As long as they patch it out after a reasonable time as they have in the past I couldn't give a toss.

It appears that this is due to a new version of TAGES rather than anything Ubisoft is doing explicitly.

I say that not to let Ubi off the hook, but to point out that since it is a 3rd party DRM scheme, it will probably end up in games from other publishers as well.

Yeah Ubisoft you put this ass-fuck DRM on your games to prevent pirating? I was going to buy your games. And now what? Thanks to your customer-fucking DRM i am going to pirate your games! Hah!

Ubisoft clearly don't understand PC gamers at all... as if this wasn't already obvious from their love of always-on DRM, deliberately delayed PC versions and constant whining about how we're all pirates anyway.

This is by no means a technical limitation of hardware-based activation tracking; Microsoft's activation system for Windows and Office also remembers hardware to tell systems apart but doesn't rely on an exact match; you'll usually only be prompted if you change multiple components simultaneously. Activation limits do exist but are similarly flexible, based on frequency and disuse rather than a fixed total.

It's surprising that Ubisoft's marketing team didn't handle this themselves. It would be easy for them to hand out a few extra keys as a quick fix, but instead it was the developer themselves that resolved the situation. Apparently Ubisoft believes in the old saying "any publicity is good publicity".

Fortunately most publishers are moving towards account-based DRM implementations (Steamworks, Origin, etc.) that don't care about your hardware at all.

I know about the activation limit but I didn't know it was that anal. Sad, I have the game and love it alot. If only they get themselves out of Ubisoft.

What's funny, is after all the talk of Ubisoft's policies I actually gave them a shot with M&H Heroes VI. They toned down the DRM for that, but it was still somewhat present.

I doubt I'll ever buy another Ubisoft game with these policies.

Funny, I actually considered this one given the praise some others heaped on it over in the gaming deals thread.

I'd probably not blame TAGES, though, their software might allow for it but it's still the publishers that go down the enforcement policies lists that these tools give them and check the individual box to enforce each item (or not enforce it).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEBbu-wkKrs

Hedwards, that's right. It's insane that anyone has been sued successfully for "piracy", since the whole point is that they don't spend money on music!