Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed II may have the new DRM scheme by the time it's released on PC.

UPDATE | Good lord. They really have been as stupid as to boot you from the game if your internet connection drops. Short of the usual blog fury and forum explosions, I’m not sure how to treat this. Boycotting is not the answer — the game studios just see that sales are down on PC, assume piracy has won, and it gives them more excuses to slowly strangle the life out of the platform by focusing on console.

Last week, Ubisoft revealed its new DRM scheme, effectively doing away with CD checks by moving the tech online.

Ubisoft hasn’t had the best run with DRM, although fortunately this seems to be a small step in the right direction.

All you need is an ubi.com account, and to associate your game with that account. The technology then authenticates whenever you run the game, and syncs your save games online so you can transfer between machines, or install the game later and still have access.

In short, Ubisoft is doing its best to mimic Steam. It will be fascinating to see if Ubisoft eventually takes it one step further, cutting out the middle man and selling titles direct.

As usual, there are a few troubling things about the whole idea:

1. Double dipping DRM. This is speculative, but I’d hazard a guess Ubisoft titles sold through Steam and other digital distribution platforms will likely still require an ubi.com login, forcing a pointless double-dip DRM process akin to the GFWL games on Steam, or the GTA IV Securom/GFWL/Rockstar Social Club fiasco.
2. Destroying the game experience. A “permanent online connection is required”, and if that is lost then “the game will pause while it tries to reconnect. If the Internet Connection is unable to resume you can continue the game from where you left off or from the last saved game.”  Interruption of the game and destroying the suspension of disbelief is unacceptable, especially if this event occurs at no fault of the player. At the most, the game should only check when it is first launched. If you’re going to make background checks, they need to be in the background. If a check fails, wait until the game process is terminated before enforcing a policy.
3. Mobile users are cut out. Pity the laptop gamer. If you don’t have WWAN or reception drops, too bad. Unlike Steam, there’s no way to set an “offline” mode.
4. We’re asked to trust the untrustworthy. If the service somehow disappears from existence, then Ubisoft “will create a patch for the game so that the core game play will not be affected.” Which is all very nice, but Ubisoft hasn’t exactly established itself as a shining knight of consumer favour. Its version of  Beyond Good and Evil on Steam and GoodOldGames requires a lot of system tweaking to even get working properly on modern systems, despite selling for US$9.99. Prince of Persia Sands of Time, Two Thrones and Warrior Within require you to turn off fog in order to be able to see anything, otherwise it just turns the screen white. These titles are also selling for US$9.99 on Steam. All should be considered broken goods, and a portent for how Ubisoft treats its old code with new customers.
5. Growing pains. It took Steam years to become the reliable service it is today. I suspect we’ll see a few reports of Ubisoft’s servers being unable to cope with the load in the early days of the scheme’s release.

All this is summed up with the remarkably sheltered comment of Brett Wilkinson, Ubisoft’s Director of Customer Support, who states: “We think most people are going to be fine with it. Most people are always connected to an Internet connection”.

Who are these “people”? Brett, you might want to take a look at the most recent internet penetration stats (at the time of writing, 25.6% world wide), or at the very least adjust your sentence. Perhaps a more accurate statement would be: “The bulk of our sales come from densely populated cities with always-on internet connections, and as a business, we follow where the dollar goes”.

At least it’d be honest.

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