The retail PC version of Ubisoft's Prince of Persia, released to stores this week, is entirely devoid of any DRM or copy-protection code according to Ubisoft community manager Chris "UbiRazz" Easton.
"A lot of people complain that DRM is what forces people to pirate games but as PoP PC has no DRM we'll see how truthful people actually are," said Easton in a post on the Ubisoft forums. "Not very, I imagine."
Easton later clarified that only the retail copies will be devoid of DRM: "I was purely talking about store-bought copies of PoP which have no copy protection."
Ubisoft faced two significant DRM-related backlashes this year. The PC port of Assassin's Creed was widely criticized for its DRM that apparently "phoned home," with some claiming that the copy-protection software was behind performance issues. In July, a patch that rendered the PC version of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 unusable saw Ubisoft releasing a no-CD crack, produced by a warez group, as an official fix.