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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."
The second link confirms that there still will be no LAN support - the 'offline' mode is for the single-player only. Any networked game, including on a LAN, has to go through Battle.net 2.
Unfortunately, they still require online activation, don't support LAN play, and are region locking SC2 so that you can't play with people from a different region without purchasing that regions version.
What exactly are you talking about?
It's a single online activation. It would not surprise me if they release a patch sometime in the future to remove even that, especially if they take down the auth server. Blizzard has done similar things in the past, although on a small scale. You are not, since 1.15, required to have a CD in your CD drive to play Starcraft or Broodwars.
I don't mind that they are trying to protect the single player part of the game from casual copying. That multipalyer is forced to be on battle.net only is slightly annoying, but I had not intended to play anywhere else anyways.
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Yes, you will have trouble installing this on the non-existent computers that have no way to connect to the Internet, even temporarily, but still are modern enough to meet the other system requirements
It can also be a question of location. When I get a new machine, I use the wizard thingy to move my home directory and installed apps across. One game, Escape Velocity Nova, notices that it's running on a new machine and wants to update. First time I noticed this was when I tried to play it on the train. Ooops, no Internet, couldn't play it. I then tried a bit later to play it on campus. Well, there is Internet, but the firewall blocks the port that they use for authentication. I don't think I've tried reactivating it since then, I just make a note not to give Ambrosia Software any more of my money (and wrote them a polite email explaining why).
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They released no-CD patches for Warcraft 3, Diablo 2, and Starcraft 1, you know. They have a good track record here.
Battle.net 1.0 is still up and it's been 14 years. So far so good.
Bonus -- if you like LAN play, you get sued. Add Warden to the mix, and I hate Blizzard with a passion. "No onerous DRM?" Can't play on a LAN without access to your servers. Spyware monitoring your computer's memory every 15 seconds for an EULA violation. What are these? Pictures of cute little kittens?
Put identity in the browser.