Seeing as they haven't used StarForce for several years now, I doubt it's still in many.

I love how everyone in this thread is SO SURE that this drm will never work. NEVER! It is not possible and how stupid some people are for considering it!
Of course, pay no mind to the fact that DRM has worked before on games like Chaos Theory, Mass Effect and Riddick 2, even if for just a short time. Oh their files may have been on a torrent on day one, but that doesn't mean they had a working crack.
Nevermind that Ubisoft is emulating MMOs, which are not pirated with any serious numbers.
Nevermind that NONE of you know the extent of the DRM, it could have streaming content, download-as-you-go, exe serial association with tracking, who knows. Nevermind all that, you guys are on the case and it will be cracked in hours, because dammit, everything ever is.
I think all you DRM-free people just have been told and retell this story so many times you don't even stop to think about it. 'DRM never works and just hurts the consumer" and you say that over and over like a recordning, never stopping to think that hey, security technology does actually work a lot of the time in 2010, and this is a rather robust system that have worked on for a long time...
Nah, it will NEVER work. Internet avatar #8,506,302 told me so. And he's a computer expert!
Whatever, I am done here. All I can say is I HOPE it works. I hope I can go to a pirate forum on day one like I did with Mass Effect and watch as pirates flip the hell out because they can't get a working copy, then play my Assassin's Creed 2 and enjoy the hell out of it. That will be a good day.
And I hope the DRM sticks a while so that piracy can be lowered on PC and we see renewed interest in ports and exclusives. The end.

Oy.
You are right, CT, MEPC, and Riddick all had semi-effective DRM. MEPC is actually a perfect example of DRM doing what it was supposed to do (since it got out before everyone started claiming to boycott all games with activation-model DRM :p). But they all got cracked too. And a lot of people (on the militantly anti-DRM side) think that DRM is supposed to never get cracked.
And do you know why MMOs tend to not get pirated in any serious numbers (let's pretend that Ultima Online doesn't exist :p)? Because you need other people to play those. And patches/content come out every other week. SP games? Not so much.
As I have mentioned many times in this thread: This will get cracked, there is no doubt in my mind about that. I personally expect an MEPC-style affair, where AC2 never gets fully cracked, but every game after it does (because after a Release group releases their proof-of-concept crack, all of them stop caring). But time will tell.
And heads-up: I sincerely doubt that the game itself streams, since that would mean people are downloading well over 7 gigs (probably 14) per completion, and more if there is any backtracking.

Don't get me wrong, I hope they invent a solution to the majority of piracy thats somewhere between not letting people play games at all and throwing caution to the wind and hoping nothing will happen.
I'm just not a fan of the always on internet requirement, my inconsistent internet connectivity just yesterday would have screwed up my gaming all day had I been using this system.If they gave a firm and unchanging date on which this system would be patched out (after 6 months or a year would be acceptable), I'd be right behind it. It's protecting their investment and I get the guarantee that I can play AC2 in 30 years when I get the desire

I wish Ubisoft would be smart and release them on GoG only. That would've saved trouble,

I am not familiar with Chaos Theory or Riddick 2, but I wouldn't consider the copy protection on Mass Effect to have worked to any significant degree. It was fully cracked about 4-5 days after the North American release iirc, and as such it was available for piracy before it was released in Europe. The only reason that it took that "long" was because it was the first time that particular version of copy protection/DRM was used - Spore, which was released later and used the same protection, was cracked far faster. I would expect the same thing with this scheme, first release will take a few days after launch (assuming that you are required to download missing files during install, which is probable), later instances will go much faster.

You're looking at the wrong metric. DRM only "works" if its use ends up increasing sales to a great enough extent that it increases profits beyond the various costs associated with the DRM (licensing fees, server maintenance, tech support, etc). If it doesn't manage to increase sales to a great enough extent to cover all of this plus some then it doesn't matter if it prevents any and all piracy, it's still a net loss for the company. Personally I hope that this new DRM doesn't get cracked for quite a while, and at the same time is accompanied by piss poor sales. With any luck this will drive the point home to a lot of folks that stopping piracy is not the goal they should be looking at.

By that argument, the only DRMs that can possibly work is Steamworks, Impulse GOO and None...

I don't know about the other two, but MEPC had a crack available within 2 days. No, it wasn't a fully working crack, as you noted. However, that was remedied within another 4 days. So, what did we end up with? A game that was not cracked for a week. Hey, that's great - and as you hinted at, that's really what DRM is all about: delaying the pirates for as long as possible.
But many of us anti-DRM protesters aren't actually of the mind that DRM is supposed to keep the pirates at bay forever. We fully realize that it's meant to keep the release of the game piracy-free for as long as possible. What burns our toast is that these DRM schemes are getting more and more restrictive and slowly chipping away at the number of consumers that can play the games (this latest scheme by Ubisoft means a significant minority are not going to be able to play). As well, once the crack is out there and demonstrably works, the publisher doesn't patch the DRM out. The legitimate paying customer still has to deal, in many cases, with activations, limited activations, etc.
Mass Effect was restricted to 3 activations for quite some time before they finally upped that to 5. And they took a helluva lot longer to get a deactivation tool out for the game. But with a working crack out, why is the customer even saddled with the necessity of dealing with limited activations and revoke tools? They do nothing at this point to curb piracy.
This is the issue I have with DRM. If Ubisoft plans on patching out their DRM after a certain period of time, or after the game is cracked, that would be wonderful. And that's when I'd consider buying their game(s). Until then though, I'm not going to play anything they dish out with this scheme on it.

Now this I agree with.
I am only a fairly mild supporter of this DRM because I want it to work. The minute it does not work, as in stopping piracy, and still hassles me, as in server outages or somesuch thing, then I am over it like platform shoes and will throw a hissy fit.
The fact all those EA games still user SecuROM activation after being cracked for months or years infuriates me.
I am just saying don't give up the ghost. Let's see how long it takes, let's see how effective it is, before calling a complete waste of time.

Keep in mind they likely got the DRM cheaper by offering to put it on multiple games. Plus, I think one or two times it DID prove effective, just nowhere near as effective as MEPC.
As for removing the activation needs: We might be eager to get it removed, but a patch will be needed so that the game can still run (basically, the crack). People WILL complain if they are forced to patch (they already do), even if said patch does nothing but remove the DRM (let alone fix bugs).

I thought they developed this whole UPlay thing internally? I could be wrong. I know in the interview about the DRM with PC Gamer or whoever it was he talks about "the guy" who made it.
In any event, if they continue to use it in the future to stop what release period piracy they can that won't infuriate me, I just want a relatively quick patch to remove it after release if it has been cracked. SecuROM would not bother me at all if they patched it out within 6 months... how can I use 5 activations in 6 months? I can't.
But Mass Effect STILL has activation DRM after 2 years and a freaking sequel with no DRM what-so-ever has been released. That tells me they don't want to bother paying to patch it out, which makes me worry they will never get rid of it.

I was referring to EA's Securom thing. Although, expect to see the Ubisoft one for a long time for the sole fact that they DID develop it internally. So even if it is a 0Day crack, they put too much time and money into that for it to be a one-shot wonder.

For all those games, it was not the DRM (as in online activation part) that was effective, this part was removed day one, it was the triggers, and for triggers you don't need at all online activation or something as stupidely draconian as Ubi's DRM, any standard CD-check copy protection will do.
And triggers are nothing new, the olders ones of this forum might even remember that Amiga games already used them, heck some Amiga games Like Jurassic Park are even rumored to never have been fully cracked, not even today.

Maybe the future is online browser games that use some sort of special browser game like unite. Somelike like that Interstellar Marines game.