The gawd-almighty merged DRM in Silent Hunter V thread

[badkarma]

It's clear that the community is sceptical that this platform will be crack-proof and that is understandable. But I cannot stress strongly enough the effect that piracy has had on the PC market. If you want to scale it back to the very basic - we feel that this effort to combat piracy allows us to continue investing creative resources into PC development.

Can we guarantee that the platform is crack-proof? I guess it's impossible to make that guarantee but I can say that we would not be releasing the system if we didn't believe that it's worth its salt.

Do we know that this kind of thing is bothersome to a certain group of gamers? Absolutely. And we're not happy to be frustrating a group of people who play our games. But we do feel that the services that we can offer with the system offset some of the frustration and, more importantly, the efforts that we put into limiting piracy will ensure that Ubisoft can continue investing in developing true AAA game experiences for PC gamers..

Well that seems pretty reasonable to me. I read this as:
IF this DRM works then the loss of customers with no/bad internet is worthwhile to stop piracy and regain some lost sales.
IF this DRM is cracked and removed within a week (which to be honest will be like every other DRM to this point) then the whole thing has been a massive failure doing nothing but inconveniencing legitimate customers and probably pushing more people to piracy.

This had better be the most amazing hack-proof DRM concieved up to this point in PC gaming, or UBI are going to look amazingly stupid over this.

In fact, this statement has made me decide to do something I've never done before.
I'll be looking to see if a pirated version of SH5 is available. NOTE: I will NOT be downloading or using it, EVER. However, if I don't find one within a month of release, meaning UPlay actually works as anti-piracy and isn't just corperate BS for "no reselling of our product", then I'll be purchasing.

I still think this DRM is draconian to the max, but if it actually stops piracy then I find it hard to argue that it's the wrong way to go for games companies.
However if it doesn't work, it's done nothing but punish legitimate users.. and I'm in no mood for punishment that does nothing but make UBI feel like at least they made an effort, and they can now guarentee no re-selling and lots of marketing opportunities.