[Infowarrior] - Blizzard: DRM is a waste of everyone’s time

[Richard Forno]

Blizzard: DRM is a waste of everyone’s time
by Nicholas Deleon on May 27, 2010

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/05/27/blizzard-drm-is-a-waste-of-everyones-time/

“We need our development teams focused on content and cool features, not anti-piracy technology.” Thank you, finally! See, Blizzard gets it. The company’s co-founder, Frank Pearce, recently told the good folks at Video Gamer that he thinks the fight against DRM is misguided. Not that he supports end-users going around torrenting his games till the end of time, but that the way to “beat” piracy is to embrace gamers and treat them like complete jerks.

Part of the process is the new Battle.net, which launches with StarCraft II. Its DRM is rather simple: a one-time online activation. After that, you can play online or off without having to worry about Blizzard’s mommy-state servers keeping tabs on your authentication status. No, Blizzard isn’t the only company whose DRM works like that, but it does highlight the idea that, “Oh, well, all the top publishers see piracy as a huge, catastrophic issue, so clearly we need to implement ridiculous DRM policies.”

Pearce also called DRM a “losing battle.” By that he means what we’ve been saying forever: no matter how robust your DRM is, it will be cracked. It is a complete waste of resources (time, money, sandwiches, etc.) developing trying to outfox crackers. (These crackers, most of the time, aren’t even interested in pirating the game, but merely seeing if they’re “hacking” skills are as sharp as possible. That people can then pirate these games is but a nasty side effect.) There’s too many of them out there to develop a truly hack-proof system. So, spend those resources making sure your game isn’t a pile of dross! Maybe then it’ll sell?

Sigh, if only other PC publishers would follow Blizzard’s lead here…