elmuerte

I wasn't describing the functioning of the DRM, but rather how the company treats its customers.

omg... there is a Wizard level!? omg omg omg

Ok, apparently my sarcasm wasn't obvious :/ Anyway, it's a nice step in the direction to free PC gaming from the clutches of Microsoft. I hope more developers follow, and maybe in a year or 10 we'd also see more gaming coming to Linux (considering it's a smaller step than going from Windows to MacOSX).

Considering the Mac is a PC, and it's a PC game, why would you even have to pay for that. It's not like you have to pay extra to play your game on both Windows XP and Windows 7.

When steam doesn't detect a working internet connection (which could take up to 5 minutes) at startup it will automatically prompt to start in offline mode. After that you can play all your "offline" games, but only if they are fully updated (according to the client). Once every few days steam will try again to connect to the internet when you start a game, which could take up to 5 minutes. As long as you keep the steam client running you only get this delay once in a few days (I think). This worked for at least 2 weeks without any issues. After that they finally fixed my internet connection again. Of course I couldn't configure steam to use the internet connection I made through my mobile phone. If the steam client has a pending update you cannot use it in offline mode. If a game has a pending update you cannot use it in offline mode. You can "computer shift" games with steam. I used that to get Serious Sam HD to my workstation from my work laptop. How is this different from the Ubisoft DRM? When during the whole part above you cannot play a game with the Ubisoft DRM.

□□△○x○△xx□◇ ◇? wtf

Would you keep going to a grocery store where they would search you every time you exit, just to check if you didn't steal anything?

doubt it, otherwise rome.ro would have said something about it on planetromero

I don't care now good the DRM is for the publisher (and/or game devs). I'm only interested in how it affects me. Based on how it affects me it influences the maximum amount of money I'm willing to fork over. But this new DRM by Ubisoft affects me in such a way I'm not even considering to buy the game. To be honest, this "unreachable server" issue didn't surprise me at all. If you look back to all past times a company introduced some online (DRM) mechanism is always came to a halt one way or the other in the first few days. This happened to Microsoft, to Valve, to Impulse, Apple, Blizzard, etc. And in pretty much all cases they could averted most of the issues. Some companies blamed hackers, or DDoS attacks, and others admitted their network was underpowered for the demand (which also looks like a DDoS attack). In due time AC2 will be fully cracked and playable, and Ubisoft will probably take the next step and add a dynamic content factor to their DRM which is going to fail horribly. With dynamic content Ubisoft will host servers that compute part of the gameplay logic which is send back to the client. So you're basically running a single player online game. In the first week they won't have enough computing power to serve all. After a few months these machines will only cost money to keep active but don't generate new income. So they would probably shut it down, and thereby killing your single player game. And this concept will piss of even more people (at least the EA sports games from 5 years ago can be played offline). And after that Ubisoft will either abandon the PC market completely, or go back to the "proven" DRM which is broken anyway but is "better" than nothing.

mac release of what?

crud, I meant http://www.8bitalarmcock.com

What time is it?

I've never been into watching others play. Games are meant to be played, not watched. Otherwise they'd be movies.

What? no! that would make things easier. That's not the idlethumbs way.

hasn't that picture been posted before on idlethumbs?

Industry achievement unlocked?

awesome anti climax

hm... must return to spelunky some time, last version I tried didn't work well on my system

It looks like the "pirates" have the better product again: http://www.infoaddict.com/ubisofts-new-drm-cracked-in-under-25-hours Not much of a surprise, it just shows that you're mostly pissing off/bothering your paying customers with this. And partially destroying the 2nd hand market.

Customization doesn't fit Remo

the Idle Banter forum has the wasteland theme.

oops... I mean portal arg. It is just a minor typo, don't go portal now.

they're updating steam for more postal arg

I highly doubt it. It will probably get the steam DRM as a free extra. Assassin's Creed 2 also includes the new ubisoft DRM crap: http://store.steampowered.com/app/33230/

That too. And usually there's a 25%-33% reduction steam deal within 1 month.