You don't see the fault in your logic? WoW MUST be online, or it wouldn't be WoW or MMO.

AC2 gains nothing by being online only. Infact, online only severely ruins the game.

You dont really believe that do you? No matter how good a game is, if people can get it for free by pirating it most of them will.

And again this kind of system could eventually work. If they program PC version to get tiny parts of the game online during gameplay, it would be as piracy proof as WoW.

As has already been said, no one has proven there is a negative impact from piracy and the reason they haven't is because they can't.  If they could, they would.  Statistical data on piracy would be everywhere, the math would be testable, and the results would be reproducable.  The fact is, though, that piracy has a statistically insignificant impact on their business.  Most people who pirate would love it if they could afford to buy legitimate copies, they don't because they can't. 

Do take note, that they are also using this system to stop used sales.  What they are doing is fighting tooth and nail to show some kind of improved profit margin.  They do not care if you buy their game legitimately or not, they care if they get the money for it.  They hate used sales just as much as piracy and this is a mover to fight used sales just as much as it is to fight piracy. 

If they get their way they actually won't have any impact on pirates, since the game can be hacked to avoid the security altogether, but it will have a severe impact on people who buy games second-hand.  What they are really doing is squeezing the middle market, which will only have the effect of making used buyers in to new buyers or pirates.  This is not something that deserves praise.

Hell, the fact that people actually think this move is about piracy is laughable.  They can't kill piracy, they know it, and you'd have to be completely naive to think this will slow the pirates down even one bit.  This is about the used market, and you're going to miss it when it is gone.  Trust me.

lol, I always like that. You can't believe that I'm "actually" doing something.

Anyway, no, I didn't "actually" do what you thought, you misunderstood I guess.

I was saying that WoW can't be pirated because of the same online requirement, but it is still very successful and played all the time.

So, in theory, if you just take the login from a game like WoW and move it to EVERY game, then you couldn't pirate ANY game, and the games could still be very successful and played all the time. Right? MMO's just place strict requirements on gamers. They don't deliver a better experience, necessarily, nor do they have a greater draw in theory than any other game, so if gamers are willing to meet those requirements there, why not with all games?

This is apparently what Ubisoft thinks too. I know one thing, it'll prevent piracy at least. If nothing else, it's worth a try.

i actually blame pirates for this



for every key required they'll invent keygens
for every anti-piracy hardware they'll produce chips and fake bios
the meaner the mice, the meaner the cats

Zen - Wow has been pirated many, many times. Clone servers have been put up, allowing people to play their pirated copies 100% for free. You have to be incredibly naive to think the devs/publishers have a shot in hell at stoping piracy.

Miguel - I'll spare the attitude if you stop being lazy. All the information in the world at your finger tips and you want people to post sources on wide-spread information? Come on, dude.

Good point. Maybe they should stream some of the code for the actual game during gameplay. That would piss you off more, probably, but it would take a while to crack.

Im with you and Ubisoft 100% on this.

The article gave conditions like gaming laptops where you may not have an internet connection. However thats BS because you'd burn through your battery in less than 90 minutes playing off battery and usually where theres a power source theres an internet connection. If not, how many people won't have a 3G mobile or better within a couple of years? So when you run inside to plug it in, you've got internet back to save woohoo!

The DRM here really is the placement of saved games online. That means you can pirate the game, break the authentication but it won't help because you can't save the game. So sure, you can argue about 'downloading to test' the games and be 100% right whether the intentions there to buy or not because it effectively renders an offline version as an unlimited demo.

I would personally prefer an unobtrusive DRM like this over CD-checks, cracks etc and if the piracy issue can be solved I can return to gaming full time on my PC because I will know all the games I could ever want will be day and date releases with consoles. I think anyone who wants a return to the glory days of PC gaming ought to support this. I want the PC games to actually have value, rather than just feeling like im a douche for actually paying for them when nobody else does.

@Everyone, the main protection this DRM gives is likely the inability to save games to the local HDD. So whilst you can crack the game, you'd need a unique key to go online and play it.

Like i said you should have checked the bittorrent numbers that were released recently. For example: The game Prototype was downloaded more times than it was sold on PS3 and X360 COMBINED. And that's just Bittorrent, and only downloads since it could have been copied multiple times after.

So don't go saying it doesn't impact the bussiness because it does.

And i hounestly won't miss the used game market one second, since iv'e resold only a handfew of games in my entire life, and those i did were for like $10 to friends. And to be honest, nobody complaints if they pay like $10 to watch a movie of 2 hours in the theater, why complain when paying $40(PC average new price) for 10-20 of game entertainment?

On-topic: Ass said above, you probably need to online to access your savegame and maybe to save your game aswell. And again in future optimations games could be programmed to get parts of the game code online.