Blizzard Blackout

Like most of the internet, I've been playing Diablo 3. Like most of the internet, I’ve been having trouble playing Diablo 3. Maybe I should give some background information for anyone who isn’t keeping up-to-date with gaming news.

Diablo 3 is a mostly single player game published by Blizzard, but as with all other Blizzard games you must be constantly connected to their servers play it. This is a DRM initiative that Blizzard has put into all of its games and it mystifies me for a number of reasons.

Firstly I’ve already bought this game. I paid money for the original box, I didn’t pirate it or get a copy. I bought a SINGLE PLAYER GAME, but to play it by myself I need to connect to Blizzard servers. I’ve been lucky that (touch wood) my internet connection has been stable for a couple days, but what if it wasn’t? If I had no internet connection then I would be forced to buy a pirated game (when I would rather buy original). I’ve ranted about that before so I won’t belabor the point… much.

How does it make business sense to do this? On one hand you can make a single player game that has only an upfront cost – once it’s being sold, then the only additional overheads you have are marketing, maintenance and patch development. Blizzard then adds these DRM servers into the mix: They now have to pay for all those servers, the bandwidth they use and people to manage and maintain them. That must cost a terrible amount of money. Somehow I don’t think they’ve looked at the cost evaluation of how much their DRM is saving them piracy wise vs how much it costs them to implement.

The thing that irritates me most about this DRM system is that it is failing. You can go now and check the social media site of your choice and find hundreds of people complaining that they cannot play their game. Why? Because Blizzard do not have enough servers to handle the load. Amazing. I bought an original copy of a SINGLE PLAYER game… and I can’t play it because of an initiative that is supposed to encourage me to do that. DRM is supposed to make it better to buy original than pirate…. Something is very wrong.

Blizzard have been very apologetic and have said that they are provisioning additional servers, so we must just hang on a bit and everything will be fine. I don’t think they can use that excuse. If anyone should know how to handle server load, it’s Blizzard. These are the same people who run World of Warcraft (which currently has 10.2 Million users) for Newton’s sake. Add to that the fact that Blizzard has to know the preorder numbers for their game and you arrive at the conclusion that they willfully screwed the pooch.

They KNEW that implementing this DRM would require them to have servers. They KNEW the number of people buying this game at launch. How could they NOT know that they wouldn’t have enough?

Blizzard: You screwed up. Fix it.

-Odd

“All that's left of proud Tristram, are ghosts and ashes.”

P.S. The game is awesome. Really super awesome. I just wish I could play it consistently.

Modern DRM

As I mentioned in my last post, I've just gotten back into computer gaming after many years absence. This means that I've had my first proper experience with modern DRM... and that was not positive.

For anyone who doesn't know: DRM stands for Digital Rights Management and in the context of gaming it means various software that is installed along with a game to ensure that it is not copied or pirated. Sounds good, right? Sounds fair? ... Well... not so much.

I'll be one of the first people to say that developers have a right to protect their products from being stolen (which is what piracy is) and I always buy legitimate products when and where I can, but the way companies are handling DRM is broken. It's horrible, and here's why:

Every game you buy these days has to authenticate itself online through whatever portal the developer is associated with (Steam, Orgin, Windows Live, etc.) and by itself that would be fine... but all these portal programs need to be updated and then the game itself needs to be patched (often on the day it releases). The net effect of all this is that (in South Africa at least) it takes hours (literally hours) before you can play a game that you bought.

As a case in point, a while ago a few friends and I bought copies of Kingdoms of Amalur and we all got together to play it. Here's the catch... three of us bought legal copies and one went down to the flea market and got a pirated copy at half price.

For those of us who bought it legit, it took 5 hours (5 Fraking hours!) to get the client and game to install, update and play. The guy who pirated it was playing it in half and hour.

So this is what I don't get: Why are games developers making it more difficult (and expensive) to buy legal copies of their games than it is to get pirated ones? I could understand if all this DRM had stopped people pirating games... but it hasn't. You can find them all over PirateBay or at any flea market you care to explore.

Now there are reports that Sony will block used games in their next console. What madness is this? It's like they're going out of their way to push people into piracy.

The world is mad, getting madder and we're all doomed... Doomed it tell you! Doomed!

-Odd

"Humans make illogical decisions" -Spock