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.

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“We have heard your requests over the past months and here is our plan for The Sims 3,” Sims development head Rod Humble stated on the official website. “The game will have disc-based copy protection – there is a serial code just like The Sims 2. To play the game there will not be any online authentication needed. (casualgaming.biz)

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We’re sticking with the thinking that this is a “good faith” jesture to the gamers for how they “rocked the vote” on the last title as The Sims is one of the best selling series on the PC gaming platform. Lots of sales with lots of fans, why interrupt that momentum with ugly DRM whiplash?

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