Blizzard has always been one of those companies that did not worry about piracy at all. They had a very simple way of dealing with it and that was to kill the cd-keys and ban players.
However, in a recent interview from Incgamers with lead designer Dustin Browder, VP of creative development Chris Metzen and VP of game design Rob Pardo, it is reported that Blizzard is finally going to use DRM (Digital Rights Management) and the first game to use it will be Starcraft 2.
No its not end of the world and before you start going to SC2 forums and ranting about how this will kill the game, you should know that the form of the DRM protection would be very low.
Even though developer Pardo said “piracy really historically has not been that big of deal for [Blizzard].” He said there has been a few examples, but “for the most part we can shut down those services.”
The game will have a very low form of DRM protection in which:
In order to install the game, “you need to connect once to install the game,” StarCraft II lead designer Browder revealed. A player will also either have or sign up for a Battle.net account during the installation process.
I doubt anybody would be annoyed by this kind of DRM, but it is the first time Blizzard actually require players to be registered. For the most part it should sit well with fans of Blizzard, however, we have to remember that Activision loves DRM and most likely they will influence Blizzard to do the same.
Would love to hear what you all think about all this?