Offline means out of luck for Assassins Creed 2

Have you ever read something that obviously carries some huge ramifications but you're not quite sure how big or even how you should react?

This is where I am with the recent news regarding the extent Ubisoft is going to for its upcoming PC version of Assassins Creed 2. According to a brutally honest article at CVG the latest Assassins Creed game will not only require PC gamers to have an internet connection to load the game initially but to play it as well.

According to Tom Francis and his hands on experience with a pre-release version of the game, 'If you get disconnected while playing, you're booted out of the game. All your progress since the last checkpoint or savegame is lost, and your only options are to quit to Windows or wait until you're reconnected.'

Francis quite rightly concludes, 'Even if everyone in the world had perfect internet connections that never dropped out, this would still mean that any time Ubisoft's 'Master servers' are down for any reason, everyone playing a current Ubisoft game is kicked out of it and loses their progress.'

There are a few reasons this is still bouncing back and forth in my undecisive brain.

Understanding the birthmark the red-headed step children, aka PC gamers, bear in the gaming community is the ugly 'pirate' word, DRM (Digital Rights Management, the term given for steps taken to prove that game in your computer is the genuine article) will always be out there in some form or another. But when it infringes on the very ability to play a single player experience in such a dramatic fashion, then a more serious consideration needs to be given.

Also, consoles tend to be as wired to the internet as thier PC cousins but I haven't heard of any intentions to make this mandatory in those worlds.

Finally and certainly the biggest concern over this latest news, this is reportedly going to be the standard DRM system for all Ubisoft games. With the company being so large and buying so many smaller developers, trying to avoid Ubisoft games could leave a huge hole in the gaming library.

As they say in the best ongoing stories......to be continued....