14 DAY TRIAL // Ubisoft has announced that R.U.S.E. will not be released with the infamous digital rights management software that has been plaguing other PC games until now. Instead, the real time strategy game will be using Steamworks, a much friendlier solution.
The French publisher has decided to replace its own copy protection with Valve's Steamworks tools because of the complex multiplayer component of R.U.S.E.
A post on the Steam forums revealed this decision. “Please note that when R.U.S.E. is released in September, it will benefit from Valve’s Steamworks API to offer the best community experience to players.
“Consequently, a Steam account and Internet connection will be required to activate the game, as per Steam policy. For this reason, R.U.S.E. will not use the Ubisoft protection. Single player can be played offline,” read the post to the joy of the fans.
Ubisoft's digital rights management software involves a constant connection to the Internet, during which the game exchanges information with a remote server to constantly check that it is a legit copy.
While the solution seemed to be working for a time, the protection was beaten in all of Ubisoft's PC games it came along with. However, it has achieved to attract a lot of criticism from the fans and press alike, really damaging the publisher's reputation.
While Steamworks is also not known to keep crackers away, it gives a lot of advantages to legal users, with Achievements and cloud saves. It allows playing through the single players offline.
Unfortunately for PC gamers who are also Ubisoft fans, it seems the company intends to make R.U.S.E. the exception and not the rule.
Speaking to VG247, Ubisoft's Stefano Petrullo said that, “We will continue to use Ubisoft protection system on most of our PC Games.”
Splinter Cell: Conviction, Assassin's Creed II, Silent Hunter V and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands have been released with the always-online DRM solution on-board until today.
R.U.S.E. will be launched on the 17th of September on the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360 and the PC.