amen to that

About a week for a free roam-only version, a month for an emulated server version, a month and a half for a full crack... I'd say that compared with the usual time I hear it takes for a crack to get released (which seems to be minus one or two weeks) this DRM has lasted almost unbelievably long.
Someone from Ubi did state in an interview that they expected it to get cracked eventually, though. Wonder if their estimation was as low as one month, though. On the other hand, all the hype is gone now - I assume most games get pirated during the first few weeks when they're still fresh in peoples' minds.
Will be interesting to see if Ubi felt their experiment was a success. (Too early to call it anything else).

Not quite instant. They'll still have to complete the game to get the full content before they can crack it. But it should be a lot quicker all the same.

I guess we will see how good Skid-Row are when Splinter Cell is released.

Huh, the way the games are cracked sounds interesting. It seems to be much more involved that it was just a few years ago (just editing a few files to bypass disk checks or copy-protection). I have to admit, I am curious why completing the game would be a requirement though.
Is there any way you can enlighten me without telling me exactly how to crack a program (like keeping it more theory than practice)? I don't know if it is possible to talk about in that way without actually giving a "How To" for cracking (which shouldn't be posted, obviously), but I figured I would ask.

Ubisoft as an always online requirement with their 2010 PC games. This means that if the connection so much as stutters at either end then that's it, game over.
One of the reasons for this is the fact that the game is downloaded as you play. Meaning that when you install the game you're installing little more than a demo's worth of the actual game content. When the game was 'cracked' originally that was all that was on offer.
So I'd imagine that you'd actually be required to do every possible thing in the game in order for it to all be downloaded. But there's also the possibility that certain files you don't currently need will be deleted. Which further complicates things.

As far as I know, regarding AC2 at least, it's because not all of the game data is on the installation disc, but is sent to your machine from the Ubi server when the game needs it.
EDIT: Ninja'ed by Navagon.

They still need to crack The Settlers 7 to claim victory over that DRM.;)

Ahh, that makes sense, thanks for the quick reply. I played Assassin's Creed 2 on the PS3, so I didn't know they did it that way (they may do it on the PS3 version too, for all I know, but I don't pay attention to the HD space as readily on the console).
EDIT: Thanks to Wishbone too. Yeesh, you were both fast.

No. Just the PC version. Even the 360 version was left alone despite the massive piracy on that platform.

Shhh. Microsoft don't like people talking about 360 piracy. All piracy happens on the PC thats why it makes sense for developers to make their games for the 360 and not the PC.

This.
No way I'm paying more than $10 for ubi games. I won't finance this stupid thing.
Still one or two weeks before the mighty fall of SC:Conviction, on PC.

The only thing i will buy from Ubi is HoMM 6.