Yes, we got Assassin’s Creed 2 before North America. Singapore had it since Thursday, 4 March 2010. I received an SMS (that’s “text message to you Westerners) from my regular game shop at 1pm saying that it was in Singapore. By 6pm I had a copy in my hands, and by 6.30 I was already home and installing it.
<RANT value=”copyprotect”>
The copy-protection on this however, is a little too extreme. It says it “requires” a constant Internet Connection for it to work. That’s lame, because what happens if you’re not on Broadband, but on dialup, and each minute you’re on dialup costs you money?! That is irrelevant in Singapore since everyone is already on Broadband, but it affects people in other locales.
Secondly, what happens if Ubisosft servers are experiencing heavy loads? We can’t connect to “authenticate” and thus we can’t play it? The North America launch is coming on 9th March, that is tomorrow. You can expect a sudden spike in users trying to authenticate to your servers, Ubisoft.
That’s exactly what happened to me the other day – Ubisoft Servers actually went down (see “Related Articles” below). The game just quit suddenly to desktop, and when I tried to relaunch, it was stuck at he Login screen of the launcher for about 5 mins. Then when the game started and I chose “Story Mode”, the game went to a screen saying “please wait, contacting server” and the only option available at that screen was “Exit To Windows”.
At least Bioware doesn’t force the requirement on the user. Dragon Age, for example, just says the achievements and scores won’t be updated on your web profile. Mass Effect 2 just tells you that you won’t get Cerberus goodies if you don’t have an internet connection. They do NOT stop you from playing their game!
And game companies wonder why people continue to get pirated copies.
</RANT>
