Blizzard: DRM is "a losing battle"

Game studio Blizzard claims that trying to use digital rights management and other restrictive copyright protection is "a losing battle" in the current gaming marketplace.

Blizzard's upcoming Starcraft II video game is one of the most anticipated games of 2010 -- and will be released on July 27 -- with a one-time activation and active Battle.net account required for online game play.  Similar to Diablo II, gamers will not be able to play on the same CD key if it has been registered and is logged into Battle.net.

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Blizzard understands there will always be a group of people looking to crack DRM, with a large number of successful breaches, so it seems like a wise choice to just try and work with the game community.

"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," said Frank Pearce, Blizzard co-founder, in an interview with VideoGamer.com.  "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."

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Even though Blizzard has a good perspective on the issue, Starcraft II will not have LAN support.  The decision has been somewhat controversial, but it should help "safeguard" the game title from widespread piracy.

I applaud Blizzard for recognizing the obvious pitfalls of DRM -- and the game studio won't go out of the way to try and interfere with the gaming experience.  Battle.net has a unique ability that gives gamers from Starcraft, Starcraft: Brood War, World of Warcraft, Diablo II, and other Blizzard titles the option of chatting in a single location across multiple game titles. This is just one of many attractive features available to "legitimate" customers of the games.

Ubisoft's controversial use of always on DRM has angered customers, and even though it has been cracked already, the company has been ridiculed by many gamers.  Capcom also had a recent public relations issue due to DRM used in its Final Fight: Double Impact video game, as the company wasn't upfront and honest about the DRM it used.

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