No DRM in retail Prince of Persia PC?

Retail versions of the new Prince of Persia for PC are reportedly shipping without any form of digital rights management (DRM). Like, on purpose.

Ubisoft community developer Chris Easton said as much in a forum post picked up by Shacknews. "A lot of people complain that DRM is what forces people to pirate games but as POP PC has no DRM we'll see how truthful people actually are," he wrote. "Not very, I imagine."

Easton went on to clarify that there's no DRM in retail versions of the game, but that this does not apply to digitally distributed copies.

Eurogamer hasn't been sent a PC version of POP yet, so we can't check this out for ourselves at the moment, but we've contacted Ubisoft for comment. The PC version went on sale in Europe last Friday, 12th December.

Given the recent debate about DRM in the likes of Spore, Grand Theft Auto IV and Ubisoft's own Assassin's Creed and Rainbow Six Vegas 2 - and the oft-stated claim, acknowledged by Easton, that DRM drives frustrated gamers to DRM-free piracy - it will be interesting to see how the move impacts piracy rates.

Check out our Prince of Persia review for more on the game in general.