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Blizzard Boss Says Restrictive DRM Is a Waste of Time
Stoobalou writes "Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce reckons that fighting piracy with DRM is a losing battle. His company — which is responsible for one of the biggest video games of all time, the addictive online fantasy role player World of Warcraft — is to release StarCraft 2 on July 27, and Pearce has told Videogamer that the title won't be hobbled with the kind of crazy copy protection schemes that have made Ubisoft very unpopular in gaming circles of late. StarCraft 2 will require a single online activation using the company's Battle.net servers, after which players will be allowed to play the single-player game to their hearts' content, without being forced to have a persistent Internet connection."
Seriously, this is why I love this company. Ever since being a young kid playing Warcraft Orc and Humans, then playing multiplayer against my dad, I've known they make quality games, how they want, when they are ready. I still play Diablo 2 to this day, completing Hell difficultly on Hardcore still gives me a feeling of achievement lacking in recent games!
Hasn't Blizzard said you'll need a connection to Battle.net for multiplayer, even if you're playing with someone in the same room?
So it's still only good until the server dies? Or are you going to be able to back up the activation?
...are destined to repeat it. I can remember, back in the early '80s, when computer games on floppies (remember them?) were "protected" by weird copy protection schemes, including scrambling the directory so that if you tried to copy the files you'd just get garbage. There were even games that blanked the directory as part of their startup, only re-writing it at the end, so that if you removed the disk before the game was over, you lost everything. It didn't last, because, among other things, people always found ways around it. Now, Blizzard is learning that old lesson Yet Again: copy protection is, and always will be a lost cause.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Yep -- proving once again that history goes in cycles even as it progresses, in line with the overarching wavicle nature of the universe. Next up: Bell bottoms, and leg warmers -- this time, together!
Whee!
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
but won't this "activation" business complicate reinstallation onto new OS/computer? And what about the lack of LAN play?
Don't get me wrong, less intrusive DRM is better than more intrusive DRM and I laud both Blizzard's actions and words here, but don't the standard criticisms still apply: that it only hurts paying customers (though it hurts fewer of them than worse DRM) and is ineffective against pirates?
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Most people are actually willing to pay for quality!
.: Max Romantschuk
Their games are mostly played online, and they've left out home network play. Their DRM is not the usual crippleware, it's the new kind of crippleware that puts necessary software on the server while taking away features gamers have loved for over a decade.
Starcraft 2 requires an internet connection to Battle.net in order to play multiplayer. LAN support was stripped out during development.
They've removed features from the original game in order to "prevent" piracy in the sequel. That's pretty much the goddamned definition of onerous DRM.
suddenoutbreakofcommonsense
Why the love? They are still shoving restrictive DRM at you, just not as restrictive as another company's DRM.
I guess some people don't mind being screwed up the arse, just so long as its gentle.
And here Blizzard has a trick : WoW requires a monthly fee. So used games resell aren't a "threat" to its income.
StarCraft 2 would essentially be played online thru its battle.net servers and there you will need to have a valid account and register your game, as you would need to with Ubisoft. No one plays offline and alone.
Ubisoft's AssassinCreed2 is a game you can play only alone. So the "phoning home" from the DRM is artificial while it is "hidden" in games with a naturally online gameplay.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Dropping LAN support was a dick move aimed directly at pirates.
It wouldn't be so bad if the new Battle.net was the greatest multiplayer platform ever. Heck, it wouldn't be so bad if the new Battle.net was just a good multiplayer platform period. But the fact is the new Battle.net is one of the worst multiplayer platforms I have ever encountered.
Every time they roll out new features - the latest being 3v3, 4v4, and custom maps - the more Bnet2 stumbles and falls flat on its face. I thought the game was shaping up well for release, and -game- wise it is, but Bnet2 just gets worse and worse.
Why do all recent games feel that a list/lobby based multiplayer environment is a bad thing?
leg warmers? wait what? Don't tell me those are coming back...
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
My friends and I used to play cracked Warcraft and Starcraft copies on our PCs. After we graduated and eventually had jobs, some of my friends bought authentic CDs because they felt that it was the right thing to do. They said that they've always wanted to buy the real thing but they didn't have money to do so. It was then that I realized that the figures that some companies claim to have lost to piracy are just a bunch of BS. I also realized that in order for a software company to be profitable, they need to make quality software that people actually use. Attempting to control how people copy their software is a waste of time.
Battle.net appears to be a very restrictive system for multiplayer. I'm in the SC2 Beta (having preordered), and Bnet has been having issues last week, which would interrupt an ongoing game.
So apparently, a constant connection to Battle.net is required for the entire duration of a multiplayer game. I can understand the requirement for setting up a game, but not afterward. (I view Bnet as no more than a sophisticated lobby system, which is apparently wrong). Multiplayer represents 80% of SC2's worth for me, and that constant dependence on Blizzard's servers makes it little better than Ubi's terrible system.
In terms of convenience, Valve's Steam arguably beats CDs as long as you have a fast internet connection. Switching to a new computer? Download Steam, install it, log in and re-download your whole stuff with a few mouse clicks.
But the problem remains that your access to the games depends on the availability of Valve's servers. If Valve ever goes bankrupt you can probably forget your games :-(
C - the footgun of programming languages
leg warmers? wait what? Those are out of fashion?
"your key is then bound to this account" because this put an extra burden to the second sale market. IMHO company like blizzard saw that DRM is useless for piracy, but that they could easily pretend to be only checking the validity of your copy without being intruding, when the goal all along is to kill the second hand market and bypass the first sale doctrine.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Coming back? I saw plenty of 14/15 year olds on the streets this past winter in neon orange/pink/green legwarmers. No sign of bellbottoms yet though.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
"DRM is ugly and a horrible thing. Only IDIOTS like EWWWbisoft use DRM." -blizzard
(oh btw, sc2 will have DRM lolz.)
Fucking retards.
Not to the auth servers maybe but playing warcraft without a near perfect connection is not really possible.
Excuse me if I'm wrong, but isn't a one-time registration more like a common "Product registration" than DRM?
Everytime you buy something for your computer, there usually is a "Online registration" to follow, I don't know about any who uses that, but it's more because it's something you don't need to do.
Now, Starcraft 2 is build around being online and playing your friends, it's linked to your battle.net account, so to have to register your copy to your battle.net account can't really be counted as DRM?
Latest findings from the indie groups have found that a single pirate can download 90 games, while 9 honest players buy 9 games. Has a result the piracy is a "90%". What this means is that people that don't have to pay for the games, download all games, even these are not interested much, while people that buy games, play much fewer games.
More findings about that: most people only buy 1 game / year (!!), so is very easy for a pirate to download 900% more than no-pirates.
Pirates are pirating games are not really interested.
The people that is looking at the pirates as "people that can be forced to buy 90 games /year" IS WRONG. DRM, even a economic level, don't work,... its a option for people that is bad at math, and don't understand simple % and how the real world work. DRM only serve to make your clients angry at you, that is a super-smart strategy on this economic times /sarcasm
-Woof woof woof!
i loved it and went to futureshop paid 80+tax and got the boxed set wiht manuals and the expansion disk
for a lad who has a broken S5 ( a condition where you can walk but mean s you have 80 % muscles in back ) and hten got injured at work and now has a sciatica bad. THIS game helped me keep my sanity as i laid there in utter agony thinking about why am i bothering to live...
kept my mind off bad thoughts....
and so not only did the piracy aid you in a sale but both you and piracy helped someone in need.
ALL this stupid fraking greedy lawyer idiot shit for brains crap minded control feaky dumbass moron copyright IP UPEE is INSANE
YOU WILL NOT:
Control me
Control knowledge
Control Culture
Control Freedom
YOU SHALL NOT
Invade my privacy
restrict what i do after a sale
pester me with popups and ads
WHAT it does do:
-employs lawyers who would otherwise be working at burger king
-keeps lazy good for nothing drug addicts in large homes cooking steak while i eat kraft dinner.
-makes a mockery of dmeocracy as the USA goes around bribing the leaders of every nation to do as it wills.
I DID NOT vote for obama FUCK OFF wiht you laws and treasonous bribery.
-allows the pedophiles to hide amongst the masse sand masses of copyright infringer's you now criminalize and thus decrease the chances they get caught( ya know if you'd not created such an urge to encrypt everything who would need it?)
-allows terrorists the potential of the same benefit as other actual criminals the same less chances of getting nabbed.
-takes massive amounts out of YOUR country to be sent to the USA so they can continue to live beyond there means and ramp up massive debts to get to play soldier boy all day.
-the above means you must pay higher taxes to gt the same services yo used to get for far less , this takes more money out of the economy for all other things and thus slows the actual recovery of this so called global economy.
GOT IT OBAMA ITS JUST NOT GOOD at MORE THEN 20YEARS
the crap coming out of hollywood in the last 3-5 years is absolutely DOWN RIGHT crap.
saw avatar pretty but hard to watch and not nothing to go "this is soo cool"
ugh
ipads and locked in is stupid.
WATCH how sad the ipad does in Canada
and the main stay will be the actors and musicians that are entrenched in the selling of apples shit.
after that its dead meat...proof michael geist doesn't gt it...he has an iPhone app ROFL.
he and i argued privately for a wek that TPM = DRM as we all discussed and agreed at groklaw.net
TPM is just hardware based DRM
NOW have a nice day.
im a looking at my 150 tutorials on cracking software( and these work)
When the best RTS games all let you spawn multiple multiplayer installs off one game disc? Even Blizzard was in on that action, how times have changed . . . I'm not complaining really, games these days are a hell of a lot more convenient, but still, it makes me nostalgic.
Blizzard HQ has it backasswards. New battle.net for sc2/d3 doesn't offer anything of value besides matchmaking (was there already in 2003 in wc3) and flash heavy interface, people can't even communicate freely because devs thought that crippling battle.net to the level of braindead console user is such a great idea. There are no features people care about - lan latency, chat channels to organize community efforts like clans or tournaments, clan/tournament features, global ranking (that doesn't lie to you how good you are like the current system) but devs found time to include facebook... WTF?
Even mapmaking community that got very powerful tool bitches about the unreasonable rules. You can't propagate your map yourself so you need battle.net to take care of it (i guess they want to be a middleman and get their slice from paid premium maps), but the problem is there is some ridiculously low quota - your account can have 5 maps, total 20MB. In short: they want money from map market, but they don't want to pay for storage and bandwidth.
I had to once work on a computer for someone who had an app that installed off of a dozen or so floppies, and on the last one, it moved a file off the floppy to the hard drive, rather than copying it. If you told the program to uninstall itself, you were actually prompted to insert that last floppy, so the license file could be moved back. Unfortunately, the person who had the computer did not know enough to back up the computer, or even the floppy set, so when their computer crashed, we were unable to reinstall that program without jumping through a bunch of hoops with the company who sold it...
I have a few points to make. I would post directly to the relevant comments, but that would take too long.
A) A history of letting you not need the disc in the drive anymore after a patch is NOT really a friendly way of stripping away DRM once the "hype" dies down. Besides, people are getting the dates wrong here, Starcraft removed needing the disc with patch 1.15, which was released almost ten years after the game debuted. Requiring online activation of a unique code is apples-to-oranges with keeping a disc in the drive.
B) People still do have LAN parties, especially Starcraft enthusiasts! It's a classic of the LAN party, and was by far the most-played at the last one I went to. Now, I'm not sure how much data is actually launched up and down the tubes when you're playing online, but if you have a lousy ISP, or not the highest-speed service, having eight people all stacked up on one connection playing that game might be a bit much, especially if you have an ISP that throttles, or imposes other crappy limits, or, in my case, one that likes to disconnect for random periods of time, especially during the night.
B2) The above point, either way, shouldn't be a matter of if it is or isn't a hassle, it should be a matter of, just because you can, doesn't mean you should have to.
C) This whole discussion is instantly destroyed by the level of fanboyism for Blizzard, and the level of anti-fanboyism as well. I'm probably going to get modded down to comment hell for this post, for example. This is becoming a matter of "Awh, shucks, Blizzard are such great guys! I bet they'd buy me a new computer if my current one couldn't run Starcraft II" versus "DRM IS COCKS!!! GO DIE!!!"
D) That being said, I really see no reason for anyone who loves SC1 to get SC2. I played the beta, it's pretty much just feels like a modded, or expansion-packed, or remastered SC1, with some bits from Relic's RTSes pasted on. I think the best way to avoid the alleged hassle of SC2 is to just... keep playing SC1.
E) I think my biggest issue here, and the one I will leave off with (leaving out comments about stat tracking and achievement farming and whatnot), is just that Blizzard here is stating, and their fanboys in the room are happily restating, is that, put simply, they are awesome because they aren't doing what Ubisoft is doing. Even though they aren't as bad as Ubi, they're just as bad, if not worse, than the rest of the market in this matter. They're still being 'bad', they just aren't the 'worst'. But they're still being bad.
Yes, you will have trouble installing this on the non-existent computers that have no way to connect to the Internet, even temporarily
I know how to connect a laptop temporarily: take it to a restaurant with Wi-Fi. But laptops are also less likely to have gaming GPUs. How does one connect a desktop PC to the Internet temporarily? Windows XP has worked around this with telephone activation.
They still require an online activation which is an intrusive form of DRM.
And worst of all the game will not have a LAN mode "to counter piracy". Cutting vital functionality from the game because they think pirates may use this feature (hey, customers do, too!) is way worse than any DRM I've ever seen.
In terms of convenience, Valve's Steam arguably beats CDs as long as you have a fast internet connection.
And if you rely on 5 GB/mo satellite or 3G? Prepare to move to the city. Live in the anglophone southern hemisphere (NZ, ZA, AU)? Prepare to emigrate.
If Valve ever goes bankrupt you can probably forget your games :-(
I seem to remember reading that Valve had put a master unlock key for each Source game in escrow in case Valve goes chapter 7.
Blizzard forever lost me as a customer when they removed LAN play from their games, and sued the bnetd developers for restoring the feature. As far as I'm concerned, Blizzard and Microsoft are part of the same Axis of Evil (but for different reasons).
what happened to it. and why arent you putting it into the game. are you aware how important it was for sc 1, EVEN after internet and battle net came about ? there are vast numbers of people who played the game on lan for a long time, and then moved to battle net, despite battle net being around for a long time.
Read radical news here
In my mind, it's the most concrete, restrictive DRM they could've implemented. At least the leet haxors could've broken Securom or whatever other bullshit they might've put on the disc. As it is, without the LAN play, most people will buy the games, complete the single player once or twice, and then spend the vast majority of their time with the game PLAYING ONLINE. You don't buy Diablo 3 or Starcraft II just for the single-player unless you're a very small segment of the market. The removal of LAN play was a DRM-enforcement move by Blizzard, and in addition to ensuring I won't play their new games by doing this, they're now insulting me by trying to say "Oh look, we're not as bad as Ubisoft!" What kind of fucking comparison is that, anyway? Jesus Christ, I feel like the Dennis Leary of video game commentary here. It's going to be great 5 years down the road when the plug gets pulled on Battle.net support for these titles in order to force an upgrade cycle on the customers. I mean sheep. I mean...whatever. Fuck it, I'm done with Blizzard anyway.
thats because bellbottoms did a quick pass back at the end of the 90's they where not quite as gaudy, and smaller bells, but they made a pass. right now we're in paisley shirt/decorated pants mode. 5-9 more years until bell bottom pants make another pass. I expect tie-die to make an appearance before then though.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
If you have played SC1, and you got bored of it, don't bother with SC2. I figured it would be a massive upgrade in gameplay. Something radical in terms of the game.
Its an expansion pack. Seriously. New maps, new vehicles. Everything else is the same ol thing. In some ways, its more boring than SC1.
I uninstalled the beta after a few days and won't be buying it unless I hear that the single player game is just (somehow) amazing.
I know I never did. I buy games for me to play, not because I want to resell them. I'm perfectly happy to pay $50-60 for a good new game, and I have no expectation of ever selling it -- if it was good enough for the money and the time investment, it's likely good enough I'll want to play it again in 5-10 years for nostalgia's sake.
Prime example: Portal. Worth every penny, and get your own, I'd feel worse about selling my copy than I did about the Companion Cube.
Also, I do find Steam to be a fair trade -- but when given the choice, I'll usually buy a DRM-free version of a game, rather than the Steam-ified version. Better for the developers and better for me, unless I'm an idiot and lose the copy I had, in which case, better for the developers, since I'll buy a second copy. (There are few enough DRM-free Linux games that I feel an obligation to support them.)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
which is responsible for one of the biggest video games of all time, the worryingly-addictive online fantasy role player World of Warcraft
After two years of badgering by friends already playing it, I finally relented and tried the game out for a month on one of the role-playing realms.
It wasn't a bad game but one thing that killed any immersion for me was the lack of cohesive realism - for example, being given a mission to kill an NPC then having to stand in line waiting for someone else to kill the NPC first, the NPC standing up again and then you killing him again.
Furthermore, for an MMORPG I actually felt quite alone playing it. My friends were invariably off doing their own missions and there seemed to be lots of people shouting abuse or racial hatred but when I actually tried role-playing with other people I bumped into, they pretty much ignored me and went on their way.
I didn't buy a second month's subscription and have gone back to exploring the worlds of Fallout 3 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. on my own because they feel far more immersive than WoW to me.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
At our annual family reunion, the guests tend to self-segregate into three groups by age. Those under about 8 (older for girls, younger for boys) play at the crayons and Play-Doh table. Those under about 22 play at the video game table. Grown-ups sit around and "BS" (which I assume means telling random stories about acquaintances that others are unlikely to meet) with one another. I'm 29, but it's my job to supervise the gamers. I also have a brain disorder that makes it hard for me to acquire how to BS, and no one in my family is willing to take the time to teach me how to BS.
I highly doubt it's a matter of what the devs found time to implement. These are product management level decisions.
Just because the draconian DRM isn't being implemented for singleplayer doesn't mean it's not there.
It is, for Multiplayer, you can only play across B.Net servers, there is no longer a LAN option, or a direct linker(serialserial, adhoc wifi). If you want to play multiplayer when you don't have the internet you're fucked.
Blizzard is only doing this for 1 reason, so that whenever a coffee shop, baang, or any other kind of gaming cafe wants to run a tournament they have to pay blizzard for the right to, or blizzard will ban all there copies of SC2 from the B.Net servers.
Then don't plan on playing EQII, EQ, WoW, DAoC, Eve Online, etc.
Those are massively multiplayer online games. I wasn't aware that StarCraft 2 included an MMO mode.
Blizzard is upfront with what they are offering.
And we are upfront with why we are choosing not to buy what they are offering.
cant wait till the rest of the companies follow suit or remove thier DRM. UBISOFT would be good to learn something form the big companys Blizzard uses no DRM and they seem to be doing just fine. mean while ubisoft tried DRM and turned away bout half the community that would have bought their games and had the DRM cracked and removed with in the 1st week. so they lost money from potential buyers and from it being pirated instead of it just being pirated but a smaller portion of ppl. now they had it pirated by many many more and bough by many many less. poor poor decision on thier part. i hope they change things cuz ubisoft used to be a good company.
Yes, do as I say not as I do.
Because the removal of LAN play had nothing to do with preventing piracy or limiting their users with restrictive DRM.
They really must think their users are idiots.
That is what they DON'T call DRM anymore.
When they decide (are forced) to stop the activation service ten years from now, you won't be able to install Starcraft 2 anymore. I can play Starcraft still today.
http://2dboy.com/games.php
Who goes to a fucking LAN party with no internet? Even when I was playing SC1 10 years ago at LAN parties, internet was MANDATORY. Are you guys really going to go to a gaming center/LAN center and not have internet access? Because as long as you have net, you can still have your LAN party. And the additional 60ms of latency isn't going to ruin your game. I, for one, would play on a hosted server before LAN any day. Off the top of my head: 1. It's much less likely the server will drop the game than your hosting PC freeze/crash/get coke spilled on 2. I'll be able to invite my friends who can't make it to the LAN center to play 3. Stat tracking, etc That said, someone enlighten me as to why taking out LAN play is any detrimental to anyone EXCEPT pirates? (I'm open to good reasons, I just dont see any myself)
Everybody must now assume you have it. It's 2010, the "e-mail address" field is in a lot of forms you fill out on paper. I guess we've finally reached an age where it's assumed you have an internet connection in the same way it's assumed you have a phone number. Guess the thinking is, "validate your copy online, or don't play." Why bother? Someone's going to crack it. Do what you did in the past Blizzard ... allow local registration, and if duplicate keys are found on battle.net, refuse online play. This worked well in the past, and hell, I even bought a copy of Starcraft. ;)
"True refinement seeks simplicity."
So, restrictive DRM is a waste of time, but B.Net is nothing more than a sad facebook copy with DRM on top.
Removing LAN support is a waste of time AND money. The waste of time is the time that will take someone to code a B.Net emulator. The waste of money is the money you won't get from people like me. You can shove the game up your ass Blizzard. And the same goes for Diablo 3.
At least man up and admit what you're doing. But of course, if you don't there will always be people that will go "oh, how I love Blizzard, they're so good" while you keep removing functionality from the sequel.
Bastards.
If everyone pirates the game then the company gets nothing and goes bankrupt.
If everyone buys the game then the company gets an excellent return on their investment.
The typical game is somewhere between these two points and represents a partial loss from piracy and a moderate return for the company. To say there is no loss is disingenuous.
So you believe it's unreasonable to present credentials when you bought it with a credit card? How about when you are purchasing liquor? Writing a check? Do you consider yourself to be treated like a criminal in such situations? It is simply a precaution.
Unreasonable is not the same thing as inconvenient. This is a simple step to prevent casual piracy. It IS the norm for software to require registration and/or activation.
Nowhere did Blizzard claim they would prevent illicit copies. They have a more realistic approach. They also remove the requirement for DVD's in the drive once the game is no longer new. They understand that once it's no longer new, there is no need to enforce a physical disk in the drive when sales are not at risk. How many other game companies do this?
I equate this to locking your door at night when you go to bed. It is not an unreasonable step to prevent simple theft. It wouldn't prevent someone from breaking a window to gain entry, or breaking down your door, or waiting until you left for work. You could certainly take drastic steps to prevent those occurrences as well, like removing all of your windows, hiring security guards, getting a steel reinforced door, all of which would be unreasonable for a typical home.
I think you've confused unreasonable with inconvenient.
but they were able to pay for the gaming pc that it requires.
I also saw piracy in college and it had nothing to do with ability to pay. People could find the money for beer and pot but not games or music.
Don't make excuses for people that steal luxury entertainment.
It's not gay if it's with an elf
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'm a nerd, what is this "fashion" thing you speak of?
Free Martian Whores!
Those 90% piracy ratios come from publicly tracked torrents and are actually a conservative estimate since while sales are fixed torrent piracy is only the main form.
They also are not an aggregate figure, they come from comparing completed torrents to sales.
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/11/13/world-of-goo-has-90-piracy-rate/
Please enter the 24th word in the 2nd paragraph on page 22 of the manual.
You're also unwilling to practice. Did anyone in your family take the time to teach you how to write code?
No, but there are 1. books and manpages for that, and 2. a right and wrong answer (a program either produces the expected output or doesn't). A single wrong answer in conversation can get and has got me shunned from that table for the whole rest of the reunion.
Go sit with the other adults. Just listen at first.
I do listen, but when they talk about friends of friends of friends, it's as if they're talking about the events on a TV show on a channel that my cable TV operator doesn't even carry.
Treat it like any technical problem -- pay attention to the rules, pay attention to what works and what doesn't.
Unfortunately, these conversations aren't annotated. Listening to conversation is like trying to read code without comments written to an API without manpages. The comments in well-written code explain what works, why it works, and often what other suggested solutions would not work in this situation and why.
It's your job because you've self-appointed it so
It's my job because among the dozens of people there, I am best at it.
I swore off buying another blizzard product, when the WC3 expansion pack refused to install on my machine because it couldn't validate that I had a legitimate WC3. Their customer service was downright useless. In the end, after wasting probably 6 hours, I discovered that the initial WC3 install, had been done under another user and the expansion pack didn't have access to some DRM bullshit in that users account. This, even though I had been playing the base version without a problem in my personal account. The whole time I was thinking, "Why did I give them money for this, when I could have just gotten the hacked version, that xxx is running just fine." Plus, debugging DRM failures is a TOTAL PITA, as it just refuses to install, rather than being helpful and saying "registry key xxxx" is not correct, or something useful.
So, while I own multiple legal copies of WC->WC3+expansion packs, SC+expansion. I won't be buying SC2. I've got such a backlog of games to finish there isn't any reason to give them money for some restrictive crap I won't be able to play in 10 years with my friends.
Apparently someone doesn't watch dancing with the stars. Edyta Sliwinska has them on every week.
So Blizzard decided from the sales of StarCraft 1 that a sequel should be made. Great. But they at the same time decide to make it less customer friendly. If they think StarCraft 2 will be as great a success as StarCraft 1, they are sadly mistaken.
StarCraft 1 had a huge following. I do own a legal copy of it, but I did use a pirated copy to start with. All my friends did. We played in a LAN setup. And they all bought a legal copy sometime later.
Now, I only expect a few of my friends to buy a copy and maybe none of them will. The reason is that there is no LAN play and we are forced to play via an internet server. If the internet breaks down, there is no point of us moving the pc's together and we would curse Blizzard for their unnecessary control over our fun. Had SC2 had the same features as SC1 (Lan play, no forced battle.net logon to play) we would all have bought SC2 at full price. Now, I see no point.
I'll wait for the cracked version and the fake battle.net server for LAN play. Then, if this works, I'll probably buy the game when it is down to 25% of its original price.
I think that, if they want to at least placate those who want LAN play, they should release a LAN edition with no single-player campaign or Battle.net connection for the clients. The idea here is to cater to LAN party hosts and Internet cafes (if they still exist) to provide a multiplayer-only environment for those who don't connect to Battle.net either because it's not convenient for them, or because they just want to play with neighbors or friends. If they're really smart they'd market this "StarCraft II Server" much in the same way Microsoft does for Windows Server, and allow hosts to provide cut-down versions of SC2 solely for the purpose of local multiplayer games.
Of course, as with WoW private servers, Blizzard will never officially sanction this, and probably will aggressively fight any attempt by players to make this possible. The reason is not piracy or user safety, given that they insist that this is the case without much justification for this reasoning. The reasons are manifold: (1) It is more cost-effective to provide support if the platform is as homogeneous as possible, and the best way to ensure that is if everyone is required to connect to the same servers-- Blizzard's. (2) It is much easier to market and sell additional content (should they decide to do so) if they are in complete control of the online experience, something which LAN play and private servers will deny them. (3) It is likewise much easier to enforce Blizzard policy, no matter how inane or draconian, if everyone plays the same version on the same server farm, again something which private servers and LAN will hamper.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
You're a fanboi. One word for you: BNetd. Blizzard don't want the same DRM as others because they've got you stapled to their floor. No need for such DRM because they have all the control Mass Effect was trying to get: you can't connect to anything but their server, if you breech their TOS (which they can change whenever they want), they can kick you out of their FORUMS and your games go byebye.
No, Blizzard are just as evil, they've just not put it in their games, they've put it in their copyrights.
"reasonable DRM" by whose standards? Yours? Why have YOU got the reasonable standard? According to some, your version of DRM is weak-sauce.
Blizzard DO NOT have "reasonable DRM" because they are using copyright AND trade secret laws together. Pick one.
As for "terribly onerous", what about when there are no Blizzard servers for playing realm Diablo2 games? Bnetd is banned. Blizzard won't. So your game with its "reasonable DRM" is worthless. Yet Blizzard still has use of your money. How about when they stop servers activating WC4 altogether? You cannot ever install their game. "Reasonable" DRM? No.
Nice going Blizzard, and I'll buy your game as soon as it is available on Steam. I don't want to install several software installer clients and I know and trust Steam, even though it's not optimal (the I-wanna-see-your-passport-before-I-tell-you-the-price is utterly rubbish for instance.) Still, I like your attitude.
"you can always pirate it then.". Really? Copyright expires and DMCA doesn't work if the company owning it decides not to do a non-required thing like break their own DRM??? Or are you personally indemnifying all people who pirate because an activation server is no more and they then pirate.
And please enlighten us how the pirate crack is made whilst there is no illegal cracking of the game while it's still "hot"? And aren't you jointly liable for proposing breaking the law to fix this DRM problem? Or are people going to have to pay for cracks to be made? And wouldn't that be profiting from copyright infringement????
You need the login, and your real name is plastered all over the game. And of course it has no LAN - so screw you Blizzard.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
So they can give me the money back. They've had 10 years of investing it to make money off, so we're all equal. I've had use of the game, they've had use of my money. They take away the game, I take away the money.
Simples.
Good call. And if evidence shows this game runs under Wine on Ubuntu 8.10's ATI accelerated drivers, I may finally have a reason to update from Warcraft III/DoTA. I wonder if IceFrog or anyone else has plans to port DoTA to this engine.
Last weekend I went on a short vacation. My brother in law and I brought our laptops. We had both installed our legal copies of starcraft 1 before we left and hopped on battle net to update. Once we arrived there was no free internet access. We played a few games of starcraft during the rain over a small lan we setup and had a blast.
All this time I've been thinking, the DRM they're adding (multiplayer only through bnet) is fine and won't affect me. Now I realize, it absolutely would have prevented me from playing the games I did.
The moral of the story, until they add non-bnet based LAN play, I think I'll keep playing SC 1.
LAN play and LAN Parties, the features that made the original Starcraft and the Warcrafts so popular, is now now no longer allowed. WoW! How stupid! Does anyone wonder if the progression from Social Lan Parties to Multiplayer Online gaming is actually making nerdy gamers even less likely to breed? Consider 10-20 people in a house attempting to kick each-others asses while conversing, joking & interacting with eachother, to a single person kicking some random blokes ass on the internet - someone which they are unlikely to ever meet. That's progress? I wonder if there is a correlation between patronage for online gaming, and rates of depression and suicide :iagree:
That original social "contract" assumes that the government actually enforces the protections of copyright. Millions of copies of Blizzard games have been copied and played through by people who had no intention of, and didn't, pay Blizzard for the honest effort that went into the games. So the government didn't actually offer them any copy protection for their side of your "bargain."
This is where Blizzard, in order to collect enough money to develop the next fun games we all enjoy, needed to put in slight speed bumps to people stealing their way around the no actual protection afforded from the government to their product.
"Welp, we didn't stop anyone from stealing your product, now you owe it to the public domain forever and ever" doesn't sound like a very fair bargain. Hence the (light) DRM.
Blizzard folks know they won't stop everyone, they just want to catch a large chunk of people who want their games in the initial rush to actually compensate them with some cash, before the crack comes out and they are too lazy to pay.