Ubisoft revisits Internet-at-all-times DRM
Drive away the pirates
Ubisoft has revealed that in order to play its forthcoming title Driver: San Francisco on a PC, users will require a permanent internet connection.
The news was Tweeted by a Ubisoft community developer, who in response to a Driver related query, simply stated "PC version requires permanent Internet connection."
This is corroborated by information on Steam's pre-order page, effectively saying the same thing.
The move would see the return of a digital rights management system that had previously caused public outcry. Ubisoft tried it with Settlers 7, as well as Assassin's Creed 2, before changing the system for its follow-up, AC: Brotherhood, where Internet was only required to validate the install.
Now the full-DRM is back - at least for PC - in a bid to keep piracy subdued.
Even those with strong internet signals have problems from time to time, so surely the playability of a game shouldn't depend on the reliability of t'interweb?
Driver: San Francisco is out this September. ®
COMMENTS
Fantastic
Another title where the pirates will get a better experience than the people who pay for it. I'll be the one sporting the skull & crossbones for this one.
Good reportage of dick move
Well done for picking this up, boo to Ubi for not learning their lesson.
Thanks for the heads-up
It is always good to know which Game not to buy
Error in your subtitle
"Drive away the customers."
Fixed that for you.
Fault lies entirely with the managers unwilling to accept a non-zero piracy rate
Bullshit. There is -no- level of piracy that a publisher would be willing to accept and write off. If they didn't include any copy protection at all, and 10% of their copies were pirated, for the next release someone in power would go "Hrm.. if we make the disc harder to copy, we'd get an extra 10% sales! Do it!" So the next release comes out, customers get pissed off, and so 25% end up getting a pirated copy. They go "Hrmm this isn't working.. those damn pirates are stealing our work, and forcing us to add DRM! Make them validate online too! That'll stop them!". The cycle continues endlessly, with legitimate customers having more and more draconian crap forced on them, and so turning to get a non-crippled pirated version as a result, making the sales figures even worse...
