*Genius*
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Ubisoft is known worldwide as a company which generated controversy back in 2010 over the DRM use. Their method of copyright protection went further than the rest of their fellow companies and required from all customers to have permanent connection to worldwide web to be able to play any games produced by the company. Last year Ubisoft announced its respected principle, which included using a DRM protection tool, for which an “always-on” broadband connection was necessary.
After the company started using this protection tool, its customers became more and more angry. The matter is that those customers who had the misfortune of having some trouble with Internet connection, or just lost service, were not allowed to continue with the disk and returned to the main menu. By the way, the rule was applied not only to the network games – the inclusion of this controversial DRM protection also made it impossible to play video games offline! Even those who wanted to play the games using the “single player” mode, were not allowed to do so without “always-on” Internet connection.
After the introduction of this new DRM protection, not only the customers having troubles with constant connection became angry with the company. Later the problem had escalated when due to failures of the company’s authorization servers legitimate game players had been “plugged out” a number of times. At the same time, this had never happened with pirated versions. In other words, only paying customers were affected, and the reason of the problem was of anti-piracy matter, while pirates experienced no minor inconvenience. The situation not only sounded nonsense, it indeed was nonsense, which the industry observers were tired to prove.
However, Ubisoft remained confident in the efficiency of its new anti-piracy tool and ignored multiple complaints from displeased consumers. Despite the ever increasing flow of complaints from their loyal customers, the company keeps releasing games using the built-in DRM tool intended for anti-piracy fighting. The latest game which will undoubtedly harm legitimate players while not affecting actual pirates is the “Driver: San Francisco”, which launch was announced for late August.
