and general comments from a wide range of people. What disturbed me more than the blatant misinformation and falsehoods regarding various aspects of the debate was the unashamed 'Culture of Piracy' which now appears to be prevalent around the Internet. Not only are the people who are pirating games openly bragging about it, they're flowering it up with a range of excuses, even suggesting that it's their right to do so. Back in the 1980s when my friends and I swapped copies of Amiga games, we didn't blame the copy protection for forcing us to do it, we didn't blame copyright laws, or assume it was our right to copy any game we want in the name of 'freedom', we didn't even make a point of openly advertising that we did it. We copied games for one simple reason: because we could.

Fast forward to the 21st century, and piracy has apparently somehow become a political struggle, a fight against greedy corporations and evil copy protection, and in some cases, I've even seen some people refer to the rise of piracy as a "revolution". What an absolute farce. Truth be told I have the greatest respect for the people who simply come out and just say that they pirate because they can, no more, no less. At least then I know I'm dealing with someone who's being honest and has got their head screwed on straight.

Piracy is the result of human nature: when faced with the option of getting something for free or paying for it, and in the absence of any significant risks, you don't need complex economic studies to show you that most people will opt for the free route. However to back this up, the data presented in this article shows quite clearly that DRM or no DRM, good game or bad game, demo or no demo, available via Steam or not, cheap or expensive, whether sold by an independent or a major publisher - all games are being pirated on a massive scale. The most significant determinant of which games will get pirated more is how desirable they are. No surprises there.

The purely self-serving nature of the arguments people use to justify piracy has become quite galling, and frankly is an insult to the collective intelligence of all internet users. Whether you pirate games or not is ultimately none of my business, but at least have the decency to be honest with yourself and everyone else about the real reasons why you're doing it.

 

[Kosmik]

Your forget rule number 1 of business.

Keep your customers happy. We can all understand what they are trying to do but by affecting your paying customers the worst, you lose your customer base. Studios should rather switch to a software as a service model. I'd be happy to pay a subscription service to a studio to have access to their games to play as long as my subscription is active. Now wouldn't that be a great idea.

 

[general_koffi]

Doesn't really phase me cos they can't really do much wrt DRM on the 360. I imagine that the PC folks would be a bit pissed though.

I actually wonder if the idea isn't to kill the PC as a gaming platform and get everyone to move across to consoles, as its easier to develop for them and the games generally sell better.

What they're actually doing is encouraging everyone to pirate the game...

 

[Shayd]

You guys wondering if the PC gaming will die due to this are on drugs, piracy has always existed, there are more and more sales of legitimate games these days.

If a game is pirated once or 50 million times it make no difference if 10 million copies are sold. Those 10 million are the market games studio's should be targeting and making happy, not trying to make the pirates straight. Pirates will either change of their own free will or will continue to pirate. If larger studio's wanna leave the PC market there will be tons of small guys who take their place.

 

[I am Penguin]

If larger studio's wanna leave the PC market there will be tons of small guys who take their place.

Yep! we take note of the ratio of console game title releases to PC releases. That's a fact!