Apparently, Ubisoft is going to keep all the authentication servers for all their (new) games open, forever and ever and ever.
If, for some silly reason, they can't, they're going to patch the DRM out. For realsies.

Yeah, I have a hard time believing that myself, but... well. Benefit of the doubt, I suppose.

I can't give them the benefit of a doubt on it. They would have no motivation to patch a 10 year old game that uses this DRM if they shut down the server permanently. Or if they go bankrupt for some reason, or are even bought out by another company.

This kind of reminds me of my response when the Xbox Live Classic servers were taken down and everyone mourned Halo 2's imminent demise. There have been tons of games with online multiplayer that have been taken down, IE, Metal Gear Solid 2/3 online games, and people barely batted an eyelash.
Digital distribution is starting to make this a hard position to take considering any company is more than happy to re-sell you the same game you already bought. I mean, this is correct, public domain is getting to be nonexistent by the greedy and the companies who 'own' everything. It's just tough to state that I'm in the right by downloading Mario Brothers 3 instead of buying the remake for GBA/Virtual Console release.

EDIT: This is why Tycho is such an utter moron, really. He's always been entirely too friendly to the companies who manufacture games with digital rights protection on them, and frequently mocks the people who rebut him. It's like he doesn't understand that DRM is just another step in the direction of letting companies do whatever the fuck they want.

In the case of MGS3's online, it wasn't too popular anyway from what I gather, and had been around for a while before it was shut down. EA not long ago shut down servers for both old games that weren't played much anymore and games barely a year old, which is what got people worried. If EA started doing that, who's to say they won't make a habit of it?

Yeah, they probably won't patch it out. But really, even if you buy it, there's nothing stopping you from cracking it anyway to get rid of the DRM. Hell, that's what I'm gonna do.

Point taken, and EA is the central concern here, but I was only mentioning MGS because there are tons of games that have online multiplayer that, eventually, has to come offline.

History shall be written by the pirates, for better or worse.

Just as a mini-rebuttal, but there IS the example of Netstorm. It's a 12 year old game that the parent company has dropped server support for, but the fans have picked up and not been shut down over. Apparently, by doing some painless acrobatics, you can tap into their fan servers and continue to play as always. Or at least you can unless you have Vista, which for some reason didn't seem to want to cooperate. Phantom played it a bit on his XP machine, where I ended up rage-quitting and just messing around in single-player. Maybe someone a bit more savvy and willing to fight with it could use Vista to tap in, as well.

Point being, if other companies follow this example and let fans pick up where they left off, you can continue to provide quality content at no cost to the company and avoid pissing a ton of people off.

There is something to be said for going through the system to address a problem rather than circumventing the law. Whatever Tycho's opinion (and it seems fairly moderate, which really is fine, but I'll concede that I haven't really followed his thoughts on this much) the latest PA dialog on the issue seems to be more awknowledging the ridiculousness both sides display in this circular argument.

I'm not saying that buisnesses aren't bending us all over a table but that's a larger issue. Much like piracy is used as an excuse by companies to take advantage of consumers, stealing and attempting to defend it just sounds ridiculous and gives credibility to the company. It's circular, and it escalates because no one is addressing the issues through the proper channels.

The problem is that Tycho greatly strawmanned the argument made by pirates. Which would have been fine, given that making the pirates personified by a, literal, straw man in his comic could very easily be taken as a "This is the straw man that companies are arguing against, guffaw guffaw" but his comments on it make it clear that this is not how he means it.

In truth there is no circular logic involved.

Pirates: I have two choices. I can pay for a game, and receive a gimped/broken experience because the producers are treating me, the paying customer, as a criminal, OR I can actually BE a criminal and get the game I wanted. For free.

The choice seems obvious.

Companies: We need to stop pirates, therefore we need code on our games that makes pirating more difficult. This seems obvious.

One could make an argument that there is some on the side of the companies, but that would require us to assume that they realize that their DRM just causes more people to pirate the game in order to avoid the DRM.

As that I highly doubt they realize that (or they'd also realize that restrictive DRM is hurting sales, not helping them, and do away with it), I see no circular logic.

Now, the problem ITSELF of: Stiff DRM is created, which causes people to prefer pirating, which causes companies to create worse DRM which causes MORE people to prefer pirating, which causes companies to create WORSE DRM, etc. etc. IS circular.

However the circular effect here is akin to water going down a drain. It's a natural effect of the market forces and how companies have chosen to approach them.

The actual logic being used by either side is quite linear.