Worst idea EVER

This.

There's no way in hell to stop piracy completely, but it can be mitigated.

What Ubisoft seem to be doing (like a lot of PC developers, so I hear), is basically punishing people for buying the game, since those that download it when it gets hacked and an exploit is found to get around this online authentication thing will have a much more functional game.

What they are doing is trying to slow down pirates by giving them chocolate. It will slow them down at the start of the race, but the extra energy it gives them (by making the pirated versions of the games work better than the normal ones) means that it will help them in the end.

Blasfemy? Madness? THIS IS Ubisooooft!!!!

It's nothing to do with piracy. It's to stop you reselling your game. If this works, it comes to a console near you, very soon.

For some odd reason a lot of console gamers seem to think that what's happening in PC gaming doesn't affect them. It does, it's just a couple of years ahead. Make a stand now before it gets much, much worse. Forget the petty tribalism and THINK. Above all, write to UbiSoft, let them know why you're not buying games from them any more and avoid games with this crap on it like the plague.

They are only promoting piracy with rules like that.

this will only make people want to pirate their games more.

Console gamers are already getting worked by the game publishers. DLC for the most part is the devil and gamers are lapping it up and championing it as a good thing. Gamers like paying $60 for incomplete games apparently. It's one thing if the developers created a $60 game and then worked on releasing DLC down the road to expand the game's content. Just like PC game devs did with the expansion pack format. But nowadays game companies deliberately take out content from the full retail games and then call that removed content "DLC" and have it up for sale around the time of the retail game's release or soon afterwards.

I know that game developers are losing lots of money with HD development but it's not always the case that revenue will increase if you nickel and dime gamers. Valve is a successful profitable corporation and they offer frequent sales on Steam and lots of free DLC. Valve understands that lowering the price can lead to a big spike in demand, leading to greater revenue than if you charged $60 + nickel and dime with DLC.

Also the main reason why game companies are losing money is that they allocate big budgets for way too many games. What's the attach rate on games? Like 9-10 for PS3 and 11-12 for 360? That means the average gamer buys 3-4 new games a year (per HD console) tops. The rest is either bought second-hand or rented. So the average gamer is only going to buy so many games and chances are, it's the big blockbuster-name games that are going to sell. And it's the lesser known games that are going to be bought second-hand or rented or maybe not even played at all! Game companies shouldn't be pouring in these huge budgets for these lesser known games that don't have much selling potential. It's stupid to do that.

So I say game companies, if you want to survive during these tough economic times, don't rip off gamers (that's like trying to extract blood from a stone. The bad economy affects gamers too). Most of you are losing money so whatever you are doing now isn't working. The best bet is to lower production costs (for games that aren't profitable) and focus more on creating fun and innovative games.

[off topic]Ya know all that content that got dropped from FF13? Enough to make a whole new game, they say? I wonder how much of that is going to be DLC?[/off topic]

Yes you do =/ studies have shown that piracy doesn't decrease sales...

Also I wonder how long before companies realise that PC gamers can get around any of these measures eventually and that all this will do is fuck off the people who legitimately buy the game.

I do not want to have an account anywhere other than Steam when I'm gaming. I don't want to sign in, I don't want the game to be connected...

And as my internet connection can be a bit iffy, I have a feeling I won't be playing any Ubisoft games on my computer, if this article is anything to go by.