Driver: San Francisco will be the testing ground for Ubisoft’s newly announced ‘Uplay passport’.
The passport will essentially be the same as EA’s ‘project $10’, the method by which games companies are now trying to reduce second-hand sales and punish the less well off members of society.
Driver: San Francisco (and, by most indictaions, any future Ubisoft titles with multiplayer) will come with a unique code inside every box. This code will provide access to multiplayer features through Ubisoft’s third-party ‘Uplay’ software. It won’t add anything extra to the retail price, but if you buy a game second hand the code will already have been used, locking you out of multiplayer.
Unless, that is, you spend $10 USD to purchase a new ‘passport’.
Sticking with the passport analogy for a second, it’s kind of like having to bribe a customs official every time you want to travel abroad on a discount ticket (because how dare you try to save money).
Still, it’s probably better than Ubi’s old PC DRM that broke the games it was supposed to protect.