Blizzard Says DRM Is A Losing Battle, Better To Focus On Positive Value
from the focus-on-your-fans,-not-your-enemies dept
A bunch of folks have sent over variations on the story that video gaming company Blizzard has said that DRM is a losing battle. While that part is catchy, even more impressive is the overall reasoning, which is that it just makes a lot more sense to focus on adding value for the people who do want to pay, rather than worrying about the folks who don't want to pay:"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 added.Now this is definitely good news. We're hearing more and more stories where content creators are realizing that wasting so much effort on stopping people who would never buy in the first place is a waste of time. It's much more productive (and useful) to focus on giving people better reasons to buy. And, Blizzard has been known to experiment creatively with that in the past as well. For example, we recently wrote about the virtual goods it was selling in the game, as well as selling some physical goods as well.
"That's a battle that we have a chance in. If you start talking about DRM and different technologies to try to manage it, it's really a losing battle for us, because the community is always so much larger, 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, is much larger than our development teams.
"We need our development teams focused on content and cool features, not anti-piracy technology."
That said, Blizzard also does have a history of less inspiring behavior. The company is still fighting a questionable lawsuit over whether or not the creator of a bot is guilty of copyright infringement. It's also been very aggressive in sending out cease-and-desist letters to fan sites. And, worst of all, the company had announced that it would remove LAN support from StarCraft II in an effort to fight "piracy."
So, while it's good to hear these words suggesting a focus on adding more value, rather than fighting at the technology level, the company does have some legacy issues to overcome as well.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: drm, reasons to buy, video games
Companies: blizzard
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
The vast majority of the video game world has no interest in "phone home" schemes. Why? Because only a small chunk of video games that are developed are commercial creations, or have the manpower or the desire to host a needless community. True, the big name companies get the most attention, and bring in the big bucks, but they are still only a small percentage of easily accessible (legal) video games. If things get too annoying to the average consumer, there are plenty of good alternatives out there that will never be restricted.
And besides that, DRM cracks are always around, and in most countries circumvention is 100% legal.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
I'm a HARDCORE PC gamer and the idea of having my PC doing stuff behind my back disgusts me. I HATE steam, for example, because it installs patches automatically. It actually FORCES me to install patches before starting the bloody game! What the hell? It's my PC and my (copy of the) game! Back off man! I want to play my game!
I also don't want my software poking around my hard drive checking if I'm "legit" like some sort of spyware and sending the data home. Again, my PC, back off.
And another thing. I love mods. I love modding my games. I love map editors and SDK's. They make the game worth playing after the single/multiplayer gets boring. What you suggest will kill those tools and make the games static, sterile and boring. They feed you horse crap and you eat it while thanking them. Nice...
No PC player in his sane mind will approve any of this. Problem is, not many care these days. Most new "1337" players that parachuted into the PC scene were imported from the consoles, or were born playing CS. They don't care. They just want shiny graphics and incredibly simplified, unrealistic gameplay so they can "pwn" some "n00bs" online and brag about how their machine can "own" the game at 3072x2304 resolution and 62x AA. Even if the game is incredibly shallow, bloated and bug ridden.
This is why DOOM and UT are still my favourite games of all time.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
TAM is you, lower case idiot. I would have thought that you would have figured that out by now, since everyone calls you TAM. But I guess it's not that surprising that you haven't figured it out, since it appears that your reasoning skills are quite lacking.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Really?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Actions louder
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Actions louder
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
It's doublespeak
Blizzard wants to "unify" the community, but it does it through coercion and manipulation rather than just letting the features compete on their own accord! Battle.net 2.0 is a neat place, but I do not care for the greater community. I want a functional product. From where I live, the game is fairly laggy. Why do I have to pay $60 only to be watched every minute that I play?
Sorry, Blizzard. No LAN, no sale.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: It's doublespeak
Exactly! And that IS a lost sale. I won't buy it either.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: It's doublespeak
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: It's doublespeak
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: It's doublespeak
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Why so needy, devs?
All I can come up with is data mining.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
1. A computer with minimal system requirements for the game
2. The spare $$money to pay for a Video Game
3. an optional Internet connection
should understand that the internet has become a system, much more sophisticated, than our previous telecommunications. Though the internet is not everywhere we go, with the mobile web explosion it has reached and surpassed the use of cell phones and land lines. For communication, the internet has become a necessity just like our phones, especially in areas where they have merged or overlapped.
So for single player games, it should not be required to check with the net (I could understand only for activation)
For multiplayer games however, the default communication service is the internet because of wide audience. If the mass had to choose between LAN and internet multiplayer, the mass would choose internet. To me that's common sense for multiplayer (non-console) games.
LAN was a good feature and I wish they would keep it around for those who played the original Star Craft. But I also keep in mind the new Battle.net is a service to help connect us socially and transfer data more quickly through their servers.
We've seen different levels of DRM, and though us the consumer does not want any use of DRM there comes a time where we both have to compromise. DRM is an issue that will NOT go away in the foreseeable future. We will have to deal with DRM, but hopefully on a low to medium level. Game makers will learn that extreme DRM will have a major effect on sales. Not all DRM is bad for the customer, it just may not be exactly what we want and at the most it will be a slight annoyance. I'm of the opinion if you want a game or any product to work exactly how you want it to, make it/do it yourself, or compromise and purchase the product because it still holds enough value. Don't like it? Don't buy it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
old steam example
i do NOT play DRM'ed games, no matter how cool they are, and i damn makers that require PC's to have this access.
let me also point back to M$ just recently knocking some good games from their original xbox live servers. or people not being able to play their DRM'd music if i cant get its unlock commands
the entire DRM scheme is a joke, and cripples all honest people
rant rant, blah blah
[ link to this | view in chronology ]