With Ubisoft’s recent announcement that Rayman: Origin’s splendid arrival on PC will have the barest DRM for the download version (a single activation – a pointless waste of everyone’s time still, of course) and the retail version having none at all (although Ubi have yet to get back to me over whether it will work without the disc in the drive), it makes you wonder if the company is beginning to see the light. With other recent games having only required a single activation, there does seem to be a movement away from their moronic ‘always on’ system. A system that’s proving its idiocy next week, when Ubisoft take their servers down for an indefinite period, meaning any games using it will cease working.

As if a sampler for what would happen should Ubi ever go south, Eurogamer reports that HAWX 2, Might & Magic: Heroes 6, The Settlers 7, and any other Ubi games infected with the malware will simply not run on your PC. We’re not talking about the multiplayer, or downtime for an online game here. We mean, the single-player versions of the game played locally on your own PC.

Great, eh?! What a brilliant thing for everyone involved. Those with pirated version can carry on enjoying the games throughout, and those who paid money for them will receive an error message. Woo-hoo! Put it on a PowerPoint slide and present it to your shareholders as another victory!

This all happens on Tuesday 7th, when the servers are all moving house. But Ubi haven’t said how long it will take, and for how long non-pirated versions of their games won’t work.

However, for those missing out, you could spend the downtime repeatedly punching yourself in the groin, while throwing money out of the window.