Almost nobody bothered to play it on the PC either with a DRM system like that.
I myself and a number of people that I know and people in All Other Games on this forum are no longer buying Ubisoft games that have it for that reason.
Also while it took a few weeks or so for Assassin Creed II to be cracked I can confirm (via a friend who pirates the odd game, I don't approve of it) that the crack does indeed work.
Actually, cracked games often run better than the legitimate copies. For example, Civ V is Steam-free, which means that it's a rather tempting for those who avoided buying Civ V because of Steam... And that's when you know that you have failed, when real fans steal the game just to get rid of Steam.
The DRM and Steam is still usually in the pirated copy, the crack just circumvents it. People pirating it to avoid Steam are not helping anything, all that will encourage would be for Publishers to insist upon extra DRM (not that any of it works).
The only real drawback is that multiplayer almost always suffers (which shouldn't be a problem in a single-player game like Civ). Also, patching could be a hell, but on the other hand, if a game is as buggy as Civ V, you might as well wait a few months anyway.
Not having patches is definitely a huge drawback, but then again they didn't pay for it so they have no right to get support anyways.
The thing is, earlier I had a lot of friends who downloaded games, but they all had one thing in common: If they really enjoyed the game, the went out the very next day and bought it. Because most of us, even pirates, are honest people who like to pay for things they enjoy. The problem today is that the pirates get a superior product. For Civ 5, they don't need Steam. For Settlers, they don't need to be online all the time.
People primarily pirate a game because its free, a number of people do buy a game if they liked it enough but there is no data to show this is in any way a majority (sadly). As for superior product, that can depend entirely upon your point of view, as there are many people who have no problem with Steam. As well not having multiplayer or patches is a mark against it (this applies for more than just Civ5).
The conclusion is that DRM actually may increase piracy.
Sometimes, such as in Spore's case, but generally there isn't anything to really say that happens a lot.
Steam is not going to help against piracy at all. If they chose steam for that purpose, it will fail. There is already a simulated steam engine coded by different reverse engineer groups and absolutely all versions of civ5 is reversed already, ready to be played on.
They just don't get it, it doesnt matter what you do, they cant keep it from being reversed. Take a look at the "brilliant" new security system of ubisoft and silent hunter 5, it was reversed in just a week and it all broke down in no time. Reversers are extremely smart, smarter than the general developer. Developers are not trained to think reverse engineering, thats why the reversers will always be several steps ahead of them, always.
That is why nobody expects the DRM to last forever, they just want it to protect the game for the first month. Any longer is a bonus.
Of course, this doesn't work almost every time.
