Having heard the angry cries of PC gamers around the world, Ubisoft has changed the DRM in the upcoming Driver: San Francisco from “always on” to “always on.”
Ubisoft revealed in July that it would be bringing its always-on DRM to the PC version of Driver: San Francisco, a decision that went over about as well as you’d expect. It wasn’t exactly a tsunami of rage because, to be frank, I don’t think there are all that many PC gamers who care about the new Driver game in the first place, but among those who do, or those who simply object to onerous DRM as a matter of principle, the news was irritating and frustrating.
But Ubisoft is nothing if not sensitive to the needs of its loyal customers and so, in response to the “extremely negative reaction” from the fans, it revealed to Rock, Paper, Shotgun today that it has changed its mind about the DRM situation.
“We’ve heard your feedback regarding the permanent internet connection requirement for Driver and have made the decision to no longer include it,” the company said. “So this means that Driver PC gamers will only need to sign in at game launch but can subsequently choose to play the game offline.”
So to clarify, you’ll still need to be connected each and every time you want to start the game, but you won’t be punished if your internet connection happens to drop while you’re playing. It’s an improvement, I suppose, but only of the most minimal sort; you still can’t play while you’re away from the net and if your connection happens to drop while you’re playing, you better be sure you don’t quit the game until everything’s fixed up. Call me hard to please if you will, but I don’t think I’m going to throw Ubisoft a big “thank you” party for this.
Driver: San Francisco comes out for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii on September 6, while the PC version hits on September 27.
