Official explanation of controversial Assassin’s Creed 2 DRM

Ubisoft has long had some controversial ideas about how DRM should be used, but when PC Gamer was given a review copy of Assassin’s Creed 2 on the PC it seemed as if the reality was going to be much worse than what opponents to DRM had feared: the game requires an always-on ‘Net connection and constant communication with the home server. If your connection is dropped, the game kicks you out, and you lose any progress you had made since your last save.

If you have flaky wireless in your home, it sounds like it’s time to move onto a wired solution. We caught up with an Ubisoft representative to get the full story, and it may not be as bad as it sounds… but it’s still certainly not good.

Here’s how PC Gamer described its test:

The game first starts the Ubisoft Game Launcher, which checks for updates. If you try to launch the game when you’re not online, you hit an error message right away. So I tried a different test: start the game while online, play a little, then unplug my net cable. This is the same as what happens if your net connection drops momentarily, your router is rebooted, or the game loses its connection to Ubisoft’s ‘Master servers’. The game stopped, and I was dumped back to a menu screen—all my progress since it last autosaved was lost.

We reached out to Ubisoft to see how accurate this account was. “As long as you do not quit the game, the game will continue to try to reconnect for an unlimited time. Once the game is able to reconnect, you will immediately be returned to your game,” Ars was told. What about your progress?

“Where exactly you are reconnected in the game may differ from title to title. Settlers 7 reconnects at the exact point where the connection was lost, AC2 reconnects you at the last checkpoint (and not the last auto save, as indicated in the CVG article). There are many checkpoints so you’re back to the point where you got disconnected in no time.”

We were assured that only happens if the disconnection is lengthy. If you’re cut off for just a second or two, the game simply pauses and continues on. Ars was also told that nothing will happen if your connection slows down. “Our online services platform will require a maximum of 50kbps of available bandwidth, so even with the slowest connection, gameplay won’t be affected.”

What does this mean for you?

Since upcoming Ubisoft PC games will require you to be connected to the Internet through your entire gaming session, members the armed forces may have a hard time playing games on their laptops. If you’re flying, you’ll have to pay for onflight Internet or not play. If your Internet goes out in your house, you can’t play, and if you were playing while it happened, you could lose progress.

There is a certain weirdness to a company demanding to know every time you play the game, and requiring you to be talking to their servers for the entirety of your session. Does this DRM come at the cost of privacy? That’s debatable, but it will be a deterrent for those who travel or play games where there isn’t Internet to buy the game at all.