Starting next week, a number of Ubisoft's legitimate PC customers will be unable to play their games because of problems with the titles' digital rights management (DRM) antipiracy schemes.

A handful of Ubisoft games won't be playable while the transition takes place.

The publisher has announced that it is "transitioning the hosting of many of its online services from a third-party data center to a new facility" starting on February 7, and as a result, most of its games will lose online functionality. However, because some of Ubisoft's PC and Mac games feature DRM that require a constant online connection to the publisher's servers, those games will be completely unplayable when the publisher takes those servers down for the transition. Ubisoft's uPlay service will also be down during the transition.

Ubisoft apologized for the downtime, saying, "This move ultimately will help us improve the maintenance of our infrastructure and deliver better uptime and greatly improved services for our customers."

Not all of the publisher's games will be impacted. It is keeping servers running for newer releases like Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Driver: San Francisco, and Just Dance 3. Full lists of the games that won't be impacted and the ones that will be rendered completely unplayable follow below.

Games that will be unplayable during transition

Assassin's Creed--Mac

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. 2--PC

Might & Magic: Heroes VI--PC

Splinter Cell Conviction--Mac

The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom--PC

The Settlers--Mac

Games that will have online functionality throughout transition

Anno 2070

Assassin's Creed: Revelations

Driver: San Francisco

Just Dance 3

The Settlers Online