The oppressive Ubisoft PC game DRM has been lifted! Well, mostly. The DRM copyright protection is still there, but it isn’t as annoying and restrictive as usual. Previously, games like Assassins Creed II and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction required players to maintain a constant internet connection if they wanted to actually play, because the DRM would be continually checking to make sure you didn’t abruptly decide to play an illegal version of the game you already showed you owned. Not anymore. But Ubisoft has patched both games to remove that requirement…

With the rising success of Ubisoft’s Assassins Creed and Assassins Creed’s 2 (which comes out November 17, 2009 for Xbox 360 and PS3), Spike TV will be premiering in high-definition ,Assassins Creed: Lineage, a live-action and CGI short movie based on the video games.

Lineage takes place just before the events in AC2. It revolves around Giovanni Auditore da Firenze, the father of main character in the second game, Ezio, and provides a little insight on the back story of first game and the premise of the next.

The film was developed by Ubisoft’s Hybride Technologies, the visual effects company that worked on movies including 300 and Sin City.