A Hooked Gamers editorial published last week and making the blog rounds today makes the claim that Ubisoft's always-on DRM plan, which I've discussed here already, is actually pretty cool or something. Through a rambling escapade of analogies and references to electrical plugs on planes and the 360's common red-ring-of-death, in the end the final judgement is that Ubisoft's DRM is both progressive and "ahead of its time."

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R.U.S.E. is a upcoming RTS developed by Eugen Systems and published by Ubisoft. While a private beta has been under way for some time, Steam users were treated to a free open beta test earlier in March, continuing through until April 9th. Set in the time period of World War 2, R.U.S.E. takes the traditional RTS and gives it an interesting spin through the form of the eponymous "ruses," wildcards that allow a player to trick and deceive the enemy in a variety of ways.

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Confirming their dedication to previous announcements, Ubisoft has recently said that the PC version of Assassin's Creed 2 will utilize their latest attempt at DRM, necessitating an always-on internet connection for the duration of your game time. Rock Paper Shotgun says that this is "open contempt for paying customers" and, frankly, I agree with them.

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Ubisoft has stated with the release of upcoming title The Settlers 7, they will require online connectivity to activate and play their future games. Promising that the game won't have a set limit of activations (the direct quote from Brent Wilkinson, Director of Customer Service and Production Planning at Ubisoft, is, "If you own a hundred PCs, you can install your games on a hundred PCs.") and will allow gamers to sync their saved games onto the Ubisoft "cloud," letting them pick up from where they left off on any computer, the downside is that you will need constant connectivity to the internet to play your game.

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