Sorry but that's pure fantasy.
http://filenetworks.blogspot.com/200...war-steam.html
Just as an example. There are few games that are not cracked within 3 days of release, most of them BEFORE release!

All this does is remove the 2nd hand market, and possibly make companies feel like they're doing something.
Well, they are doing something.. aggravating legitimate users.

May make it harder but not impossible
Within a week or 2 will be pirated allowing those pirates to play offline where as those who buy it will be stuck online always

Yeah true. Valves HL 2 had an offline option even though you had to log online first then had a choice to choose offline mode to play the single player. You couldn't install the game unless you had a geniune copy but once install you could play offline. I was thinking the same for SH5. Maybe they're thinking to do this differently. :hmmm:

My uncle and I have always had a shared interest in WWII; we pass dvds of old documentaries and such back and forth, and I keep him in the loop about upcoming PC sims and wargames...

His favorite series has always been Silent Hunter (we've visited the Pompanito and the Drum, and he's toured U-505), he owns SH I-IV AND Destroyer Command, and he's always telling me about his latest patrol...

Well, he also lives way out in the country and is stuck with a crappy little sometimes-on modem connection. His gaming PC isn't even hooked up. I'm now going to have to tell him that this's the first Silent Hunter that he won't be able to play, and that's the saddest thing I've heard all day... :cry:

Thanks Ubi for looking out for your paying customers' interests. Maybe you should look up some broadband penetration statistics before you pull boneheaded moves like this. :nope:

I've never really understood the issues people have with steam. For people like me, who used to have a habit of losing game CD's, it's a GODSEND. It also means that once registered on Steam, I never have to buy the game again, I can download it to any new computer I use and all without hassle and I dont even need a CD/DVD to do it. I know it sucks hardcore for people without perma internet connection but thats why offline mode was created.

At this point, I would GLADLY take SH5 on Steam. It also doesnt deter modding in the slightest, take a look at the Half Life series and the number of mods that are Steam Compat for the original HL, and for HL2. It's CRAZY!

:arrgh!:

STEAM itself was cracked years before Empire TW. You could find sites that offered EVERY game that was distributed via Steam.

Another pretty good example of "impossible to crack or if you crack you cant play because online stuff" games would be World of Warcraft and Lineage II. Both MMORPG's relying on the player being connected to the game's server. Ooops, both cracked and running large private servers. :O:

But look at the bright side. Assassin Creed 2 is coming, which will most propably use this online thingy. With that "hot" title, scene groups will be all over it and once it eventually gets cracked, I hope Ubi takes notes and gets rid of the system. :hmmm:

Yep, thing is blizzard don't mind about the private servers in fact they probably see it as a good thing for promoting the game & the private servers don't charge so no reason to hunt them down. They are never heavily populated either. I log onto a private server on maintenance days (tuesdays) as blizzards servers are usually down for 9-10 hrs so everyone heads to the private servers to pvp. lol

Anyways im going off track now.

AS long as i can run SH5 without any online issues im okay with it.

This is how most MMOs work, and it's a very cool thing. What this does is protect your progress in the game. It's not tied to some file on your computer, but rather to the servers.

It means that if your PC has a meltdown, and you get a new PC and install SH5 on it, no progress is lost. Or you could for example install SH5 on your work computer as well as home, swtch between both and the save file is shared between them. It's really cool. Uh, why would anyone ever complain about this?

It's about reliability. I take care of my PC, both hardware and software. I've never lost data, and I've had 1 hardware failure in 15 years of PC ownership.
MMO servers go offline weekly, usually at the most annoying times (especially if you're not in the hosting country)
As an example, Fallen Earth MMO was offline due to server problems and updates when I was snowed at home for 2 days, so i couldn't play it at all.
Very inconvenient, but part of the package as it were for an MMO. If I want to play a game with others, I need to be online.
For a single player game, this is all the potential server problems with NONE of the benefits.

To summarise, no lost data in 15 years on my PC. Servers unavailable weekly for a few hours.
That's a pretty easy choice for me which I prefer.
If your PC melts down weekly, I really feel sorry for you.

Its a PC, it had a chance to die no matter what you do to it. You've been one of the very lucky ones because I dont know anyone who's not lost anything on a PC in 15 years, but you're going to be real pissed if you lost 100s of hours of gameplay if your PC does decide to die.

Just because it hasnt happened to you doesnt mean it cant happen. To some people, you cant risk losing that much gameplay, no matter how lucky you've been so far.

Ive been playing the MMO guild wars for 3 years now, never once have I been kicked from the server, and ANET uses the exact same system Ubi is now using. Id rather run the risk of losing a couple hours of progress rather than 100s of hours of progress. Thats just me though apparently.

If ym pc melts down my save will be the last thing i will be worring about. It is my understanding that everything gets craked so this wont last that long.I just hope ubi will be smart enough to remove it on time and give the game a chance to evolve through moding.If it cant be moded you can imagine how fast it will go old and boring.

If it cant be modded why have the dev's stated on serveral occasions that it could "The file structure will be familiar" and the like.

And how exactly have you reached the conclusion that the game CANT be modded? SH5 retains the same file structure of SH4 and even has a few improvements to make it MORE modable.

But is it worth modding if ubi will keep auto updating when you are connected ?
All ifs and buts at the mo

The problem with modding is dependant on how they do updates.
Railworks on Steam suffers this issue that if you're in connected mode then updates are automatic and applied before you even know what's in them.
This can overwrite changes to any default files they've updated, including mod'ed ones. Extra things aren't a problem (and in RW most things are addons rather than edits to the default stock) but in SH where most changes are edits of existing files, this could be a big problem.

If updates are optional, or at least warned of, with a list of what's going to be changed then people can prepare for it - although this could be a royal pain to monitor all your changed files and maybe have to merge those changes back into the "updated" files.
If they do "no warning, auto-update", it's going to get messy.