In the long-ago land of 2010, Ubisoft made a name for themselves by producing some of the most intense, downright-ridiculous Digital Rights Management protocols ever for games like Assassin's Creed 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction on PC. Not only would gamers have to be connected to the internet when they logged into the game, but they would need a constant connection the entire time -- a method of piracy protection that crossed the line and occasionally caused most of the legit gamers to be unable to play.

In a non-publicized move, a recent update to Ubisoft's DRM-stricken line of games has changed things up, allowing gamers to play their games without needing a constant online connection. They will still need to go through an online checkpoint when they open a game, but from then on if a router goes down or net neutrality ends, they'll be able to play that session to their hearts content!

There are still some gamers who dislike the fact that they have to re-authenticate the game every time they go to use it -- which, depending on how busy the servers are, isn't always instantaneous -- but most would have to admit that Ubisoft is going a step in the right direction. A significant number of gamers tried to boycott the affected games to counter the aggressive DRM stance, but Ubisoft is a company that has taken a hard stance on the piracy topic. As Max Beland, the creative developer for Splinter Cell: Conviction, put it:

"We consider that protecting our PC games is vital to our business, and will allow us to continue investing in the development of creative and innovative games on the PC platform."

It's no secret that piracy on the PC is several times more of an issue than on consoles, but when DRM is so aggressive that the legit customers have been having game-breaking problems for months, whilst pirates who downloaded cracked versions get a problem-free, DRM-free playthrough, things are wrong. You have to wonder if Ubisoft is cooking up a new kind of efficient, smarter DRM for their next generation of games, or if they've seen that their current style of DRM just isn't cutting it like it should be, and was alienating some of the fans who purchased their games on PC.

Did you have problems with Assassin's Creed or Splinter Cell DRM on PC? Are you more enticed to buy it now that the constant network-checking DRM portion has been removed? Tell us your thoughts!

Source: User Reports