Just WOW. I’ve been following this mess with Anno 2070, but… you know… I thought that Ubi would sort it out. Shockingly, the company have given the ‘finger’ to Guru3D and pretty much every gaming site that wants to benchmark their title, stating that Anno 2070 is restricted to only 3 hardware changes and that there is no way to bypass this feature. This basically means that if – by any chance – you replace your GPU for three times, you will lose the game you have bought. What the F Ubisoft?
But let’s start from the beginning. Guru3D wanted to benchmark Anno 2070 and naturally, they tried to test their cards with it. What stroke them was the fact that the game required additional online authentication checks, each and every time they replaced their GPU on the very same system. As a result of that, the team was unable to complete their article. Why you ask? But because Anno 2070 can be activated only three times.
Guru3D contacted Ubisoft and the French company replied with a really frustrating response. In their mail, Ubisoft claimed that Anno 2070 is ‘indeed restricted to 3 hardware changes‘ and that ‘there simply is no way to bypass that‘. Not only that, but the publisher – ironically – stated that they do not have ‘7 copies of the game‘ for them. In other words, the Guru3D team would not be able to complete their article, unless of course they bought seven copies of this game.
And that’s exactly what is wrong with Ubisoft and their draconian DRM. You know what? I have a copy of Quake 2 and works like a charm. No wait, I have a copy of Quake and works great, even to this date. I’ve uninstalled and re-installed it countless times, used lots of mods, and tested one hell of GPU’s with it. That’s one of PC gaming’s ‘magic’ after all, right? To re-install the game, whenever you get new hardware, and further enjoy it. Noone should interfere with the gamers’ enjoyment and dear Ubisoft, WE ARE NOT CONSOLE GAMERS. So stop treating us like them, will you? We’re upgrading our systems – some of us on a monthly basis – and want to enjoy the games we’ve bought. Plain and simple!
Ubisoft’s attitude is wrong in every possible way. What’s even worse is that pirates can enjoy Ubisoft’s games for as long as they want, without these ridiculous restrictions. Is Ubisoft pushing PC gamers to piracy? With their stance on such matters, yeah, you could say that.
Such a shame!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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