
Blizzard Calls DRM a "Losing Battle" - SlyShy
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3179516&cmpid=0101
======
pyre
It's nice to see this coming from Blizzard, but it's not the 'full' story.
They are just counter-acting piracy of the game by adding value through
Battle.net. But they will defend Battle.net to the death.

The statements sound progressive and to a point they are, but this is just
accomplished by moving the battle somewhere else. It's a lot easier to squash
people trying to create alternate Battle.net servers/networks than it is to
squash all of the cracking groups out there.

At least Blizzard is a company that is known for _not_ abandoning their older
titles (IIRC, you can still connect to Battle.net from the original
StarCraft).

See:

\- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd>

\- <http://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd>

[On a side note...] I came across this Battle.net 404 page while searching,
anyone know which came first?

\- 404 Page <http://eu.battle.net/starcraft-universe.shtml?rhtml=y>

\- Original
[http://knowyourmeme.com/system/icons/185/original/nickcage.j...](http://knowyourmeme.com/system/icons/185/original/nickcage.jpeg?1240917662)

~~~
sliverstorm
> But they will defend Battle.net to the death.

Of course they will. I should hope they would. It's the best and most
successful alternative to DRM (that I am aware of) when it comes to curbing
piracy, which they as a company NEED TO DO. DRM may be bad, but preventing
piracy is not. I don't think they are trying come across as saying "we don't
care about piracy".

Besides, Battle.net has provided some pretty darn good extra value.

~~~
timwiseman
_curbing piracy, which they as a company NEED TO DO_

Let me state plainly that I believe piracy is generally immoral and I would be
happy to see it vanish from the face of the earth. Let me also say that I
think approaches like battle.net are much better than DRM.

But, they do not necessarily need to stop piracy. What they need to do is earn
a reasonable and healthy profit.

They could (potentially) do this witout worrying about piracy at all. They
would benefit from preventing all piracy that would otherwise have been a
sale, of course, but if they are earning a profit even this is only
beneficial, not necessary. The piracy that would not otherwise have been a
sale is simply irrelevant to the company's health. In fact, in some
circumstances piracy that would not otherwise have been a sale could be
beneficial to them by providing publicity and helping to gain a fan base that
will eventually make purchases (again, this should not in any way be read as
condoning piracy, but it remains true.)

~~~
sliverstorm
Yes, you are correct; in all likelihood, they technically do not _have_ to
fight piracy. I was just conjecturing that the cost of some piracy prevention
is probably lower than the gains. i.e. squashing out every last pirate is
financially a poor choice, but the low-hanging fruit are worthwhile. Typically
I refer to a clearly wise business move as a 'need', though that is
technically a mistake on my part.

------
chc
Blizzard aren't being completely honest here. They aren't just making
Battle.net so awesome people will want to pay for the game — they're
specifically disabling LAN multiplayer so that people have no choice but to
use Blizzard's servers for any real gameplay.

Fighting piracy by making people authenticate with a server just to use a
feature that would otherwise work fine without an Internet connection? Back in
my day, we called that "DRM."

~~~
hazzen
Hopefully they are not so stupid as to "disable" LAN play. What they have
probably done is to _never have written LAN netcode in the first place_. There
is a very large difference between those two - one implies maliciousness, one
implies that they didn't devote the manpower necessary to get it running
anywhere other than Battle.net (which presumably is doing something more
complex than connecting several IPs together for a net game).

~~~
Shabaz
What they've disabled is unauthenticated LAN games. The plan, at least this
time last year, was to have connections try to go over the LAN if the players
are within a LAN. All the players must however authenticate with the
Battle.net server.

 _I asked Canessa whether the solution his team is working on might include a
pseudo-LAN connection, where the game would only check in with Battle.net to
authenticate before reverting to typical LAN behavior._

 _"Something like that," he replied. "Maintaining a connection with
Battle.net, I don't know if it's once or periodically, but then also having a
peer-to-peer connection between players to facilitate a very low-ping, high-
bandwidth connection.. those are the things that we're working on."_

From <http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/60156>

~~~
hazzen
Thank you for the source link - I stand corrected, but I will wait until I see
it in action before passing judgement. In retrospect, it makes sense that they
would have some way of running a game specifically for high-level competitive
tournaments as a percent of their market (and a very vocal group) plays
specifically with that in mind.

------
GavinB
It's worth noting that crackers have been working on the Starcraft 2
battle.net for months and still don't have working multiplayer. Server
emulation is a lot harder than cracking a single player game.

The future of profitable software is in architectures that allow you to keep a
significant portion of the code on your own servers and only "sell" the client
application.

~~~
meroliph
Their progress was hindered
[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/100197-Blizzard-
Su...](http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/100197-Blizzard-Sues-Alleged-
Hackers-Then-Drops-Charges). The costs of a lawyer will likely stop anyone
from continuing to crack it, since I'm guessing these guys are mostly computer
science students having some fun.

~~~
norswap
It's interesting they dropped the charges. I wonder if they were afraid to
take the risk of a verdict that would have legalized alternate game servers
(when you think about it : you bought the damn game, you should be allowed to
plug it wherever you like). Even if that's really implausible, they really had
nothing to gain with the lawsuit once they had scared the hackers away.

~~~
meroliph
The charges were for copyright violations. It was merely a way to tell them to
stop, as Blizzard has done this in the past, having lawyers show up to the
doors of people making or promoting wow emulators.

------
vaksel
the problem with DRM is that it penalizes the legit users, without actually
stopping the pirates. A lot of people started pirating, after their DRM
software crapped out on them.

------
morphir
who cares about drm? Everybody in the game industry knows that "cloud
computing" is the future.. Where the company holding the copyright do not have
to release the entire binary. The future is services over fiber/4G networks.
Distributed gaming that is. This may also mean that cheating as we know it
will cease to exist.

~~~
timwiseman
_who cares about drm?_

It can hinder my enjoyment of my software that I have purchased legitimately
right now. Every time I have to deal with even the most minor of DRM I am
annoyed. If I have to put in a disc for a game I have already installed, it
makes me actually dig out that disc. Registration codes annoy me to know end,
especially very long ones. I am a veteran and still work with the government,
in my job I could wind up without network access for some period, so I do not
even think about buying a game that requires network authentication for the
single player version.

Any time an illegal, cracked version of a piece of software is superior in
usability to the legitimate version, I consider that a major problem.

 _Everybody in the game industry knows that "cloud computing" is the future.._

This may prove true in the long run, but I find it far from obvious and it
certainly is not true right now.

Remember that there are people (people deployed in the military come to mind,
also some rural areas even in America..) for which consistent network access,
much less fast network access is a luxury they do not always have. This may
change in the future, but it is going to hold true for a while still.

Also, there are some people that just do not like the idea of their software
needing to check in and report back. They do not like it for privacy reasons
and because they may like being able to play retro games long after they are
unpopular and forgotten about by most.

Cloud computer will definitely affect gaming (already has to a degree), but I
think the idea of it being "the future" for all or even most games is not
obvious

------
sliverstorm
I'm pretty sure just about everyone has realized this by now. IMHO the media
companies are using it to draw out their demise to maximize revenue before
collapse or drastic change inevitably comes about. It also buys time to think
of a better answer.

