What's the DRM Model Ubisoft is Using for Assassins Creed III on the PC?

I'm trying to see if the rumors about Ubisoft coming to their senses about super-intrusive DRM apply to their AAA titles. So far Google has two completely conflicting articles about DRM for Assassins Creed III dated back in September.

Now that the game is out on PC, I was wondering if anyone knew if they had actually moved back to a sane model.

Solution 1:

It uses Uplay (yes, even on the Steam version), which needs to be kept running in the background.

I did some testing:

• Offline mode is available. You need to have logged in to Uplay on the computer you're using at least once before.

• You won't get kicked out if the game if you get disconnected from the internet.

Solution 2:

Yes, I have completely disconnected internet from my PC in playing using a dvd/uplay combination. You have to use uPlay at least once, but from observation it appears not to really respect the "offline mode" or cloud sync (there's messages inside the game and uPlay pop ups which indicate it's still running?).

Mainly did this to stop blue screens, which were happening between 5-30min intervals (and losing saves along the way). Played a solid 4 hours on higher quality settings than initially tested during blue screens, but disconnected seemed to do the trick for me.

So no "always on" DRM it seems - might at least be the opposite for me :)