2 days before release. The usual corrupt person at the disc duplicators will leak it as soon as they get it and talented hackers will manage to crack the authentication, cause the checks to go to the localhost address and into a modded micro-server that will run in parallel to the game
Just a guess but its the first thing I'd try

And no mention about the FAQ's magic patch they are supposed to release in case they shut down their server... why was I 99.999% sure of that...

It's the #3 seller on Steam right now. We're fucked.

Can't expect that when thread like those are up:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1156304
Goddamn retards...

Oh god...
I hate this crap. They completely miss the point.

That's what happens if you don't look what your 13 yr old kids do at computers 8P
EDIT:
AC is 2nd Top Seller now...
And it's been just a few hours.
I guess that's it then...

That sorry excuse of a human being who started that thread on Steam forums is either Ubisoft employee or a goddamn fucking moron.

It's sad to see so many misguided fools who are either too selfish or too narrow minded to think of the bigger picture. I can easily think of a bunch of problems DRM may cause.
First of all, has no-one realised that we'll end up with a gazillion game accounts? If every developer or publisher or platform will use its own account, we'll end up with 100 games being tied to 30+ accounts. A nightmare to remember them all! And gosh it will be fun when you tie it all to a single email account and it gets hacked and they run away with the data of all your games, including savegames! I already get a headache whenever I need to log into an EA game because I got about 6 different accounts due to them changing their rules every few years.
But I simply don't like any system which relies on an external source, full stop. They can say what they want but Ubisoft are a bunch of liars. When their Starforce games stopped working on 64 bit systems, they simply stated that the games were not supported on those systems instead of providing a patch. I can imagine the same thing happening with their current games when their online system proves to no longer work with future Windows versions.

Or he is just someone who realizes how so many devs and publishers are ignoring the PC. And honestly, if a bit of DRM will make them consider still developing for the PC, it might be a worthy price to pay. I personally feel that this DRM is a bit too strong, but I felt the same way over limited activation models.
Believe it or not, your opinions aren't divine truths handed down on slates of rock. Other people have opinions.
People run around screaming "boycott this game to support the PC gaming industry!" or "buy this game, then return it to support the PC gaming industry!" and the like. This guy is running around saying "Buy this game to support the PC gaming industry!"
I may not agree with this guy, but at least he is able to make a post and state his opinion without attacking everyone else just because they have a differing viewpoint.
Seriously, grow the hell up.

Sigh.

Looks like an Ubisoft shill to me. Perhaps a sockpuppet?

It's down to 6th at the moment, but we won't really know how it did until the weekly steam charts are released next week. Assassin's Creed 2 is a "Triple A" title so it's a bit naive to think it wouldn't be somewhere on the list, but if it ends up outside of the top 3 I'm sure Ubisoft won't be pleased.
Looking at the releases and future releases, barring a sale on a popular older game the only title that should have a chance to beat AC2 is Bad Company 2. In my opinion anything less than 2nd place in the weekly steam chart would be a failure.

Would have a done a lot better if they hadn't canned the PC DLC due to their so-called business reasons. Really, when you have DLC that actually continues the story and then refuse to release that for a system, how can you expect sales to do well?

Ah well a lot of people were probably like me and bought it before any mention of DLC.
But come to think of it, it obviously didnt sell great enough to make them want to bother.

More like "none of your business" reasons