Ubisoft drops DRM from PC games despite soaring piracy rates
For years, gamers have complained about Ubisoft’s (UBI.PA) poor implementation of DRM for its PC games to no avail. But in an interview published by RockPaperShotgun, Ubisoft worldwide director of online games Stephanie Perotti says that Ubisoft has, since June of last year, quietly ended its “always-on DRM” for PC games. The DRM policy required PC games to always be connected to the Internet in order to load. Moving forward, Ubisoft-published PC games will only require a one-time online activation during installation. The company will also eliminate limits on both the number of times a game can be activated and on the number of PCs it can be installed upon. Ubisoft’s change of heart comes after CEO Yves Guillemot recently said that DRM was a necessary evil due to high piracy rates that topped 90%.
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