Best-selling PC download games of the week: purchasers unperturbed by protective measures

(All rights reserved - Ubisoft)

Some surprise entries this week as, despite the publicised controversies surrounding Ubisoft's new copy protection measures -- Assassin's Creed 2 and Silent Hunter 5 being the first PC games to sport them -- both appear among Steam network's best-selling games of March 1-7.

Some surprise entries this week as, despite the publicised controversies surrounding Ubisoft's new copy protection measures - Assassin's Creed 2 and Silent Hunter 5 being the first PC games to sport them - both appear among Steam network's best-selling games of March 1-7.

The new anti-piracy measures, which require players to be logged on to Ubisoft's online verification system throughout a session, even when playing single-player or not benefiting from consistent web access, were met with discontent by those who felt such measures were only set to frustrate genuine customers rather than prevent unauthorized distribution.

Such was the opposition that some web users even managed to overwhelm the company's online support systems by way of a co-ordinated denial of service attack in protest - booting out legitimate owners of the two games in the process.

Elsewhere in the chart, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising benefited from a sale offer which ran from Thursday, March 4 through Monday, March 8.

The sequel to 2001's highly enjoyable military simulation Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis was released in October 2009. That was, unfortunately, perhaps just at the wrong time as excitement surrounding November's Modern Warfare 2 was reaching critical mass, but here it experiences a resurgence as PC users snap up a bargain.

01) Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Limited Edition
02) Supreme Commander 2
03) Assassin's Creed 2
04) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
05) Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising
06) Napoleon: Total War Imperial Edition
07) Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 Chaos Rising
08) Napoleon: Total War
09) Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic
10) Aliens vs Predator

Chart positions reflect total revenue gained by the Steam Network.