Ubisoft have now dropped Starforce DRM and are trying out an “always-connected” piracy plan.
In a nutshell, the publisher’s new anti-piracy measures aim to disarm DRM’s more troubling aspects, removing install limits altogether and allowing you to play without a disc in the tray. Also of note: cloud saves. For the uninitiated, this means that your game saves can be stored remotely on Ubisoft’s servers, which – while a fairly prominent feature these days – is still 12 different flavors of cool.
Cloud saves seems like a great idea, earlier in the year when Assassins Creed 2 first came out I was a victim of their “corrupt save” bug, where the Xbox froze up during a save process and destroyed my entire game making me start all over again! Hopefully cloud saves would be a way around that bug, perhaps a backup feature on Ubisoft’s servers?
However here is the kicker;
See, there’s one major string attached, and if you disconnect that string, then you can kiss your gaming time goodbye. It’s the Internet, and you’ll be required to connect to it in order for Ubisoft to authenticate your game. Despite the restrictive nature of that limitation, however, the publisher doesn’t seem too worried.
"We think most people are going to be fine with it. Most people are always connected to an Internet connection," said Brent Wilkinson, Director, Customer Service and Production Planning at Ubisoft.
See were the frustration is going to begin? If your internet cable goes down for whatever reason for even a minute, your Xbox screen will dim black and you will be locked out of your game. My question would be will this happen if the “Xbox Live” servers go down, which happens every few months.. Servers are reset, connections get lost, can we really rely on always on connectivity? For as “Murphy’s Law” states; If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong!
So if your going to be downloading the new DRM for Assassins Creed, make sure you are on an “Always On” connection.
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