An article over at GameSpy takes a look at Ubisoft’s upcoming thoughts on how to handle piracy: by taking a page from the Big Book of Steam, and having games require an internet connection. Last year after the whole StarForce anti-piracy rootkit DRM (read: bad) debacle, Yves Guillemot said the company was taking steps to combat piracy without annoying gamers who’ve legally bought the damn things.
Their new system will, apparently, let you run your games without a disc in the drive, and you can install it on literally unlimited computers. “If you own a hundred PCs, you can install your games on a hundred PCs,” said Brent Wilkinson, Director, Customer Service and Production Planning at Ubisoft.
The catch: you have to be online. Your savegames will be stored on the Ubi servers, so you can access them from any machine (useful, if you’re the type to get HDD wipes). But what about gamers who don’t have an internet connection?
“We think most people are going to be fine with it. Most people are always connected to an Internet connection,” Wilkinson replied. Yeah. Most people. Except for the people who aren’t, which in my opinion, is the real “most people”. It certainly bodes ill for South Africans. While such anti-piracy moves make sense, the backlash against Steam should be cautionary enough.
In other news, you’ll be able to play as Marcus Fenix or Dom WhatsHisFace in Lost Planet 2. Check this video of the bromance out.
