Anno 2070 (PC) - worth $25?

It’s on sale from Gamefly this weekend for $24.99. Opinions?

I’ve heard nothing but amazing things. Great game if you can run it.

In fact, I’m going to buy this as soon as I figure out how Gamefly works, specifically, how do I reinstall it if I nuke my PC and if it is available in Canada.

So apparently you don’t want to buy this game if you nuke your PC and change hardware with any kind of frequency 'cause of its hilarious three-install limit DRM. I’m sure that within six months I’ll switch out at least two pieces of hardware.

Wait, I thought the DRM was a max of 3 PC’s at any one time.

I believe you can revoke/reset your machine count and can play as long as no more than 3 machines in total are running the game.

Then again I could be thinking of another Ubi game.

Some games with this system of DRM allow you to use a tool to revoke one of your activations or automatically deactivate one when you uninstall the game. From what I can tell Anno 2070 does neither of these things. Once you activate it on a machine it is permanently registered* and the only way to get more activations is to ring their technical support lines. Originally, changing any hardware forced you to reactivate the game. They changed it so graphics cards don’t count.

So more than two hardware changes (other than graphics cards) and you’ll need to contact technical support in order to continue playing the game.

10 seconds on Google will tell you how completely ineffective this incredibly annoying DRM is.

It’s the one thing preventing me from buying it. A shame, because it looks and sounds like a fun game.

The last Anno game just charmed my socks off, despite being at its’ heart rather unambitious. This one just failed to swing for me, at least the free demo. Does it get better?

That sort of DRM scheme is awful. I’d punish them by still buying it but at a lower price. Give it another couple of months and buy it at $7.50. That way if you fall victim to the DRM, it’s not as big a loss.

But… a lot of these sorts of games release license revocation tools eventually as too many people call them to bitch about the stupid system.

It’s especially stupid when they don’t strip the DRM off of steam games, since steam does an adequate job of DRM already.