I think some of you missed the point of the comic, it is actually a statement against piracy.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/2/19/
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Originally Posted by Penny Arcade
A Cyclical Argument With A Literal Strawman
Alright. So, Ubisoft's new DRM. Supports unlimited installs and Cloud-based save data. Requires absolutely unbroken access to their master servers, or the product ceases to function. I can boil it right down for you:
Nobody wins.
Well, except pirates. Pirates always win, on a long enough timeline. Honestly, the timeline doesn't even need to be that long.
Visit any thread regarding the topic, and I mean any thread, and it won't be three posts until someone raises the Goddamned Jolly Roger and says they'll pirate the game as a gesture consistent with some comprehensive ur-morality they've ginned up, one where stealing things is alright provided they were very angry when they did it. It's entirely possible that you don't like being spoken to in this way, but somebody has to get this done. What Ubisoft is doing here is Draconian - I don't mean those lizard dudes, I'm talking about laws which are characterized by their severity. Before they eventually dismantle it, and it will be dismantled, it will have achieved exactly the opposite of their intention. But what I won't tolerate from rational beings is the idea that you don't understand why they're doing it.
Every avenue of convenience for the user is also a vector of exploitation.
They have given up.
As fiery rhetoric goes, this sucks. It doesn't have that revolutionary quality that rallies the faithful. The trouble is that this dialogue between pirates and publishers, one which was always characterized by falsehood and ill-will, has ceased to exist in this case. A maneuver this extreme means that they're finished talking altogether: this mechanism is their response, the final word. Only it's impossible to get the final word here in The Cloud. Ever.
And no-one of any sense has ever bet against the scorn and resourcefulness of young men.
(CW)TB out.
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Anyhow for all you would be pirates ready to 'stick it to the man' by pirating SH5, I wouldn't hold your breath. I don't expect this DRM to be broken any time soon, and SH5 would be the last game on the list to bother with (particularly when compared to AC2 and SC Conviction), if ever.
I will not be buying any further Ubisoft games due to this new form of DRM until the DRM is removed (which may happen if sales are actually worse with it). Being angry over the DRM does
not give license to steal the work, the DRM is there largely because of stealing. Software piracy has become a huge problem due to the ease at which people can now commit it. Any drooling moron can do it now, as evidenced by the huge numbers of idiots who contact tech support over problems with their stolen game.
Piracy has gotten so far out of hand that it is not unusual for games to hit 4:1 or higher pirated:bought ratios. Some games have hit 90% piracy rates (that means out of 10 people who have the game 9 are pirates)! No matter how you slice it this is costing the companies a fortune, especially when compared to console piracy rates, which are considerably lower (well below 1:1) due to the added difficulty, and if it continues it will eventually wreck PC gaming.
Now I am not going to say that the game companies are all saints. They release plenty of garbage that is either just bad, buggy, and/or broken. I'm sure everyone of us can point to at least one game we bought where we got ripped off. Sometimes they fix the game, too often they don't, or just barely make the game work. A lot of this is their fault sure, but piracy doesn't help either. Number of copies sold helps determine if its economical to patch the game or not. I don't agree with game companies doing this, and I think when they do this, they are stealing from us. But this doesn't justify wholesale piracy back either, as its not the bad games that get pirated like crazy, its the top games; games that the game companies deserve to be paid for, for making a good game.
Anyhow all I am going to say on this issue.