Starcraft II DRM?

[shortylickens]

I've ordered SC2 but it may well be my last Acti Blizzard game. The more I hear about Activision's, and now Blizzard's, attitude towards their consumers, the more I'd rather burn my money than give it to them.

Blizzard used to make top quality games and support them for years longer than their competition, and as a result their games were the most popular and most purchased.

Now, I still believe they make top quality games, and still support them. But Activision has injected a new angle, a new focus on revenue streams and anti piracy that just wasnt there before. The No Lan play is a classic example of this. It makes no sense whatsoever, from a gaming point of view, but makes perfect sense from a DRM point of view. That is, if DRM actually worked, which we all know it doesnt. If they can run cracked WoW servers, then they can run cracked SC2 servers or circumvent the check altogether. Mark my words, it will be done. So in the end, who is hurt? Joe Q Customer, thats who.

That and the nearly 50% higher price than most other new PC games indicates they know how much this cash cow is worth and are willing to milk it. Good business sense yes, kind to the consumer, no. Sustainable? I dont think so. If every Blizzard game is released at this price, but others are cheaper, it wont be long before the popularity of Blizzard games drop. Consumers wont be willing to swallow such a bitter pill combined with nickel and diming and DRM for too long.

Uhhh, for reference Blizzard averages 4 years between brand new games, and they are one of the most successful companies still around. They are doing considerably better than everyone else pumping out 4 or 5 titles a year.
You may wanna fact check, sir.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Uhhh, for reference Blizzard averages 4 years between brand new games, and they are one of the most successful companies still around. They are doing considerably better than everyone else pumping out 4 or 5 titles a year.
You may wanna fact check, sir.

Their current trends seem to be pointing in a different direction than what their past has entaled although I hope I'm wrong in that regard.

 

[Anubis]

Their current trends seem to be pointing in a different direction than what their past has entaled although I hope I'm wrong in that regard.

FWIW im pretty sure you are going to see a speedier release schedule from blizz going forward. Pretty much everything got pushed back because of WoW. When they originally launched it they figured if they got 500K subscribers that it would be a success, that fact that they got millions upon millions was a bit of a shock and everything had to be diverted to support it.


we will see D3 in the next year or 2 and i doubt they will hold the rest of the SC2 campaigns for years

 

[xboxist]

Ah, the AT community: where geeks act like they care about having to be online to play a single-player game, when they haven't gone a day without an active internet connection since 1994.

 

[kalrith]

Ah, the AT community: where geeks act like they care about having to be online to play a single-player game, when they haven't gone a day without an active internet connection since 1994.

Exactly. Not a single forum member has ever had internet-connection problems or ever had their laptop in an area with no Wi-Fi :sneaky:

 

[Zargon]

How much money does a company lose by having DRM that is at least complicated to replicate online play? I would say not a lot. If you have to jump through a ton of loops to play online mode (Starcrafts bread and butter), most people won't bother with pirating it.

pirates pirate and people who will buy teh game will buy the game. it will be hacked to play online with a pirated copy.

blizzard is likely to spent way more $$ in salaries on the DRM they could have hoped to have saved with DRM. Not to mention those that won't buy it.

the pirates arent losing money cracking games, the only entities with something to lose from DRM are the software companies and the legit consumer.

Ah, the AT community: where geeks act like they care about having to be online to play a single-player game, when they haven't gone a day without an active internet connection since 1994.

Exactly. Not a single forum member has ever had internet-connection problems or ever had their laptop in an area with no Wi-Fi :sneaky:

exactly. comcast took my line down for a whole day for upstream maintenance. thats a great time to play SP

and I disagree that MP is starcrafts bread and butter, that stuff gets crazy online. the world like you say isnt AT, I know tons of gamers, most who don't do MP because they are casual gamers. casual gamers dont play RTS stuff online.

I have over 100 hours in BC2 online, but I won't play any MP Starcraft II since there isnt any coop or LAN for skirmishes

 

[acheron]

Ah, the AT community: where geeks act like they care about having to be online to play a single-player game, when they haven't gone a day without an active internet connection since 1994.

I don't know who has the ISP monopoly where you live (or if you're lucky enough to have an actual choice of who provides your Internet connection), but if you have an ISP whose connection never goes down then I am rather jealous. Most of us have to deal with downtime.

 

[smackababy]

pirates pirate and people who will buy teh game will buy the game. it will be hacked to play online with a pirated copy.

blizzard is likely to spent way more $$ in salaries on the DRM they could have hoped to have saved with DRM. Not to mention those that won't buy it.

the pirates arent losing money cracking games, the only entities with something to lose from DRM are the software companies and the legit consumer.







exactly. comcast took my line down for a whole day for upstream maintenance. thats a great time to play SP

and I disagree that MP is starcrafts bread and butter, that stuff gets crazy online. the world like you say isnt AT, I know tons of gamers, most who don't do MP because they are casual gamers. casual gamers dont play RTS stuff online.

I have over 100 hours in BC2 online, but I won't play any MP Starcraft II since there isnt any coop or LAN for skirmishes

I know a country whose national sport is multiplayer Starcraft. I'd say the online play is a much bigger deal.

I doubt it costs Blizzard much to ensure an active login is required to play the game. Sure, it might be cracked, but good luck getting online play. Unless someone can create a bnet emulator that allows some matchmaking type of service, I don't see that happening. I won't underestimate the prowess of the hackers though.

 

[Dranoche]

You don't have to be online during singleplayer.

http://www.giantbomb.com/news/starcraft-ii-beta-extended-blizzard-talks-drm-solution/2038/

You authenticate once and that's it, you're done.

Price shouldn't be an issue if you plan to put a lot of time into multiplayer. You might not like why the price is $10 more, for whatever reason you have convinced yourself is the ultimate reason, but why it's $10 more doesn't change the fact that you should be able to get your money's worth out of it, if you put a lot of time into multiplayer. If you only plan on playing singleplayer, well then I won't hold it against you for not wanting to spend $60 if you think you won't put in enough time to make it worth it.

The additional campaigns should work like expansions in terms of development time, so it shouldn't be unreasonable to expect them sooner than you might typically expect new games from Blizzard. However, just because they have several development teams working on separate projects at the same time doesn't mean we should expect to see Blizzard at the point where they release a new game (expansions aside) every year for more than a couple years in a row. When you have 3 franchises going at once, you're likely to get some release clutter at some point.

 

[Zargon]

I know a country whose national sport is multiplayer Starcraft. I'd say the online play is a much bigger deal.

I doubt it costs Blizzard much to ensure an active login is required to play the game. Sure, it might be cracked, but good luck getting online play. Unless someone can create a bnet emulator that allows some matchmaking type of service, I don't see that happening. I won't underestimate the prowess of the hackers though.

they've done BNet emulators before(yes I knoew its redone and will probably be harder, but Im sure they will), there are steam emulators in existence as well. you need to them to lan party some games of course

I never said it wasnt a big deal, I think if they somehow delayed it till next week about 30000 SK's would commit suicide.

but too much emphasis these days is put on MP. You get these games that have a 5-6 hour SP 'campaign' that obviously had no work put into, and all the patches and DLC are all MP. some people still actually like a real campaign and some damned COOP play. half the people on any given MP server is most games are gigantic asshats and sometimes you need a break from them. CO-OP campaign is so much better too, and sooo easy to do that is so sad almost no one does.

 

[Pia]

Exactly. Not a single forum member has ever had internet-connection problems or ever had their laptop in an area with no Wi-Fi :sneaky:

I second these unshakable arguments. Also,
1) no one ever served in the army
2) all potential LAN spaces offer internet connectivity
3) all internet connectivity is, as a matter of policy, free to use with miscellaneous unsecured personal devices without bothering with any sort of permissions or bureaucracy or tangling with an IT department
4) actually there's nothing an IT department loves more than the invigorating continuous security challenge posed by 3)

 

[ZzZGuy]

Ah, the AT community: where geeks act like they care about having to be online to play a single-player game, when they haven't gone a day without an active internet connection since 1994.

Still amazes me people can live under a rock like this, thinking everyone else lives under the same rock.

I have gone months without a personal internet connection, far far from any near by towns. Best I could do was use paid public internet booths (taht you can't plug into) and every other week get a bus ride into town and use a internet cafe. To take enough books to last me would be impractical and I don't like lengthy reading on digital screens. So guess what, I brought my gaming laptop to keep me sane. I won't even go into what would happen should my OS go FUBAR and require a format.

Now, what was I doing in such a place? Well I'll let you figure it out, exercise your mind a little and get rid of some of that atrophy.

 

[lupi]

Exactly. Not a single forum member has ever had internet-connection problems or ever had their laptop in an area with no Wi-Fi :sneaky:

I went christmas vacation last year without an internet connection except when I was attached through my cell phone standing either next to a window or outside.

 

[Gothgar]

Now I am definitely skipping this game


Hope it bombs.

 

[Zargon]

yeah my grandparents have dial up.....

 

[tk149]

I do not have an internet connection at my apartment where I stay during the work week and therefore cannot perform the initial SC2 activation. Guess no SC2 for me.

 

[lsquare]

Stupid question guys, but is SC2 cd-key permanently tied to your B.net account? What if one day you want to sell it?

 

[lupi]

Stupid question guys, but is SC2 cd-key permanently tied to your B.net account? What if one day you want to sell it?

lololololololololololololol

 

[shortylickens]

FWIW im pretty sure you are going to see a speedier release schedule from blizz going forward. Pretty much everything got pushed back because of WoW. When they originally launched it they figured if they got 500K subscribers that it would be a success, that fact that they got millions upon millions was a bit of a shock and everything had to be diverted to support it.


we will see D3 in the next year or 2 and i doubt they will hold the rest of the SC2 campaigns for years

No, we're gonna see Universe Of Starcraft and Dimension of Diablo before anything else. Companies like money and MMO's are a much easier profit.

 

[zerocool84]

No, we're gonna see Universe Of Starcraft and Dimension of Diablo before anything else. Companies like money and MMO's are a much easier profit.

MMO's are only easy profit if they are good MMO's. A crappy MMO that bombs will cost a company money but as we know, Blizzard hasn't had a flop ever AFAIK.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

MMO's are only easy profit if they are good MMO's. A crappy MMO that bombs will cost a company money but as we know, Blizzard hasn't had a flop ever AFAIK.

They just have a history of not actually selling their flops (a good thing).

 

[Athadeus]

Blizzard abandoned a couple games that would have flopped had they attempted to complete and release them. There was a Warcraft game they were working on shortly after Warcraft II that I don't remember the name of, and the much better known attempt at the FPS Starcraft sequel, Starcraft: Ghost.

 

[zerocool84]

Blizzard abandoned a couple games that would have flopped had they attempted to complete and release them. There was a Warcraft game they were working on shortly after Warcraft II that I don't remember the name of, and the much better known attempt at the FPS Starcraft sequel, Starcraft: Ghost.

I remember Starcraft Ghost. Wasn't it supposed to be a 3rd person action game??? Well they still have the best track record of any game company out there.

 

[Athadeus]

Hmm, I am not sure whether it was going to be a first or third person shooter (or both like Max Payne). Good question.

 

[shortylickens]

Starcraft Ghost is still on the table, and the game they cancelled was supposed to focus on a young orc chief. It used crappy animation for the cutscenes. They eventually used the young chief idea in Warcraft 3 and nixed the hand drawn shit for multimillion dollar CGI.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAzYS-aAnuE