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."

Comments

Ubisoft : DRM isn't about piracy but used games

[AwaxSlashdot]

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.

Re:Call me a fanboi or whatever but...

[hairyfeet]

Alright! It's nice to see a fellow GOG'er, welcome brother! After trying Good Old Games I don't know if I can really stomach jumping through the other guy's hoops anymore. Having to deal with a bunch of discs, or having it phone home, install nasty viruses like SecuROM or Starforce, no thanks.

And from the looks of it they are just trying to put on a "happy face" to the same Ubisoft horseshit. And I quote "If we've done our job right and implemented Battle.net in a great way people will want to be connected while they're playing the single player campaign so they can stay connected to their friends on Battle.net and earn the achievements on Battle.net"

So how exactly is this different than the Ubisoft bullshit? He is just basically saying "We will make it so you WANT us to screw you hard baby!". I shouldn't need a fucking Internet connection to play a single player campaign and yet again it is just another excuse that screws the paying clients while the actual pirates laugh their asses off and don't have to deal with the bullshit. At least GOG treats me like a valued customer instead of a criminal. NO DRM, NO phoning home, NO payment hassles, NO limits to your installs, NO problems backing up the installers (just a single .exe), NO problems running on x64, in other words they make their option a better value than piracy instead of treating me like a thief for daring to give them my money.