Battle.Net To Stop Piracy For Diablo 3

Who needs DRM when you’ve got battle.net? Blizzard believes they can authenticate legitimate users by stopping pirates from playing Diablo 3 online using their network service Battle.net. They’re saying the system is more like Steam than like EA’s solution of lock down methods using SecuROM.

Blizzard has used Battle.Net to stop piracy and allow only privileged people to play online since it was launched in ’97. This system, still in place, allows them to reuse the copy protection scheme they’ve been using, successfully, in the past.

“If you wanna play online on Battle.net with other players you’re going to have to have a legitimate copy,” Pardo said in a BlizzCon interview. Battle.net, he says, has “saved us from a lot of the PC piracy that I think hurts a lot of other single-player-only games.” (kotaku)

Although this copy protection is highly reasonable, it seems as if much of Diablo 3’s strong points lay in the awesome storyline. Apparently Blizzard is willing to let pirates play single player, and presumably with friends, using pirated copies.

Although it doesn’t seem fair for pirates to play through a single player campaign for free, it sure beats being harrased with awful copy protection along with potential gamer backlash.

0 thoughts on “Battle.Net To Stop Piracy For Diablo 3”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Episode 239: This Episode is DRM-freeEpisode 239: This Episode is DRM-free

This week, Paul is too busy unpacking in his new home in California, so it’s just Jonah and Jordan, as the news mainly deals with DRM. The Gaming Flashback this week is the Activision racer The Great American Cross-Country Road Race, while this week’s Gaming History doesn’t focus on a video game company or developer, but a fictional character instead, Mario’s favorite mount, Yoshi.

The news this week includes:

  • EA forum bans cause game bans
  • Research film states piracy’s up 20% in past 5 years
  • GOG sez customers hate DRM
  • Steam user database cracked
  • Uncharted 3 launches with 1.1M sold in first week

All that plus Reader Feedback and the Question of the Week, “What DRM would you tolerate?”

Episode 325: Civilized PodcastEpisode 325: Civilized Podcast

This week’s podcast has Dan Quick filling in for an ailing Jordan Lund, while Civilization V inevitably comes up in conversation with the Polycast host with Jonah Falcon. There’s no Gaming History or Gaming Flashback, but tons of news items.

The news includes:

  • Andrew Wilson named Electronic Arts CEO
  • PlayStation Vita TV announced
  • Sega buys Atlus for 14 billion yen
  • Star Trek video game “big disappointment” to J.J. Abrams
  • Chair on Shadow Complex 2: Fans “don’t want it more than we do”
  • Steam adopts Xbox One’s former family sharing program
  • Diablo III auction house closing in March 2014

There’s also some Listener Feedback from the T-shirt winning contestant.

Episode 528: Back From DisasterEpisode 528: Back From Disaster

Jonah’s desktop PC finally died completely from irretrievable hardware failure, and this episode was recorded clumsily on his cellphone. Meanwhile, TJ has been enjoying Apex Legends enormously, and gives it a rave review.

Otherwise, this week’s news includes:

  • Activision-Blizzard lays off 800 employees
  • World War Z gets an April release date
  • Dragon Quest Builders 2 comes to Switch, PS4 this summer
  • Chucklefish boss says Sony is responsible for lack of PS4 crossplay

The Question of the Week is “Which game would you love to see remade?”