Ubisoft says DRM isn’t the reason Assassin’s Creed: Origins pushes CPUs
Found on Ars Technica on Wednesday, 01 November 2017
The game's Steam forums are full of anecdotal complaints about the game's high CPU usage, including reports of stuttering and reduced frame rates due to frequent CPU bottlenecks.
In any case, Ubisoft's statement suggests that the game using the "full extent" of the CPU at those base requirement and settings levels is by design and not the result of DRM.
It's more likely that the high CPU usage is caused by bad programming. Hardware requirements are not considered as an important factor in software development, so bad developers can get away with bad code that has to be buried under more hardware. Decades ago when CPUs were less powerful, and storage was expensive, developers had to show their abilities by producing small and effective code.