http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/05/ubisoft-scrapping-always-on-drm-for-pc-games

The DRM-free movement shall prevail!

So, Assassin's Creed II coming here? They will have to patch the drm out first of course, but a man can dream, right?

Have they removed it from Settlers 7?
Last I heard it was still in the always online mode.

Not DRM free, but with "a single online activation after installing, with no activation limits, nor limits on how many PCs it may be activated." - back to license keys. It is a lot better. However Ubi have done so many uturns with DRM so it may all change again tomorrow.

It's speaks volumes about the actual "restrictiveness" of always online DRM that a company can quietly shut it down and nobody notices it for month ...

And it still has a single online activation. Which pretty much renders the whole change moot. Either a PC has internet or it hasn't. It's not like anybody is still paying per minute ...

That's not quite new information.

Note, however, that due to another in the glorious string of Ubi fuckups, their games that used always-on DRM still have it on Steam. Non-Steam copies indeed use a one time activation only.

(I haven't tested it since the last UPlay update, though. The release notes they publish are pretty useless.)

Never have I seen such contempt for the paying customer.

Good direction. Hope we'll see some more Ubi games here DRM-free.

And I really don't want to burst any bubbles here, but they aren't moving away from always online DRM. They are giving it a new spin. Nowadays you need to be always online to have access to all features. You can play offline, but it feels like your only getting 95% of the game. Even in SP. The usual spin doctoring. Just as multiplayer keys for GOG games aren't DRM but "necessary for proper multiplayer".

I really don't mind in either cases, the added features in games like Anno work great and I'm always online anyway. Literally.

Well at my place, if our power is out, as it was yesterday, we don't have no interwebs. But I had a fully powered lappy that permitted me to play Heroes of Might and Magic III for many hours!!! Wouldn't have been possible with always on DRM.

Good move by ubisoft in my view.

Shouldn't that be "necessary for multiplayer with the engine that game uses", since quite a few games don't mind people using the same cd-key?
Nitpicking, but if you can't nitpick with a lawyer, who can you nitpick with?

Nihil novi... Ubisoft abandoned the "always online requirement" shortly after the release of HAWX 2. RPS (and John Walker in particular) would have noticed that a long time ago if they weren't so busy kissing Gaben's feet.

Makes them comparable to Steam. No need to differentiate between them anymore.

Quite a few games have 1 key - 1 profile - 1 user though, and you really only get one key from GOG, even if you ask.

Correct me if I'm wrong.
Most games come with a generic key (or without one) and either don't care about it for the single player or they use a modified executable. For the multiplayer part, some games identify the game session through the cd-key used, thus the key needs to be unique, other games identify the game session through other means (UT for example). In the second case, a unique cd-key isn't needed to play (I know of that because we did have 16man matches of UT back in 2k with a single installation). There are also a few more games that require an account to log in and play, with said account needing to have a unique cd-key again, though that should be patchable (didn't NWN have that thing as well? Some servers require it, some don't).
So, what does the 1 key - 1 profile - 1 user have to do with the engine limitation I mentioned above?