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Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk
Probably not. The game does not need to phone home anymore. Perhaps the last patch would provide the MP capability. Maybe in a pay for addon with additional content. It worked for SH4. Lets do the math logically. The game gets released. There is the initial glut of purchases at $49.99 or whatever. This goes on for say 6 months. Meanwhile, there are patches made for a fix or a "thanks from UBI' boat added. Others are still making purchases at full price. Eventually the price drops to $19.99 and then $9.99. Does not take long. Does it make financial sense to run, have upkeep and staff this server for DRM? In the long run I would say no. It is diminishing returns on the sales of the games that overrides the cost to keep this server up and running. So really, at $9.99 for a game most will just buy it instead of pirating a copy I would think. What does UBI really get to keep this DRM going for years? I can't think of reason to do that. What is your thoughts? I could be way off base but that is how I see it.
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I've been posting a bit about the server lately, and I'll probably continue doing it to help set things straight. There isn't going to be a "Silent Hunter 5" server sitting somewhere authorizing the game; it doesn't work like that. Reality is that all games will submit to an Authorization server; that is, Assassin's Creed 2, Splinter Cell Conviction, Silent Hunter 5, and whatever other games will all submit to the same server (or set of servers, each communicating with all games). As such, this makes it unlikely that one day they'll decide to simply stop authorizing on account of cost, as the server impact will be very low.
What you
might see is Ubisoft revoke some of the "features" the DRM will offer you -- like cloud-stored savegames. Those games will take up a very real chunk of storage space, and that does cost them money. At some point, SH5 may not be able to save games to the cloud, but you can bet your ass you'll still need to authorize with the server. The reality is that server authorization will eat up so few CPU cycles and such limited bandwidth that the requirement to authorize will never make a reasonable economic impact on them.
In short, your only hope to see the authorization go away is for the DRM to spook so many people away from buying the big titles -- like Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell, or Rainbow Six -- to force Ubisoft into dropping the DRM in hopes of boosting sales. Silent Hunter is far too small and inconsequential of an IP for them to care very much if just that game fails; as people say here, they'll just drop the series if it doesn't sell well enough.