Ubisoft has faced plenty of well-deserved criticism for its treatment of PC gamers by forcing heavy-handed digital rights management (DRM) measures upon them. Regardless of whether customers purchased Ubisoft titles through the company’s online store directly, or through third party platforms like Steam, they were forced to remain always online for the DRM, even in single-player games.
Needless to say, the DRM’s always-online requirement caused a lot of difficulty for players without permanent access to the Internet, especially those on laptops or those serving overseas in the military. Disconnecting from the internet, if only for a second, would cause the game to drop the player to the desktop, causing them to lose their progress in the game.
Ubisoft has (finally) taken note of these complaints, which have been around for years, and announced that the PC version of its upcoming game Assassin’s Creed 3 will have no such always-online requirement.
In a recent interview with Rock Paper Shotgun, Ubisoft’s worldwide director Stephanie Perotti says that a decision was made in June to remove the requirement. DRM will remain, but only to the extent that players will have to activate it once upon installation and never be bothered by it again.
Assassin’s Creed 3 for the PC is set for release on November 20, a month after its release on the Xbox 360 and PS3.