Blizzard: Fighting Piracy with DRM 'A Losing Battle'

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StarCraft II is still on track for its July 27 release on PC, but unlike some other developers, Blizzard isn't planning on gumming up the works with any draconian digital rights management software--it's taking a different approach.

In fact, according to a recent interview Videogamer.com conducted with StarCraft II producer and Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce, fighting pirates with DRM is a "losing battle." Pearce states that it's due to the disparity in size between development teams "and the number of people out there that want to try to counteract that technology, whether it's because they want to pirate the game or just because it's a curiosity for them."

Pearce says that Blizzard is focused on other ways to discourage piracy that are antithetical to recent DRM initiatives from companies like Ubisoft, and the problems they can create for paying customers. "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," he explained.

That's not to say that StarCraft II will be free of protection. Players will still need to register an account with Battle.net and use a one-off activation code to play. Once their copy is activated, players won't need to be connected to the internet to play the single-player campaign, though Blizzard is also banking on the hope that the the connection to friends, achievements, and multiplayer offered by an improved Battle.net service will compel potential pirates to make a purchase instead. On a related note, it's already known that LAN support won't be included in StarCraft II due to piracy and other concerns, much to the chagrin of some hardcore fans of the series.

From The Chatty
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    May 27, 2010 6:05 PM

    Not happy bout the no LAN, still looking forward to it though. Still haven't played beta online lol

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      May 27, 2010 6:15 PM

      welcome to the 90s, if you don't have a net connection at a LAN by now god help you

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        May 27, 2010 8:20 PM

        So how well does 30 people connected online to play a game with each other in the room work? Can you tell me it works as well as everyone connecting to each other in a room through a switch?

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          May 28, 2010 8:23 AM

          you get authenticated first then most traffic is locally routed, networking 101 and do you REALLY think Blizzard will build a tournament game that can't cope with lots of people in the same room??

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        May 28, 2010 9:20 AM

        A lot of LANs are done on university campuses or after work, both of which are generally quite well firewalled.

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      May 27, 2010 6:22 PM

      It doesn't hurt on the beta, 3 people can play well behind a t1 if not more so for most situations you should be ok.

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        May 28, 2010 1:37 AM

        Haha @ anyone who has

        a) only 3 people to a LAN (four people is generally the minimum for a decent one)

        and

        b) has a T1 all to themselves!

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