The "battle" against pirates in Battle.net
PC gamers from all over the place where distraught to hear yesterday that Blizzard has no intention of making LAN play available in their upcoming Korea-shattering RTS StarCraft II.
Speaking with Joystiq, Blizzard PR employee Bob Colayco gave this rationale:
"We don't currently plan to support LAN play with StarCraft II, as we are building Battle.net to be the ideal destination for multiplayer gaming with StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games. While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy.
Several Battle.net features like advanced communication options, achievements, stat-tracking, and more, require players to be connected to the service, so we're encouraging everyone to use Battle.net as much as possible to get the most out of StarCraft II. We're looking forward to sharing more details about Battle.net and online functionality for StarCraft II in the near future."
Currently, it seems most of PC gaming public seems unimpressed by this response. Judging from comments on a few gaming sites, many StarCraft fans would prefer not having achievements and stat-tracking if they could play a LAN mode, and just as many seem to think that pirates will find some way to enjoy multiplayer games regardless of Blizzard's plans.
No doubt this controversy will be around for some time. Eventually, when the game does hit the shelves, will the disappointments be quickly forgotten?
And what will the new Battle.net be like?
So many questions.
forums
Are they referring to using a copy of the game for a second person to play?
That's not piracy, that's spawning a copy. That was Blizzard's own idea for Starcraft 1!
If Battle.net is used to setup all MP games, this makes things much more difficult for pirates.
Sure, fake battle.nets might get setup, but pirated MP matches will be less prevalent.
As much it is a regular case that games are pirated and available for play right from the get-go, it is much less acknowledged fact that piracy rates for games MP modes of games are much more rarely successfully cracked.
"But, wait, Spore's DRM was a completely different thing!" I hear some cry.
Really?
You are sacrificing both your own customers' convenience as well as goodwill in an attempt to control something that cannot be fully subverted (piracy) - or, for that matter, you have no guarantee of succeeding even in partial control.
Running any kind of code means the ability to reverse-engineer the original programming, and communication protocols, no matter how obfuscated, are easier to unveil than a full-blown application.
While I wish Blizzard proliferate sales, this really makes me wonder if they considered what the combination of their high publicity and estimated difficulty of hacking in a LAN mode (or establishing a fake battle.net server application, for that matter) is going to do for those few people actually capable of successfully completing the above tasks.
Personally, I would not be surprised to learn rather quickly of availability of either relatively soon after the original release. Which leads to my personal main objection for any type of DRM (grudgingly allowing for its presence, removed in a subsequent patch, for a short time after initial release) - if there's will, there's means, and the will, given the prestige associated with it in certain circles, actually increases the more difficult the task appears to be. Meanwhile, all you do is pi- um, annoy your actual customers.
/rambling