Ubisoft's new DRM scheme requires you to be online whenever you're playing its games

In other, non-Apple news: Ubisoft has lost its mind. Its latest DRM scheme—the first game to use it will be The Settlers 7, curently scheduled for a Marchrelease—will require that you always be online in order to play its games. That’s not a good idea for many reasons.

For example, look at poor ol’ Devin. He’s been fighting Comcast for God knows how long. Needless to say, he’d be SOL if he ever wanted to play the PC version of a Ubisoft game ever again.

And what if you’re trying to play a game on a train, or an airplane? You’re not always going to have a reliable Internet connection there, certainly.

Or what if you’re on a forced family vacation in the middle of a log cabin in the woodlands of upstate New York? No Internet there.

The point is, there’s plenty of scenarios that you can think of where having a reliable Internet connection just isn’t possible. And these are everyday scenarios, not over-the-top, end-of-the-world malarkey.

Ubisoft wants to implement the DRM regime in order to cut down on piracy while giving you the illusion of added value. Think Ubiaoft Achievement Points and the like. With this always-online activation, there’s no such thing as a limited number of installations and not having the disc in the drive.

I seriously don’t understand why publisher just can’t have a single CD check (aka “please insert serial number”) at installation and be done with it. All this crazy nonsense isn’t cutting down on piracy, obviously, but legitimate customers—they do exist!—do not want to have to deal with all this garbage.

Sigh.