Recently this year a lot of video game publishers started using more advance DRM methods to battle piracy. Starting with Ubisoft’s new DRM system that requires gamers to be connected to the internet at all times to actually play the game, even playing the single player mode. However, after a few so called hacks from hackers, their server was shut down which led to thousands and thousands of gamers left with a game that they bought, but could not play because of the DRM that Ubisoft set up.
Blizzard on the other hand is saying that there is no win-win situation by using DRM and most likely will harm you in the long run. Recently, Blizzard co-founder and executive producer for StarCraft II Frank Pearce, told VideoGamer that Blizzard will be using only Battle.net registration and a one-off activation for StarCraft II. None of that DRM stuff because Blizzard will be hoping to improve their Battle.net service so that players will be attracted to actually buying the game and try to convince pirates to also do the same.
Frank Pearce also said “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,”
“The best approach from our perspective is to make sure that you’ve got a full-featured platform that people want to play on, where their friends are, where the community is,” he added.
“That’s a battle that we have a chance in. If you start talking about DRM and different technologies to try to manage it, it’s really a losing battle for us, because the community is always so much larger, and the number of people out there that want to try to counteract that technology, whether it’s because they want to pirate the game or just because it’s a curiosity for them, is much larger than our development teams.
“We need our development teams focused on content and cool features, not anti-piracy technology.”
Well, earlier this year Blizzard did announce that they wil still take some cautionary measure to stop piracy by dropping the LAN mode from ‘StarCraft II’. It did make a lot of gamers angry, but if you ask me it is still way better than all that damn DRM other publishers are using now.