The PC version of Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed II has digital rights management, like most PC games these days. As you may have heard, this DRM scheme requires an internet connection at all times in order to play the game. If the connection is dropped, the game quits. Harsh.

Ubisoft has released a patch for the game, bumping the version to 1.01, that changes how the game quits. It used to quit, leaving you to pick up at the last checkpoint you reached. Now, Ubisoft has taken pity on those that have legally bought the game, and patched it so it'll save your progress before quitting.

Now, TorrentFreak is reporting that the game, which has only been out for two days in Europe and one day in Australia (it releases here in the US on March 10th) was cracked within hours of the game being on the market along with Silent Hunter 5, another game that uses the same DRM.

Hopefully Ubisoft will get it through their heads that DRM just doesn't work. The more restrictive it gets, the more it's going to get pirated. I personally like how Steam's DRM system works. I don't know it's there, I just know that my games work how they should.

[Source]