Precisely. I've just got Watch_Dogs through. It was actually a fairly solid game, nothing boundary-breaking, but an awesome story and decent gunplay. However, Ubisoft had to go and fucking ruin it - and I do mean ruin it - by incorporating multiplayer into the actual single-player gameplay, making it impossible to finish it 100% if you don't face off against some of these assholes online.

My guess - this is just Ubisoft riding on the wave of anti-DRM sentiment right now while skirting any responsibility to do anything about it. They want the sympathy and good will that CDPR/GOG has garnered, but they want to do fuck all to earn it.
Ditto what I said about Watch_Dogs above. You can't reach 100% completion without the online mode, which I suspect is a strategy Ubisoft (and EA) is going to continue pursuing now.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag had their management for other ships locked behind multiplayer I think. No doubt the upcoming AC will have something similar.

This is like EA saying "project 10 dollar failed because punishing people for buying used games by witholding content isn't the way to fight the second hand game market. From now on, we're going to start enticing people to buy our games new with exclusive content they can't get anywhere else."

I would have probably grabbed Watch Dogs if not the Uplay and the MinglePlayer stuff...

What I find rich is that the article actually starts off with mentioning CD Projekt RED. CD Projekt RED and Ubisoft are worlds apart.

Does it mean that more Ubisoft games will appear on GOG? There are a few here, but mostly older titles.
I suspect it was GOG rather than CDPR that infused more common sense into Ubisoft. After all GOG is selling some of their games for a while already.

Ubisoft can talk the talk but can they walk the walk?

GOG doesn't do DRM and what Ubisoft is proposing here is more DRM so that's (hopefully) unlikely.

This drives me right up the wall. Honestly, is there anyone on the planet that has the capability of buying or playing a DVD/Blu-ray that doesn't know it's illegal to pirate the content? FFS, why do they have to make those stupid F***ING sections unskippable? I'm an honest guy and I pay for my entertainment, but this actually almost makes me want to pirate. Really effective strategy on their part... *eyeroll*

In the best case may be they will make those features optional. If they'll make them mandatory, then for sure it's just dumb.

LOl, Ubisoft is not talking about removing DRM from games, they simply agreeing that DRM is NOT work, so, they think they should transform games in online services and SaaS thing.
In other words, its getting just worse. Its like Steam where you dont even download anything, its games completely existing in "another dimension" and you dont have even signs of some rights to them.

This douchebag is just trying to justify mandatory ONLINE DRM "services" with some doublespeak. Hey! Look, we're not in favour of DRM, that's why we must implement more mandatory account-based DRM in order to incentivize you to use our DRM platform, and those who don't use these "services" will get a crippled experience and not get full value for what you paid for. Don't critique my logic, just listen. You want the full experience for what you paid for, you come on board with our mandatory online datamining spyware account-based DRM. That'll teach those PC playing bastards! Oops I mean... just log-in to our servers before each play session and stop asking questions.

Also, at some point in the future the companies will shut down the online servers and parts (if not the whole) of the games will become unplayable.

They believe that its only for good. Once you game stop working you should not complain, you should go and purchase new one. r else they can ask you to give them more money to support servers.
Its just like in medieval - criminal had to pay for rope and executor services. Now we have to pay for our chains.