Originally posted by Metal_Man88

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Given the price and obnoxious DRM, I'm going to pass Starcraft 2 entirely. They have to work for my money, not work me over for spending my money.

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What obnoxious DRM? Price I can understand, $60 is hefty for a single campaign.

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I thought he was referring to something else. So don't cheat. There are tons of ways to play the game however you want. Custom maps are not against the rules and there are loads of them out there. Plus there are in game codes you can use to "cheat" without using 3rd party software. I really don't see the need to use these other cheats when you can already do so much.

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Originally posted by Girlydragon

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I do believe that when the company decides what he can do privately whilst playing single player with his own game would count as obnoxious DRM.

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That's the thing, it's not your own game. Yes it is single player, but StarCraft 2 is unprecedented in combining single player with the online experience. This was their goal to begin with. You can still do just about whatever you want and play however you want as long as you don't break the EULA or ToS. I still don't understand why there was a need for the hacks. Between in game cheat codes, custom maps and trainers, theres nothing that you can't do within the scope of the ToS.

And when a company has spent that much money to develop a game, they have every right to decide what people do with it.

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That statement only applies to software developers and game programmers, etc. What they sell to you is basically permission to use their code. They're not selling you the actual code for the game. If thats how it worked with video games and software, then there wouldn't be any issue with editing it as you saw fit for your own needs (ala open source). It could go as far as allowing you to redistribute that code or modified code for your own gain since you purchased it out right. But thats not how it works.

For other merchandise and physical goods, you're buying a finished product that is yours to do whatever you want with. Thats where copyrights come in to prevent redistribution or rebranding, etc. Thats a whole different issue.

So lets take World of Warcraft as an example. Millions of people, including myself, pay $15 a month to play it. You pay for the game which allows you to use their code on your computer. You subscribe so you can access their servers. This doesn't give you any stake in the game or the company. So if Blizzard feels that they want to change something about the game, they can. If they want to stop a certain feature from being available in game, they can. There is nothing the users can do about it because they don't own any portion of the game which would allow them to say no we don't want this change or keep it the way it is.

Which made me think of something else semi off topic... If all 12 million subscribers owned 2 shares each of ATVI (Activision Blizzard stock), would that make us a majority over the CEO and give us sway over the games design and or patch changes? That would be interesting, but never would you get 12 million people to agree on something to make a decision.

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I'm sure if Nintendo could implement that policy they would. But cartridges didn't allow for that type of control. This is why companies (prominently Blizzard) are switching to DLC and "online connection required" types of games.

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Originally posted by Girlydragon

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I'm saying that it's obnoxious.

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Meh.



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