Steam AC2 on Steam - does it have DRM?

As per the thread title, I'm thinking of picking up Assassin's Creed II in the Ubisoft week sale on Steam. I just need to know - does the Steam version come with Ubisoft's always-online DRM system or is it just the standard Steamworks fare?

 

Yes, I'm afraid it does have the DRM.
The only recent game that doesn't use that one at the moment is Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (uses an online activation but you can go offline after that).

 

Bah, might as well not bother then

 

I'm 90% sure that the always-on DRM was patched out a few months ago... might be wrong though

 

It's not that bad, I have the retail version of the game and I've never had a single issue with their new DRM as of yet.
If you enjoy Assassin's Creed and want to play it on the PC then I'd just say to ignore the DRM because if you're like most people you leave the Internet on all the time anyway. From my point of view it's no different to having to connect to EA's servers to play the BFBC2 single-player campaign.

Plus if you don't like the always online requirement, there are plenty of functional patches out there now to make it playable offline.

I thought they only applied that to Brotherhood, I might be mistaken though.

 

I held off on buying AC2 out of principle because of Ubisoft's DRM, but the DRM has been eased a lot since the original fiasco.

It's no longer always-on, and the game works offline during play; but I think it has an authentication when loading.
From TweakGuides.com:

 

It's not too bad. You won't notice unless the Ubi servers take a sh*t, and they've stabilized since release