ReverseEngineered said:
I'm glad they are speaking out against DRM, but it all seems like doublespeak to me.
They're going to make something that pirates can't get, but paying users can. But isn't that what DRM was supposed to do? They still suffer from the same problems: paying users may be held out just like the pirates. StarCraft II still won't have a standalone server or LAN play, which the beta testers will be happy to tell you is a serious misgiving (just trying staying on a Battle.net server long enough to finish a match). If you have a dodgy internet connection, or if you aren't connected, you won't be able to get achievements.
StarCraft II is such a bad example, because like most online games, the fact that you have to be online to play them isn't a hindrance, it's a necessity. It was an entirely different story when Ubisoft did it because they did it to a single player game, where an internet connection should never have been an issue.
The new "not DRM" system seems to be a lot like the old DRM system, just a little more relaxed. You'll still be able to play your game, but you'll lose many of the features of the game. I suppose that's better than losing the game entirely, but it's still a major drawback. You still need to sign-up for an account, you can't resell it or give it to a friend, you can't get your money back if you don't like it or it doesn't work, and you'll still lose access to many features if something beyond your control happens (like a server going down). Friends lists and online achievements are fine, but they really aren't much of a carrot.
I think you may be suffering "Wizard's First Rule" here. Blizzard is not saying DRM itself is a losing battle; they are saying specifically
harsh DRM systems are a losing battle. A less intrusive, less locked-down system that includes a set of convenient features, e.g., Steam, has proven to be a more accepted system by gamers. This, I believe, is where Blizzard is going: develop a DRM system that provides value the pirates cannot give or obtain except by legal purchase, while providing little to no hinderance to those who have legitimately paid into the system.
Being able to control the distribution of content and ensuring the reception due compensation for the effort in creating such content is not an unreasonable action or desire on the part of any content creation or publishing business, in my opinion. If a business cannot make a profit, it won't stay in business for very long, which means you will eventually lose the producer of the content you desire. The problem that has occurred, however, is the extreme draconian measures that many businesses have pursued that has only served to increase cost for them, de-value the content(through extreme and unnecessary restrictions) for the paying customer(I hate the term "consumer" because of the dehumanizing connotation; but, that's just my ideological nitpick), and has failed to abate piracy in any manner(in fact, it has mostly served to give reason to increase it, as people rebel against such tyrannically imperial tactics). This, I think, is Blizzard's point, that such particular measures are simply counter-productive for everyone but the pirates(the pirates don't care because nothing stops them anyway).
EDIT:
An anecdote I wanted to share regarding piracy: piracy may not be abatable by DRM systems because most DRM systems presume that the pirates are located outside the originating studio. This, however, may be a false presumption. This possibility was emphasized when a friend of mine showed a DVD copy of Avatar he obtained while in Korea, a couple months before the DVD was actually released world-wide. This was not a "shaky-cam"/cell-phone-video bootleg of the theater run. This looked like it was an original cut from the master information, as in the original hard-drive holding the movie. While the image quality was definitely poorer than normal for a DVD(having extra blockiness, which is easily attributable to the person not having a good grasp of compression software), it had none of the properties that usually occur with a theater bootleg: people walking in front of the camera, shaky image, faded colors, extremely poor quality sound, poor contrasting, extreme graininess in the image, cut or zoomed image to eliminate silhouettes of people walking in front of the camera(makes you wonder why in the hell anyone would pay, even if stupidly cheap, for a bootleg). If the pirate is employed in the studio with unhindered access to the original information, no DRM scheme will ever stop him.
