I don’t know if you’ve recently heard about Ubisoft’s customer-unfriendly-“copyprotection” to prevent piracy of their upcoming titles like Assassin’s Creed 2, Settlers VII and Splinter Cell: Conviction.

I’ll try to describe – let’s call it – “Ubi DRM” , with my own words: Your computer has to be connected to the Internet and the Ubisoft-servers in order to play the game. If you disconnect or your connection is interrupted, the game will pause and you will eventually lose your progress, depending on the DRM’s implementation in the game. That means “no internet connection – no gaming”.

So what’s the advantage for paying customers? According to Ubisoft players don’t have to put in a disc to play the game, their savegames will be uploaded to the Ubisoft-servers automatically and you can install the game on as many computers and as many times as you want. Sounds fair, right? No, it doesn’t.

Most games without Ubi DRM give you these advantages too. Plus: You don’t need to be online to play them! You can play Torchlight at your grandparents’ place without the need of online connectivity, you can play The Witcher while travelling by train, but you won’t be able to play Assassin’s Creed 2 on your PC in case of an internet breakdown or just the lack of connectivity.

I don’t know how you think about this matter, but in my humble opinion Ubisoft is going to lose customers. Paying customers have to suffer, while cracked versions – and I am pretty sure about that – will just work offline.

The guys at PC Gamer had the chance to ask an Ubisoft spokesperson about their new DRM or rather problems regarding it.

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