Ubisoft Scrapping Always-On DRM For PC Games

In an interview on RPS today, Ubisoft tells us that they will no longer use their controversial “always-on” DRM. In fact, they quietly scrapped it months ago, but haven’t made that official until now. In what is a really remarkable turnaround, the publisher pledges that from now on they will only require a single online activation after installing, with no activation limits, nor limits on how many PCs it may be activated.

Ubisoft’s worldwide director for online games, Stephanie Perotti, explained that always-on has actually been gone for quite a while.

“We have listened to feedback, and since June last year our policy for all of PC games is that we only require a one-time online activation when you first install the game, and from then you are free to play the game offline.”

Ubisoft’s DRM had previously meant that you could not launch games without an internet connection, and if your connection dropped at any point the game you were playing would instantly stop, often losing progress you may have made. It was widely derided, and the bane of many gamers, but Ubisoft seemed defiant in response. Until now. Clarifying the new position, Perotti summarises it, using Assassin’s Creed III as an example:

“Whenever you want to reach any online service, multiplayer, you will have to be connected, and obviously for online games you will also need to be online to play. But if you want to enjoy Assassin’s Creed III single player, you will be able to do that without being connected. And you will be able to activate the game on as many machines as you want.”

In the rest of the interview, coming up in a couple of hours, we discuss Ubisoft’s plans to decrease delays for PC releases, try to find out why the publisher doesn’t publish the numbers behind its claims about piracy, and which of the statements they’ve made in recent years that they now find unfortunate.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/05/ubisoft-scrapping-always-on-drm-for-pc-games/

PDE]Chaos Theory wrote:“We have listened to feedback"

Actually, I think this is more the truth. It cost game developers a lot money and resources to make such a DRM like they had on the last games coming from Ubisoft. It was probably aimed agains piracy, but the ugly truth is, within 1 or 2 weeks every game with DRM got pirated, except for Shaun White Snowboarding, From Dust and HAWX 2. The first two got pirated in a few months and the latter never got pirated. Every other game got pirated, so obviously this always-on DRM failed to achieve its goal.

Second, it cost Ubisoft a lot of money to keep the server online and it lost consumers because of the always-on DRM. And don't forget the servers being offline for some games at the start some of them because of DDOS. Some of the consumers didn't buy because of their principals, or reasons like not-having always-on Internet and others just wanted to pirate the games.

Ubisoft doesn't do a bad job on producing good games, but when I speak or think about Ubisoft and some sort of DRM, I just get mad.

Ubisoft is so laughable. These guys never put into account for anything saying people are stealing their games, but there are countries that don't even have those games in market so of course they are going to get them the way they know how. I'm not promoting stuff like that, but it's unfair to blanket the PC market with those stats when there's no way to say if they were even loss sales to begin with.

How do they know that everyone in other countries who download would equal a sale? Yes Assassin's Creed has become their main seller since nothing else they have sells as much. This is why they catch a fit when some some off-company shows them inflated stats of people who possibly downloaded a game instead of bought it from their DRM crazed selves.

Wanna make some new money Ubi? Either make a Splinter Cell game inspired by the movie Death Wish and let Sam go loose for a change (that's how you make Sam mad, not Conviction) OR make Splinter Cell good again like the older series and the last game called Chaos Theory. They haven't had a Splinter Cell that good since.