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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."
Which means I'll be buying it for Battle.net and pirating it for LAN play. Everybody wins.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
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?
And that you're screwed when their activation server is eventually switched off.
To applaud blizzard for this stance is like the frogs being grateful that the pot hasn't got any hotter recently (reference)
LAN SCHLAN... the statistics tracking, achievements, and similar multiplayer features require battle.net. They would have had to strip those features for the LAN version, so the exact opposite argument could be just as easily made. Rather than provide a stripped-down, feature-lite version for LAN play, they just decided to make sure everyone always has all the features available.
"If and only if they have a connection to the Internet", you say. Yup. And they assume everyone does. They're willing to lose the three potential customers that might not be true for in 2010. I know some people find that hard to believe, but those kids playing on your lawn all have Internet access. Saying "it excludes anyone who don't have Internet" stopped being a serious argument years ago...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
It really pisses me off every day that I have to unlock my doors, disable the engine immobiliser and use an ignition key to get my car running in the morning.
Why can't I simply walk up to my car, and press a button and it comes on?
Oh right, because some fucker will come along and steal it.
People stealing software like they think they have a right to are what causes companies to install DRM. It is simply a security measure that ensures you pay for the privilege to play the game they spent money creating.
Until pirating of games disappears, and everyone behaves all nice and moral DRM/Product registration/Internet connection and all other forms of anti-piracy methods are going to be developed and incorporated into games. Be thankful that the protection measures that Blizzard are adding to SC2 are among the least intrusive in the market.