real.geizterfahr: If it was for copy protection, the Ubilauncher would hardly refinance itself. There is no chance that those few pirates who really are willing to buy a game, will cover the costs for running those servers over years. Particularly with regard to all those customers (missing dollars, pounds, euros, bottlecaps...) that stopped buying Ubisoft titles because of this overdone DRM.
Sadly enough this is true.
While there might be a gain in thwarting piracy, at least temporarily, there is an even greater gain in killing the second-hand market.
When it comes to keeping vital game code server-side I believe that would be a ... touchy legal area to say the least. As I recall there are commerce laws in place that are meant to hinder just that sort of thing, as it essentially means you do not get the full product at the full price you're paying for it. Even if you put that aside, it's a very clear underhanded tactic by Ubisoft which has to rattle some chains somewhere.
Or rather, would have rattled some chains if it were any other medium than video games. Because it's video games, nobody gives a fuck about the consumer. Were it movies, music, or fucking oranges they'd never get away with it, at least not in the EU and Scandinavia.
