Ubisoft Throttles Back Internet-required DRM

Assassin’s Creed II, released last spring, was greeted to rave reviews. It improved upon the original in important ways, delivered fun and exhilarating gameplay, and had graphics and sound to back all of it up. Despite all this, I posted not long after the game’s launch encouraging people to not purchase it. The reason? DRM, of course. What else?

By now, DRM is hardly an unknown. We see it with our software, games, and even movies. I can understand why companies employ it, and I accept it – even though it accomplishes nothing. The problem I had with ACII, though, was that the DRM wasn’t typical, and Ubisoft certainly kicked things up a couple of notches. As a reminder, you have to have Internet access to both launch the game and play it. If at any point during gameplay, you lose connection, you will be booted from the game. Yes, booted from an offline game.

It wasn’t only me who hated that scheme, as was well evidenced around the Web. It does seem that Ubisoft has changed its mind just a wee bit, though, as it has finally decided to drop the constant connection requirement. You’ll still require an Internet connection to launch ACII and other Ubisoft titles, but no longer will you risk being losing game progress if the net conks out.

What took the company so long is beyond me, as are the reasons for the change of heart. I’d still rather see the required connection to launch the game removed as well, because it’s pointless. A couple of weeks ago, my DSL router died, and I had to go an entire day without the net. Fortunately, my brother and I were still able to get Borderlands action going because it didn’t require such a scheme. If it was ACII I was attempting to play, I would have been out of luck.

DRM is acceptable in some cases, but schemes like this are still unacceptable as far as I’m concerned.

The change in the copy protection has been noticed by gamers on Reddit, who have posted screenshots showing Assassin’s Creed 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction running with web connections turned off.