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Coming to terms with Ubisoft's Uplay System

I knew this day would come eventually. The day when I’d have to decide whether to play a game that has an Online Pass type system.

Allow me to explain.

Being an individual that avoid games that have Online Pass, Ubisoft games have been no exception to this rule. Uplay has had a very bad rep (and rightly so) when it was first used oddly enough on Assassin’s Creed II. Though it hasn’t been that much of a pain for console gamers that I know of, PC gamers have suffered the brunt end of this Uplay system. It core focus was to be a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications service for the games released by Ubisoft. Though some have come to focus Uplay in the more negative given how it originally required a constant-on internet connection for its games at the time. This service was in the news back in 2009 when consumer backlash forced Ubisoft to apply a patch in Assassin’s Creed II where if a player happened to lose their internet connection during play, the game would at least save where you lost your connection to allow same game location continues when an internet connection was re-established.

This whole debacle all came to a head when Ubisoft’s DRM servers were under denial of service attacks that rendered all Ubisoft games that required the Uplay constant-on internet connection virtually unplayable. Eventually Ubisoft rolled back the constant-on restrictions only to later implement them later on a couple of games. Though Ubisoft has said they no longer plan to have their Uplay enabled games require a constant-on connection anymore, they instead use one-time activation of the game when it gets installed.

Though some benefits have been toted with the Uplay system, it smacked too much of an Online Pass system for me to ever want to bother with a Ubisoft game release ever again. For the most part I’ve been able to avoid their games since then and haven’t had to worry about them in my gaming hobby.  That is until I heard that the next “Games with Gold” offering from Microsoft this month is to be Assassin’s Creed II.  This leaves me with my current dilemma:

 

Should I even bother getting this “free” game or continue to avoid it like the rest of the Ubisoft Uplay garbage that I always have.

As much as I’d like to make this an easy decision, it’s hard to pass up a “free” game offering. Especially when despite learning what I have from the negatives of the Uplay system, I am still in the dark on it exactly does it do in the specifics with this game. Does it require activation like the PC counterpart? Do I have to register it with Ubisoft besides with my Microsoft account? Are the bonus offerings like the points units worth the trouble of this gaming taking up space on my hard drive? Is this all mandatory or optional? Can I still gain access to the game’s DLC with our without Uplay activation?

I know this is a “free” game but I want to know exactly what I’m getting myself into. I want to know the devil in the details. This is the one downside to avoid games like these; you end up putting yourself in the dark with what exactly comes with the game. As much as I’d like to see what the Assassin’s Creed series is like, I don’t want to commit too much time on it if I have to jump thru so many hoops to be able to enjoy the game.

Any veteran Assassin’s Creed gamers willing to shed some light on this subject?

Ta-ta

“N”