Many members of the military are avid gamers and overseas deployments can leave soldiers without internet. Soldiers don’t expect much comfort during a deployment, but many still get to enjoy playing video games during their free time. If a soldier was to buy a game with ‘Always Online DRM’, they could not play it upon leaving their homes, and would likely not buy the game for this reason. A minority will vote with their wallets on May 15th, the release date of Diablo 3, and be the vocal minority making Activision Blizzard aware that they are doing a disservice to them.
If Blizzard's servers go down, you can't even play singleplayer.
To concede a few points, internet is available on large military bases in places like Afghanistan, but this isn’t a free service. The service costs $70 for 30 days. This service is incredibly slow, providing download rates that average 28kbps, thus resulting in choppy, often broken calls to family back home. Secondly, the largest digital distribution platform, Steam, is a form of DRM itself. Users can put Steam into ‘offline mode’ which makes Steam games playable offline. Even still, Steam will occasionally have an error stating it must go online to re-contact to the ‘key server’. Until then, some games are unplayable. This isn’t ideal DRM, but it’s understandable that publishers want to protect their intellectual property.
Thrifty gamers commonly select games with a lot of replay value so that they get the most for their money. Not everyone has the disposable income needed to buy a plethora of games. For this reason, why would anyone spend money on a product they can’t frequently use? No rational consumer should buy any product that can only be used after jumping through hoops. No one would buy a pair of shoes that require a constant 3G connection to ensure they weren’t stolen. It would detract from the product’s value. Why do some Diablo fans and Blizzard see Diablo 3 differently?
There are instances of DRM that are acceptable, but since pirates continue to find ways to remove DRM, why should DRM create an even larger inconvenience to paying customers? Gabe Newell of Valve Software has a different solution. In an interview with the University of Cambridge’s newspaper, Newell said, “Prior to entering the Russian market, we were told that Russia was a waste of time because everyone would pirate our products. Russia is now about to become [Steam's] largest market in Europe”. Newell believes making Valve’s digital distribution service more convenient than piracy provides greater value to prospective customers.
Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve Software
Always online DRM has hurt Ubisoft in the past. When speaking with PC Gamer in the summer of 2011, Ubisoft claimed that there was a decline in pirated Ubisoft games. They made no mention of how this impacted their sales. However, in March of 2012, Ubisoft spoke with Eurogamer saying they were attempting to create a “less intrusive, less cumbersome” DRM. Ubisoft intends to offer features like automatic updating and “companion gaming” somewhat similar to features seen in modern MMOs. Their goal is to make their services and features more attractive when compared to a cracked version of the same game. Once satisfied, Ubisoft will begin to relax their DRM. This was after their release of From Dust, a PC game intended to be activated once by going online. The game instead released with ‘Always Online DRM’ and customers backlashed. Ubisoft began work on a patch to remove the DRM and offered a refund through Steam if customers did not want to wait. Michael Pachter, a research analyst for Wedbush Securities stated that Ubisoft’s game sales were down by 90% since ‘Always On DRM’ was implemented. While the decline of sales may not be a direct effect of the hefty DRM being implemented, Ubisoft is aware of the correlation. Ubisoft’s customers voted with their wallets to make Ubisoft understand that their DRM is unacceptable. Why hasn’t Activision Blizzard taken notice? Perhaps they expect enough people to buy the game no matter what?
It’s difficult to see an issue with a company attempting to protect the product they worked hard to create, but in this case it’s hard to believe that the end justifies the means. There is a small vocal minority unwilling to purchase the highly anticipated Diablo 3, but Blizzard either hasn’t noticed or are willing to ignore the admittedly minor loss in sales they will experience. Soldiers are able to play games with ‘Always Online DRM’ at home, why then should they not be able to use the product they paid for at any time? Blizzard’s Robert Bridenbecker dismissed it as “the nature of the industry”. The industry needs to change.
I won’t be buying Diablo 3 because of this DRM and because of what I see as a constant stream of smug BS coming from the people involved.
In particular is this quote from Senior Producer Alex Mayberry: “One misconception is that Diablo III is a single-player game. It’s not. It’s a multiplayer game you can play alone. I see the arguments about, well, I won’t be able to play it on my laptop while traveling. But you know what? When you get off the plane and get to your friend’s house, you can log in and play your character. And if you throw in the fact that we have more tools for the community, more features on Battle.net, the auction house. The online requirement is necessary for the type of game we’re building.”
So i’m suppose to play Diablo III while at my friend’s house rather than, you know, spending time with him. All that stuff he mentions does require being online, yes, but not ALWAYS online. If you want to use those things you log in. If you just want to play on your own, play offline. It’s a terrible decision and it’s why they won’t be getting my money.
I’ve heard it said that ‘Always Online DRM’ was justified in this case because it prevented cheating. Why wouldn’t Blizzard just keep your singleplayer and multiplayer characters separate like they did in Diablo 2? It’s ridiculous that anyone thinks that’s justification for DRM.
Took these idiots 12 years to release, from what I’ve seen on live streams a very average game. Splitting up multiplayer and single player woulda taken them like another 3 years.
Ne wayz I watched a diablo battle, and decided I won’t be purchasing when he did all the same moves as in D2. Blizzard u suck and u’ll prolly sue streamers cuz they cause u business rather than putting out a decent game. D3 had so much potential, and in 12 years you couldn’t harness any of it.
At the end of the day, I understand why companies want to put drm in their games. And I’m okay with drm as long as it doesnt get in the way of my experience as a paying customer.
What I CANNOT accept is the fact that pirates are getting a better product. Within a week, Diablo 3 will be cracked, allowing pirates to play offline while paying customers won’t even be able to play single player if the servers are overloaded. Considering that this is a major release, I would also expect pirates to find a way to play Diablo 3 with eachother fairly soon, as has been done with many major multiplayer releases (Left 4 Dead comes to mind). Why should I pay full retail for Diablo 3 when I’ll recieve better treatment getting the game for free?
I don’t plan on playing Diablo 3 at all in honestly, but this is probably the worst example of intrusive DRM in the industry right now, and it irks me how little attention its getting. Thanks for reporting on this, I’m genuinely enjoying the site so far.
Note: Foul language in post.
I whole heartedly disagree to the ‘drm is acceptable, so long as it is not intrusive’. That’s a lie companies pass of as the truth. It’s pretentious bullshit. CD Projekt have proved that the best way to sell your game is let nothing get in the way of the consumer and the game. They executed this wonderfully with Witcher 2 and shall receive my full support in all other DRM free projects.
Piracy is so rampant because it’s just easier to download the game, and ignore all forms of DRM, than to purchase the game and jump through all the publishers little hoops. There are some who are inherently ‘evil’ for pirating and some who cannot afford to buy games now, but (this is all speculation) I know a lot of pirates who pirate things because it’s just easier and makes more sense.
I do understand wanting to protect intellectual property but it’s being done in such a bullshit way. CD Keys, server activation, always online connections. It’s fucking bullshit. The only industry that seems to get it right is the music industry. iTunes, Bandcamp, Amazon and other music downloading services are probably the best example of this. They function. They have everything the consumer wants at a decent price rate, and multiple options, and best of all, no DRM. Bandcamp is a brilliant service, if for no other reason, because it’s a simple system that functions. Listen to music online for free, and if you want to download it simply click buy. They don’t even require you to sign up (which is another broken system, that really requires a revelation to fix). Pay the price asked or set your own if the option is offered, chose the method payment that suits you best , and they send you an immediate email and that’s it. You’re good to listen to your songs offline as well. There is no bullshit DRM there, and people still make billions in profits. The music industry may get a lot of things wrong, but it certainly knows how to sell it’s products.
The gaming/movie industry is way behind in that way, and until publishers learn that DRM is effectively rendered useless eventually (in cases games have been released days before the actual release date) and only causes a problem to people that legitimately paid for the product, the industry won’t be going anywhere.
You’re right about one thing with the music industry. If you make a product easy to get legitimately, you turn pirates into profit.
Take the source with a grain of salt, though.
http://torrentfreak.com/music-piracy-continues-to-decline-thanks-to-spotify-110928/
Having to deal with lag and disconnects in singleplayer is bizarre. I can see non-DRM related justifications for having a game like this online at all times (inventory persistence, cloud saves, etc) but it’s obvious the main reason for this move was to prevent piracy. On one hand internet connections are so good these days I doubt I’d ever really be inconvenienced, but on the other I should be able to play my damn game whenever I want. Seems like we own less and less of the software we buy these days.
I agreed with Kaylem and I feel D3 is deplorable in it’s treatment of potential customers.
I live just outside of the service area to get high speed internet. I can use my Droid phone and tether it to my computer which does allow me to surf and get small downloads. I can even play some Mass Effect 3 multiplayer on weeknights. (weekends there is too much server lag.)
Blizzard has decided to retrict all access to their game to online only which flies in the face of the previous two installments of one of my favorite games of all time. I should be able to have a bunch of friends over and have a LAN party, but with D3 I cannot because all games must be hosted by Battle.net.
I fully expect this game to be cracked within weeks and patch released to “trick” the software into thinking it is online as well as a tool to create your own LAN for easy home parties.
Perhaps then I will buy the game and use those tools, but I’m not even sure I want to give Blizzard my money. And I won’t stoop to piracy.
I think it’s shameful that in many cases pirates do get better games these days because they by-pass so much of the BS.
Movies are terrible too. I have to skip 10 different addes and a lame intro before I can even press play, then I have to read FBI warnings that it’s illegal to pirate the movie (when I bought it legally) then more unskippable disclaimers about how the opinions aren’t the opinions of blah blah blah and more disclaimers then I can finally watch the movie. A pirated copy has none of that garbage. JUST THE MOVIE!
And I’ll say this too. Pirates are going to pirate regardless. They would rather spend a hundred hours hacking a game to get it for free even if they could buy it for a penny. But if companies put out a quality product and charge a reasonable price, reasonable, honest people will buy it. That’s it.
They need to stop focusing the “lost sales” and treat the paying customers with the respect they deserve. Because they “lost sales” are from people who will find a way to hack the game regardless of any of the security measures they put in place. They should be more worried about people like me, who have been anticipating this game and will likely NOT be purchasing it because of their self-serving draconian measures.
And again, I will NOT pirate the game. If it is worth playing, it’s worth paying.
I fail to see how Blizzard continues to justify it’s always online DRM as if it were nothing. Soon game companies will continue to do so, seeing as Blizzard ‘pulled it off with Diablo 3′. The most disappointing fact though, is that Blizzard are fully capable of tweaking some code and making a completely offline game, or can release the server for offline use, but don’t wish to do so, for some godforsaken reason. It really is unfortunate for what was once the most consumer friendly company take horrible decisions for it’s consumers. (The original Starcraft shipped with 7 extra keys for all you friends, one person had to buy it and everyone else could install and play together, it was a beautiful system.)
Living in a third world country, with a horrible internet connection, unable to play any sort of multiplayer, I have grown to become what seems to be a minority. A singleplayer ‘gamer’. I enjoy all sorts of singleplayer games, from roguelikes to adventure games.
What I’m trying to say, soldiers aren’t the only ones with unreliable internet connections, the minority may be larger than you think, though it is still, a minority.
I’m glad this article was published and am very much enjoying the direction this website is heading in, I look forward to what becomes of it in the future.
Exactly. There’s a market to be had in those countries where internet service is poor. Developers need to see that their products aren’t compatible with gamers in under-developed countries if they require an internet connection. They’re not all simply pirates – some of them are potential customers that can’t meet all the requirements of the product.
Agreed.
What about members of the military that are stationed in rural or underdeveloped areas? They’re screwed too.
Diablo 2 worked fine in my opinion. A separate offline character for single players or LAN enthusiasts (like myself) and online Battle.net accounts for multiplayer & ladder rankings. You could mod the offline game, cheat if you wanted to etc and it had NO impact on the multiplayer/online game.
Why couldn’t they do that again? Heck, if they said they WOULD do it, it just wouldn’t be part of launch then that would at least be something. But so far they seem to refuse to give the singleplayer/offline mode any thought or that it should even be a part of the game.
I’ve been playing Blizzard games ever since the original Warcraft came out. They’ve always released great games and part of what made them truly great was support for the modding community and lack of any restrictions. Diablo is one of my all-time favorite series, so it was pretty disheartening to hear that they got their greedy, money-grubbing hands on it and infected it with the always-online DRM plague.
It seems like all Blizzard cares about these days is making a profit. Ever since World of Warcrack became wildly popular, their entire motive turned to money. When I think about all the money they have to be making from that game and then look at how bad it has become, I can’t help but wonder what they are actually doing with all those profits. They clearly aren’t investing it back into the game’s development; if they were, it wouldn’t be as bad as it is. Every expansion is riddled with bugs, PvP is completely unbalanced and has been for a really long time, and other end-game content is pointless because they release new patches frequently enough to make all the new gear you grinded for completely obsolete. Of course, they’ll be happy to tell you otherwise, but actions speak louder than words and it seems like they really care about making sure people hear their words and ignore their actions.
For Blizzard, forget about making another truly mind-blowing game, they just make an “okay” game and hype it up to a point where they know all their fanboys will buy it no matter what. Look at Starcraft 2. That game is basically Starcraft 1 in 3D with some minor alterations, except you can’t play it offline, there’s no LAN support, and they split the actual campaign into three separate games that you’ll have to pay for, because who really cares about single-player these days, right? Everyone I know personally that I used to play Starcraft 1 with agrees that the sequel is a complete let-down. The only thing I can applaud them for is including modding support.
And of course, there’s Diablo 3. A game I’ve anticipated ever since it was announced, maybe even before that. A game I prayed for after I saw what they did with Starcraft 2. A game I wept for after they announced the always-online requirement, even for single player. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but you get the point. Every bone-headed decision in this game makes me wonder who is actually running the show behind the scenes.
I am in complete awe at the fact that Blizzard decided to include an auction house in the game. Part of the fun in Diablo 2 was joining games to trade with people face-to-face. I think a better solution would have been the inclusion of a “market” server or something similar with no game world to go out and kill stuff in, just a place where much more than 8 players could join and you could then have many people to trade with; perhaps you’d even be able to set up a bazaar so that people could peruse your merchandise while you were AFK. And the fact that Blizzard included a real-life money AH just further proves my point that all they are interested in is profit. I even read a comment from a Blizzard employee who was trying to convince people that Blizzard doesn’t intend to make any money from it, even though they charge a listing fee and take a cut from every sale! As if they didn’t calculate this stuff beforehand. I mean, give me a break!
I’ve already read reviews of people complaining because they kept getting disconnected from their single-player game (which is really just a multiplayer game that you’re playing alone, according to Blizzard). People have even been complaining about the loot being uninteresting and undermined by the auction house! Serves them right for supporting this junk. When I pay for software, I expect to actually OWN it, not rent it. All these launch problems could have been avoided simply by including an offline single-player mode. Their excuse of, “well when you switch to multiplayer then you’d have to make a new character” holds no weight. Don’t you think some of us WANT to keep the two separate? Or maybe that some of us don’t have access to an internet connection all the time? It’s clear to me that the real motive behind all these decisions is to line their pockets with even more gold.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe companies should be paid for their hard work if you want to play their game, but when they so aggressively and ignorantly include all these draconian measures just to stop a few pirates, the person that really gets hurt is the legitimate customer. I think the thing that irks me the most is how fervently Blizzard skews their reasoning for including always-online DRM. Every time the topic is brought up, they downplay it and claim it’s for the player’s own good, so that cheaters don’t bring their hacked single-player character into multiplayer, etc., etc. I don’t think that problem even existed in Diablo 2. Even so, most cheating problems were easily resolved in Diablo 2 with the ladder system and could have been avoided altogether in Diablo 3 with offline single-player.
In the end, pirates will still crack the game and they’ll actually be able to make the game playable in offline mode. Pirates will end up with a more desirable product than the one you’d have to pay for. I truly wish people would learn to boycott this kind of behavior from companies. Money corrupts, that should be clear to everyone by now. As much as I want to buy and play this game, I refuse to support Blizzard’s decisions and therefore will not be giving them $60 to rent Diablo 3.
Besides, Torchlight 2 is right around the corner and it sounds way better than this overrated pile of crap. It includes everything Blizzard has done away with in their games — LAN support, offline single-player, moddability — and is priced much more reasonably at $20! Don’t even worry about Diablo 3, soldiers abroad, it ain’t even worth the effort. Instead, support a game company that isn’t completely up it’s own butt! If you pre-order it from Steam, you even get a copy of the original Torchlight for free!
+1. I am not a rich man, but I can easily afford video games. However, I intend to download a pirated copy of Diablo 3 when it becomes available. Why? Because I can’t (that is, am unable rather than unwilling) to play online all the time. I live in a rural area and have a crappy Internet connection.
The fact that I’m screwing Blizzard, rather than them screwing me, is just icing on the cake.
PS- I’m paying for Torchlight and Torchlight 2, for precisely the reasons that the above poster listed. Just to be clear, Blizzard: I am paying for something that’s easy to get for free, because I like Runic’s attitude and hate yours.
Blizzards primary interest is supporting the real money auction house for which they take a cut of every sale. To keep this fair and legal they have to keep the game constantly online and not allow any access to saved data locally.
Why is 60 quid not enough to buy a content complete game these days? Blizzard have hyped the hell out of this game for years, selling merchandise and using the Diablo 3 brand to lure players to expos and such. And now that they’ve actually released they game they are taking the place of gold sellers and farming bots by legitimising real money transactions for digital items as long as its under their control and they get their cut.
Urg, gaming is getting seedier by the release day
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnyegriffiths/2012/05/15/the-web-responds-unhappily-to-diablo-3s-server-issues/
Diablo 3 just went down for server maintenance.
Wrong link, but still hilarious. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5051765603
Diablo II was and is still my all time favorite game. I have never played it on the internet as well. I have been deployed to Iraq 3 times and Afghanistan once, and have never had personal internet. Sure, back in the day on my first two trips there was no internet, at least down at the company level, and a majority of folks you may hear of that do in fact have and or use internet down range use it in specific areas, waiting in line as a morale tool to communicate back home and such. And for any military member serving down range that does have personal internet, well they live on some big FOB (forward operating base) which isnt all that rough of living at all. I have always spent my deployments living out of outposts, “that house looks nice, put some sandbags in the window and get us a generator for uninterrupted power”. And when said electricity was available, an hour or so of Diablo II after a long mission was nice. And after impatiently waiting for over a decade for Diablo III and playing Diablo II over and over again the anticipation has turned into disappointment and I will not be buying the game.
Can I connect to the internet right now, here at home an play? Well yes, currently. But the last three years before my current assignment I spent in a rural area of Louisiana where the only form of internet was an Att aircard that was the most absolute worse service I have ever know.
Thanks Blizzard for letting so many down!
If this is specifically about members in the military, it’s always been that way. Even in basic training people were spending well over $60 a month just so they could use the internet on their laptops on the weekends. The lifestyle military people live is like that, requiring their members to sometimes pre-pack an emergency bag that they can grab with all their equipment and be on a plane within the hour on missions lasting months. I think you should have left it as an example of how the DRM doesn’t work properly, or Blizzard’s model is flawed rather than try to shoehorn in military pride to make a point.
Diablo 3′s DRM doesn’t work because they’re trying to base it off of WoW’s, which is a completely different model and has a different fanbase.
I fully understand what the military requires of its members, as I am a sergeant in the US Army with six years of service. I wasn’t attempting to cash in on patriotism to establish a point. I was merely attempting to speak from personal experience, as I was unable to play some games with GFWL when deployed.
If you look at my quote from Gabe Newell, you will see it’s not all about the military. I will admit I could have fleshed out a better, more rounded opinion rather than focus on the military for the first two paragraphs. A good point would have been people in underdeveloped countries missing out on great games like this or server instability creating issues. I agree with you there. However, I was not attempting to simply use military pride as an arguing point. The military is simply a fairly large customer base for the video game industry.
I’m from Brazil (uehuehuehue etc) and I can tell you that a lot of my friends and acquaintances that bought the game suffered from latency issues, rubber banding, disconnections etc during their single player games.
That is absolutely unacceptable. I have been a long time fan of Blizzard games, specially of the Diablo franchise, but given this bullshit I decided to skip on it entirely. I could put up with the bad art direction and even the alleged terrible writing, but this…. this is just too much. I would feel dirty paying for this game. I pre-ordered Torchlight instead, and I’ll probably end up supporting Grim Dawn as well.
Blizzard is dead to me if they keep this up.
I’ve been watching the blizzhack forums and they are close to getting a full game emulator to work. So far they have most of it working just fixing a few glitches and loading errors. It took 3 weeks to crack the beta and it’s looking like it will take about the same to crack the retail. I was going to buy Diablo3 even had it on pre-order. Then I saw what kind of DRM blizzard was using and I canceled my order. I can play the beta right now on private servers if I want they are still running until they get the full crack working. For someone with 100mbps down and 10mbps up running a server is easy, simple and fast. They can connect 500 people and still have bandwidth to spare. Sorry blizzard this will be the first Diablo game I DON’T BUY. Such a shame I have to crack the game to play offline. But since I can join private servers last time I checked they had over 10,000 members who cares :) I can play the game whenever I want OFFLINE or ONLINE. I can setup my own server and play lag free and let others in Australia join my server for LESS LAG THEN THE BLIZZARD SERVERS!!! It’s pathetic blizzard…
The reason piracy is growing is that gamers get tired of DRM like this. Many games have DRM that is getting more extreme every year, like always online, online activation, and spyware like origin. I have had many bad experiences with DRM and gamers feel like they don’t matter any more, being treated as pirates having to jump through the hoops to prove they are not only ends with bad results. For me they crossed the line with online activation and with activation limits for most titles. Also with the quality really down in pc games, with many recent titles really being console ports to the pc. That is one to two months waiting after the console realease for the pc version.
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How very funny…
I submitted a complain to BW tech support under their “Complaints and Suggestions” tab and was told
“Right now they are only accepting this kind of information through the forums.”
However, you can ONLY post on the forums if you have created an in-game Diablo 3 or WOW character. WHAT A JOKE!!
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I just wanted to note to all the people saying the game will be cracked soon. It has already been done… since beta. google mooege.
I actually live in Colombia where my internet can be touch and go, especially when it rains. That said, I still wouldn’t have bought the game because A. The bad quality and B. The military-grade smug pouring out of Blizzard HQ, “lol you know you’re going to but it anyway virgin”, and the truly sad examples of humanity that comprise Blizzard’s core fanbase and DEFEND this bullshit. Homonculi, all of them.
Although Always-Online DRM has legitimately stopped me from buying a game before, and it was one I was looking forward to and prepared to pay full price for as well: Assassin’s Creed Bloodlines. I ended up just pirating it.
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There’s only one wrong fact in this article.
Steam is not DMR. On the other hand, Steamworks is DMR.
You’d be surprised to pick one of your indie games bought from Steam and boot them up from the executable without having to start the platform.