Intersesting that would mean if you installed your copy of SH5 to many PC's connected to a server running the workaround, that all clients could run SH5 together. That would be great for any LAN made wolfpack games.

If so this could backfire on Ubisoft forcing this DRM on loyale customers. Seeing as there allowing multiple copies to be installed on PC's.

My biggest concern is that I have no guarantee that I can still play the game if the company goes belly up or otherwise decides the expense of maintaining all those servers eats up too much profit.

Oh sure, they say they would patch it in these situations, but what is a non written assurance to a company? It's standard practice to make customers agree to a written EULA before installation, but they won't give us a written guarantee we can still play a year from now? AND they have a written statement they could pull the plug on the whole thing with 30 days notice at their whim?

No way. I've dealt with companies, and well-meaning ones at that, long enough to know that if it isn't written down as an agreement, it's not worth crap.

How's this for a possible scenario:
Company is sad to announce that keeping the authentication servers online is just too expensive, and will require every one who wishes to continue playing their favorite game to now subscribe to a monthly fee.....

It can happen, and it's no less likely than Ubi releasing a patch removing the online requirement if they went broke or the company changed hands, or there was an earthquake destroying company assets, or any number of other things that can and do happen to companies every day.

I tell ya, I'd have been much more agreeable to the whole thing if they had required a paid subscription, because at least they would have an incentive to keep the servers going.

Frankly it saddens me to not have SH5, I was really looking forward to it, but sometimes you just gotta stand up and say THAT AINT RIGHT!

So I picked up the game yesterday and decided to do some DRM testing to see what really happens in game.

1) Yes without internet access you cannot launch the game, the launcher denies you before the game even starts

2) The game syncs the save game files upon launch and upon exit of the game, this is done not through the game itself but the launcher utility.

3) It does not dump you out of the game if you lose internet mid-game. In fact it continues as normal. I tested this by unplugging the ethernet cable mid-patrol. I played for another 20 minutes without internet access fine and saved my game after that point (which I have to assume were locally stored because I had no internet access at the time).

3) If you do have such save games (that took place without internet access), it'll upload them to the server automatically when you re-launch the game (assuming you now have internet access, if you don't you won't be able to launch the game anyways). I was able to load my saved game and continue off where right from where I saved the game.

The short end of this story is that the DRM does not inconvenience you mid-game. I can understand issues with not being able to launch a game without internet access, but that's nothing new and I can handle that level of annoyance. I have real problems with a game interfering with your game play after a game starts though, which it turns out SHV doesn't do, so this is great news.

Well, that takes care of this thread. I will state the rules one last time, I don't care what you do, but don't discuss this here.