tb87670: My opinion: Ubisoft sucks and lost my business. That is so absurd only a f#$king moron would implement that system. Pausing your game because of lack of internet? That's way too much. No more business from me.

melchiz: Wow, this new Ubisoft DRM combines all of the worst qualities of Steamworks into one crappy package. Yes, you get unlimited installs and whatnot, but no offline mode for single player games? What? If you're going to copy Valve, at least do a little research. Offline mode might not get much use, but it saves Steam from significant opposition.
It seems that Valve is stepping on toes, because other players in the industry are reacting rather harshly to it. Competing digital distribution stores now refuse to sell new Steamworks titles, Randy Pitchford goes on a rant about how Valve is dangerous, and Ubisoft refuses Steamworks for their own, internally-produced clone.
EDIT:
Also, you have to be online at all times with this new Ubisoft cloud DRM. According to the FAQ, if you lose your connection, the game will pause and wait to reconnect. That is absurd. Steamworks may be tolerable but Ubisoft has absolutely no respect for paying customers. No more Ubisoft for me until they drop this crap.

Gundato: I don't think it is so much that Valve is "stepping on toes" but that people want to compete.
It is just like Gearbox claimed a while back: People think there is a conflict of interests. And even though there probably isn't, it is still REALLY good advertising for Valve.
Let's think about this from the perspective of Ubi:
We just released Splinter Cell 9. It is on three different services AND retail. We realized that a weird glitch in the code led to Sam Fisher sporting an erection at all times. That is just not acceptable and needs to be patched. So we make the patch and release it for retail. Then we have to send it to the three digital distributors. It is no longer in our hands, and we are at the mercy of bad press while we wait for Steam to put it on the servers (same with Impulse and, I dunno, D2D or something).
Now let's imagine that the gamers get their wish, and Steam starts to do quality control. That is an even longer wait.
And either way, having an account for a service makes you more likely to buy stuff. GoG doesn't give us free game to make us happy. They give free games to make people sign up to GoG to get the free game. Then, when they see a sale, they are more likely to buy the game here than elsewhere. I know that I will probably never use D2D, since I already have a Steam and an Impulse account.
As for competitors: Why should they waste their bandwidth and servers to let people download games when they are going to need to use Steam anyway? That just means that people will buy the game dirt cheap from them, then use Steam (and forget they had a D2D account in the first place). It has already happened a few times. Hell, I think people did that with D2D and games like Red Faction that use GOO (Impulse).

melchiz: I understand Ubi's intentions, but I feel that the execution is poor.

melchiz: Speaking of experiments, I was troubled by Modern Warfare 2's combined $60 MSRP and use of Steamworks. I've read that AC2 will debut on the PC at a $60 MSRP, but Amazon has it listed at $50. The new no-offline-allowed DRM, combined with a $60 MSRP, would be terribly offensive. You can't release a game 6 months late, stack on nasty DRM, and sell it for the same price as the console versions. There are no licensing fees on the PC, so the $10 increase is not justified.

melchiz: Speaking of experiments, I was troubled by Modern Warfare 2's combined $60 MSRP and use of Steamworks. I've read that AC2 will debut on the PC at a $60 MSRP, but Amazon has it listed at $50. The new no-offline-allowed DRM, combined with a $60 MSRP, would be terribly offensive. You can't release a game 6 months late, stack on nasty DRM, and sell it for the same price as the console versions. There are no licensing fees on the PC, so the $10 increase is not justified.

Red_Avatar: It's funny really. For $60 you had:
- a single player game that was even shorter than the first Modern Warfare and heavily scripted and as a result, has little replay value
- multi player game which ties into Steam *cue sound of evil laugh coming from nowhere* Gabe, is that you? Anyway, it ties into Steam, uses VAC and ... was completely ruined by hackers within a week, has tons of lag issues, unbalanced maps, far too small teams, etc. etc. etc.
And all this for JUST $10 more than any other game *facepalm*.

michaelleung: Well, MW2 was a good game. The replay value on singleplayer is low, but Special Ops is great.

Red_Avatar: It's funny really. For $60 you had:
- a single player game that was even shorter than the first Modern Warfare and heavily scripted and as a result, has little replay value
- multi player game which ties into Steam *cue sound of evil laugh coming from nowhere* Gabe, is that you? Anyway, it ties into Steam, uses VAC and ... was completely ruined by hackers within a week, has tons of lag issues, unbalanced maps, far too small teams, etc. etc. etc.
And all this for JUST $10 more than any other game *facepalm*.

melchiz: Speaking of experiments, I was troubled by Modern Warfare 2's combined $60 MSRP and use of Steamworks. I've read that AC2 will debut on the PC at a $60 MSRP, but Amazon has it listed at $50. The new no-offline-allowed DRM, combined with a $60 MSRP, would be terribly offensive. You can't release a game 6 months late, stack on nasty DRM, and sell it for the same price as the console versions. There are no licensing fees on the PC, so the $10 increase is not justified.