Ubisoft is becoming well known for their troublesome DRM and this week is just adding another piece of wood to the fire. It has been discovered that Ubisoft's DRM doesn't just track the overall system a game is installed on but also the hardware in the system.
In general, Ubisoft games allow three activations per purchase of a game. Previously it was assumed that this meant you could activate your game on three different computers. During a performance review for the game Anno 2070, the folks at Guru 3D discovered an even more restricted activation scenario.
When testing Anno 2070 on their NVIDIA system the Guru 3D folks started off installing the game with a GeForce GTX 580 installed in the computer. When that card was swapped out for a GTX 590 and the game was restarted they were immediately prompted to activate the game again. When the key was input the game simply displayed a message indicating they were out of activations.
What that means is the activation code is not only tied to the individual computer but to the hardware configuration on that computer. By changing the graphics card, the overall hardware id # hash changed, forcing another activation to be used up to play the game.
When Guru 3D contacted Ubisoft marketing in the Netherlands their suspicion was confirmed.
"Sorry to disappoint you - the game is indeed restricted to 3 hardware changes and there simply is no way to bypass that. We also do not have 7 copies of the game for you."
The company that developed the Anno series, bluebyte, contacted Guru 3D and unlocked their activation code so they could complete their performance review, which is great but it doesn't solve the larger problem of this DRM. Ubisoft just can't seem to find a DRM strategy that doesn't make people who legitately purchase their games incredibly angry. It's one thing to tie the activation to three systems but to tie it to three hardware changes is ridiculous.
Do any of you still play Ubisoft games on your PC? What's your experience been with the DRM? Let us know in the comments.
