Ubisoft DRM Breaks Might & Magic X: Legacy Single-Player, DLC

On June 1 Ubisoft shut down online services for several popular games. One of those games was 2014’s Might & Magic X: Legacy, an old-school first-person hack-n-slash dungeon crawler with no online multiplayer components whatsoever. It did, however, require a one-time verification through Ubisoft’s Uplay system to activate the game. Without it, players can’t get past the game’s first act. Thankfully there’s a partial workaround for this entirely unnecessary snafu.

Might & Magic X: Legacy is a game that anyone with a Steam account or access to the Ubisoft shop can purchase and download right now for around $US25 ($32). As Redditor and outstanding name-haver SensualTyrannosaurus points out, it’s not exactly the best time to buy. Since Ubisoft shut down the game’s network services, players have been unable to get past the game’s first chapter without manually editing their game files, while the game’s downloadable content remains completely inaccessible.

In a post on the Steam forums, user ljmiii helpfully details how to remove four lines from the game’s “LevDialog.xml” file, effectively bypassing the initial ownership check that occurs at the end of Might & Magic X: Legacy’s first chapter. Again, while this workaround does give owners access to the rest of the game’s normal content, it does nothing to enable “The Falcon & The Unicorn” downloadable content.

Kotaku’s reached out to Ubisoft regarding the issue, and will update this post should it respond. Reddit OP SensualTyrannosaurus says they have spoken to Ubisoft support, and that they are aware of the situation.

This is another unfortunate example of the problems with requiring an online component for an otherwise completely offline game. This is not a massive, invasive digital rights management check. It’s just a quick-and-simple check-in with Ubisoft’s servers that’s now causing a headache for legitimate game owners. This isn’t something we should have to deal with. Hopefully, Ubisoft can issue a quick fix — and make the DLC available again — and Might & Magic X: Legacy fans can get back to their worry-free dungeon crawling.