Blizzard Says DRM is a "Losing Battle"

[thiosk]

He's right, you know. Steam is DRM. The only kind I find acceptable, because it not only has more pro's than con's, but the only con is really the need to have the program running. Considering the fact I can use it to download all my games anywhere, it saves quite a bit of data for quite a few games to the steam cloud, and I've found quite the online community as a result mean that it's so very worth it.

This is my view on steam-- I fell in love with steam about 3 years after I lost my Half life 2 cds, and decided to play them. Not only did reinstalling steam allow me to instantly download hl2, but I realized I had all sorts of other goodies attached to that account as well.

I'd say about 90% of purchases have been attached to steam since then, since i have moved every year for 10 years and have lost a LOT of games.

Endless online downloading is a huge win.

snips

... it IS a single online activation... and then it can be played offline. Just like steam. So yeah, you make an account, but its otherwise playable offline.

If a single online activation is too hard, when you are posting on the internet anyway, don't buy it.

Its the ubisoft U MUST BE ONLIEN business that I find offensive.

 

[karmapolizei]

So, according to Blizzard, irreversibly tying a copy of a game to a single person is "not DRM". Some publishers only seem to publish games these days because they can't market their semantics expertise. Yet.

 

[Curious Georgie]

Well, I expected Blizard to have the brains to not piss off the pirates too much.

 

[Auric]

Actually i love ubisoft games, but yea the DRM is pissy in comparison.

 

[Chrinik]

I pity PC Gaming more and more.
Being a Person that has a PC that can only barely run BF2, I always prefered Consoles.
Buy the game, put it in the Console, play a bit. Sure an XBox360 needs you to pay for Online Gaming, but I don´t play Online MP that much.
And when I look at it, it was a wise desicion.

 

[wonkify]

DRM for me encourages piracy any game where I need an Internet connection to play consider it pirated, yes that goes for all Steam and stupidly DRMed games, oh starcraft II requires you to create a Battle.Net account, I don't want one, I WANT TO PLAY THE DAMN GAME WITHOUT REQUIRING A SODDING INTERNET CONNECTION.
They will probably do the same stupid DRM with Diablo III which is a shame, I was looking forward to that game.

I am 100% in agreement with you.

As a lifelong PC gamer I have long relished being able to break out some old disks and boot up Freedom Force or Neverwinter Nights 2 or something years later. The first time I felt the cold boot heel on the back of my neck was when I tried to load up my just bought, just released Dead Space.

I had just moved and internet service wasn't up yet. I flat could not play the damn game I had just bought without an internet connection to 'confirm' my game with the Gestapo. The rage I felt at the intrusion into my private single player gaming life has stuck with me.

The insanity of being unable to play a brand new game I had just paid for, a game with no on-line component at all was grotesque.

Sorry, tastier, less obviously vomit inducing flavors of DRM are still flat out unacceptable to me. I refuse to go along with intrusions into my personal single player gaming because someone else might be pirating. It is infringement no matter how you slice it.

I can see the end of gaming as hobby for me coming up fast.

I don't play games for social contacts. I have other activities for that in my life. The only thing I enjoy is the single player gaming experience on my own PC box and hard drive. Yet that type of gaming is apparently the biggest threat to the gaming universe.

Hard to believe. But if I were willing to play through six levels of hoops and "Live" networks of various types to scrub what I'm doing, then I can be allowed to game "alone." And no I don't have any interest in STEAM.

I will never pay money for something I don't have a physical copy of in my hands. If something catastrophic happens to one company it could lose an entire library of games I supposedly "own." That couldn't happen though, right?

Been to Lehman Brothers lately? Bought a new Hummer recently? How about a Pontiac?

So what if my "type" of gaming becomes obsolete, who cares? My $60 for games clearly doesn't count...

 

[Dommyboy]

Of course they would say that, they're incredibly successful with their franchises and shrug off piracy.

 

[Abedeus]

They say "it's a losing battle", but they insist on fighting it, by forcing us through Battle.Netacebook (which IS DRM) and removing LAN support.

Result?. Me and my 20 LAN party buddies are not buying StarCraft 2, a game we've been waiting for years. Congrats on the fuckup, Blizzard. You sure do know how to treat PC gamers.

Edit: Andy, Steam DOES let you play offline LAN. Battle.Net doesn't. So B.Net is way worse than Steam, however much you insist on the contrary.

Didn't you read the news? It says you can play Star Craft 2 SP offline. And if you want to play online... hell, you'd use Battle.net anyway.

Also, BNet is not DRM. They actually let you add game keys to your account, so you can download them later, but you don't have to do it every time, on every PC, you don't have to worry about activation limits and that if your Internet suddenly fails, your zerg rush will crash half-way.

 

[acosn]

I don't care about the LAN,

What ever you say, Mr. "No LAN in Starcraft 2".

All putting it in now would do is leave it open to piracy. It just baffles me that people think they know better than Blizzard.

That's my point. For a company that presents itself as opposed to anti-piracy methods since they see them as ineffective, it sure is taking its own drastic measures to combat piracy. The LAN community is huge, don't be fooled, and many outlets don't have sufficient internet to provide efficient local play. Especially in third world countries.

Guess what happens when you use battle.net like a LAN?

It functions like a LAN.

Woops.

 

[742]

ugh; its still in beta but SC2 is doing the wrong thing as far as piracy prevention goes.
the key to good social networking is a combination of two points
1. get people to use them; social networking tools are useless if theres noone to network with or the ones your looking for all use different tools
2. make those tools not suck
so far blizzard has failed at point two; if youve tried to use the tools in beta* they are absolute trash**. the UI is horrible, being only three ways to add someone: exchange e-mail addresses outside of the game which shows real names in-game, be in the same game (and remember that custom games are unnamed at this point in the beta so its essentially random) and add each other there, or have someone whos friended both of you by one of the other methods mentioned invite you both into a group and add each other there.
also theres no local hosting. i can absolutely see why they might not have one of the players host a ladder game; but i dont see a reason for that on customs. dont get me wrong; for people who arent their own network admin or who arent very tech savvy the option to have blizzard host for you is wonderful; but for the rest of us the lack of an option to host games ourselves stinks of BS, especially if the lagginess continues into the release version*.

*it IS still in beta; this gets them some forgiveness on the lag and any tech issues/bugs
**i wouldnt care about that; except they get between me and whats looking to be the best RTS ever.

 

[TIM10]

Good site for game passionate people.

Personal ISA [http://personalisa.co.uk.com]

 

[TIM10]

Good site for game passionate people.

Personal ISA [http://personalisa.co.uk.com]

 

[Hashime]

Steam may be DRM, actually it is, but is justifies its self with enough features, sales, and services to make it beneficial instead of a nuisance.

 

[Atmos Duality]

This pretty much cements what I feared would happen, and ties those contradictory statements/actions Blizzard made together (They claim that piracy never bothered them, and then remove LAN to fight piracy, in case someone was wondering).

Battle Net 2 is going to have DRM.
But so far, it's still on the side of reasonable...if only barely.

If Diablo 3 has a multiplayer fee though, I'm done with them, and done with new games since they are quickly becoming more trouble than it's worth.

 

[Bedewyr]

I don't see hwy everyone is pissing and moaning about here being no LAN.

Blizzard staff are using LAN test SC2 right now. Hell the ability for LANing is in the damn source code for the game. You, as a normal everyday user, just don't have access to it.

Wait a month until after it is released and another program like the one for SC1 will easily make LAN do-able. It will be cracked so fast and I bet Blizzard is even counting on it.

 

[roflharris]

Personally, I don't see this as so much of 'a step in the right direction' as 'not a step off the edge of the fricking cliff that Ubisoft and co seem to have thrown themselves off of'.

The biggest problem I'll have with it (besides the lack of lan, but I can live with that and that's off-topic) is the previously mentioned privacy topic.

I've always been loathe to use my real name and contact details online, to the point that I only use pre-paid credit cards that put my purchases under the name 'Gift Cardholder'. Yet, when you are investing hundreds of dollars into a games collection (ie. steam / Blizz once you include the time players invest into wow accounts) that relies solely on a single publicly available user-name and 15 or so character password (that most people probably use on other sites anyway), you don't want to have to be trying to contact the helpline after you've been hacked and asked to provide proof that YOU are the real 'B. Gweiner'.

It would make a great premise for a movie; all of the law abiding gamers (and thanks to facebook etc, most of the 'real people') have their privacy, liberty and very identities stolen by 'the man' and are forced to rely on the dreaded pirates and crackers of today. Our very future lies in their ill-formed, flabby hands!

In hindsight you can probably just stop reading before that last paragraph and my post still stands as a fairly serious argument.