Ubisoft has this bizarre and misguided obsession with DRM. Rather than focusing on providing value, it’s always looking to take it away in a fruitless battle to “stop piracy.” The company doesn’t seem to understand that if it gives people a reason to buy, they will. But limiting value doesn’t help anyone. In the past, the company has made a series of bad choices about DRM and suffered because of it. The company also seems to misunderstand how unauthorized file distribution occurs and what it means. In cases where it finally came around to scaling back its DRM, it seemed to do so petulantly, with a passive-aggressive “open letter” about it.

The latest move, sent in by a whole bunch of you, is to require copies of games to call back home to Ubisoft every time they’re used. Yes, you will need to be online, and the game will need to phone home before you can use it. Of course, if Ubisoft actually thinks this is going to hold back those getting unauthorized copies of the game, it’s mistaken. The Ars Technica article above quotes one file-sharing gamer:

“This is fine. I only have to access the Internet once to get Ubisoft games. You’re the ones paying for a broken copy.”

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