if everyone buys it then it's first week sales will look great, which will be good headlines for ubisoft. Any later message will be drowned out by that.
Best option. Don't buy it. Tell your friends not to buy it and why. Wait and see what happens.

Especially since it will give the retail sector yet another excuse to continue phasing out PC games.

Look at all the now nearly three years old games that "feature" online activation, now looks at how many of them had their online activation removed.......afaik none, heck even wonderfull Halo 2 PC still had it's online activation, so I wouldn't count on it anytime soon.
Ok, there I really were I fail to see any logic, how is having a one time online activation (as long as you don't change your hardware) worse than having to be online 100% of the time ?
You can play Impulse games without having to even have Impulse installed, apart from maybe Halo 2 I don't know of any game that use GFWL for single player online activation, and for Steam, as much as I don't like Steam for various reasons at least it has an (often flawed but still) offline mode.

Come on people! Less chat more action.
DarthCobley: then help make it work! If those retailers are doing pre-order and they are not advertising the DRM, then leave a comment on the page, telling the author about those sites. We can do the same to them. If you do it (it will probably only cost you like 90p), then that's one more!
I don't want to be stuck playing DRM free games from the past. I don't want to be playing modern DRM encumbered games. I want modern games to be DRM free.
Letters from a few people, even lots of people, aren't going to do shit if they are still making profit from their game. If sales are actually lost and it's recorded then they *might* do something.
We are not appealing to nice people, or developers who might see reason. We are appealing to the people who have the final word; they are money hungry corporations, their owners & shareholders. The *only* language they speak is money.
The people getting involved with this can still buy the game if they want. Just the copy they buy as part of this plan has to go back.
-Kom

But the same subset of gamers collectively are pretty good when it comes to buying a game, intentionally not playing it, and then returning said game to the store?

I guess we will find out!

It's actually not a bad idea. Note that the guy says keep the game sealed, which means you can get a refund even on a PC game. If you simply just don't buy the game it does nothing as Ubisoft will just claim that the PC market is dying blah blah piracy blah blah.

But buying the game then returning it won't do anything as far as Ubisoft are concerned either. If anything, they'll just ignore the fact that units were returned while still counting initial sales. So really, all it will do is inconvenience an "innocent" third party.

Tried to head this off. Was about as successful as I expected.
This is a REALLY bad idea:
First, this requires even more willpower than a boycott. It is one thing to expect someone to not buy something, it is another to expect them to buy it and return it. I have a sneaking suspicion that, if anything, Tesco would have record sales on AC2 :p. And even if the returns occurred, Ubi still has very good first-week sales reports.
Second, it will hurt the retailer more than Ubi. Yes, Ubi may or may not lose some cash on this (depends on how the retail process works at that level) and yes, the store will be made aware. But think about it this way: PC gaming is already “dying”. If you get mass returns, are you going to refuse to stock games with DRM, or just refuse to stock PC games period?
And also, most retailers just put the same blurb that they get in the press release on the website. So if they aren’t focused on PC gaming (and they aren’t…), they might not even follow all the DRM fiascos and the like. This is a pretty big one to miss, but still.
Third, the way this is organized is as an attack against Ubi (and poor Tesco). Not a boycott/protest. You know how protesters tend to get their point across if they are semi-orderly and organized, as opposed to raving lunatics with 2×4s? Same thing here. We do NOT want to become the enemy. Because, if PC gamers aren’t “the enemy” before, they will be after something like this.
So please, for the love of all that is holy, tell everyone you know to NOT do this. It is a great knee-jerk reaction, and it feels like it might be our “only option”, but this will either blow up in our faces, or cause more harm in the long run. If you are going to boycott the game, boycott it. If you want your voice to be heard, contact Ubi. But do NOT attack them. This is even worse than “Der, I’ll just pirate it”

This thing is this thread has shown just how helpless we are as PC gamers. There is literally nothing we can do to voice our concerns against Ubisoft which will result in any changes.
>If you write a letter of complaint then Ubisoft will bin it, this is a simple and sad fact. They do not care to listen. Even if 20,000 letters of complaint are received they will all get the same treatment.
>If you don't buy the game then Ubisoft will claim that the low sales are due to piracy. It won't be true but the boycott will be ignored. The only thing this will prove is that Ubisoft need more restrictive DRM which suits them.
>If you do as this protest suggests then yes the only real victim is th retailer. However retailers like Game, Tesco and EB have far more clout with Ubisoft than we as customers have. If they purchase 50000 copies of AC2 and half are returned then they wont be buying the same amount from Ubisoft again, which does hurt Ubisoft. However of course Ubisoft will again use the lower amount of orders on future titles as 'evidence' the PC market is dying.
Basically we as PC games buyers are fucked.

They all did... check all the DRM threads on their respective forum.
Stalker SoC never had online activation, heck the US version didn't even had any copy protection.
Anno 1401 still has the online activation even after the last patch.
X1,2,3 never had online activation, the copy propection was removed by a patch though.
The original Farcry 2 still has it's online activation, maybe not the Fortune edition doesn't but I don't know anybody owning it.
You make it sound like this "magical" promise was anything new, it's not, we keep hearing than since the very first game using online activation. You also have the same vague promise from Steam, Stardock and any other digital distributor, what makes Ubisoft any more "trustworthy" than any of them ?

As long as ppl buy it, they will use it.
The only way to stop DRM is to stop buying games with DRM. Ubisoft is just the beginning of this type of DRM, if they succeed in implementing this, others will follow with the same or worse.
In a few years, you will only be able to buy a game interface with game-play only online for a subscription fee.

Pretty much just like any other consumer. Unless you can somehow garner support from the mass media, companies will not listen. And even if you do garner mass media support, they'll probably just spin you some BS line and change nothing.

So, this plan is to BUY the game, supporting the company, rather than writing to Ubisoft to protest the decision, or just simply not buying the game.
Then again, the last two PC game boycotts have been an utter joke, so this one will likely wind up as too. I knew this was going to come after what happened with the first AC game on PC.