The ever-popular debate over DRM shows no signs of slowing down, proving to be one of the most polarizing topics among developers. Blizzard, creator of the absurdly popular World of Warcraft, has come out on the “against” side of the argument, claiming that cool features, not restrictive software, will win the war against piracy.
“If we’ve done our job right people will want to be connected while they’re playing the single player campaign so they can stay connected to their friends and earn the achievements,” claims co-founder Frank Pearce. “The best approach from our perspective is to make sure that you’ve got a full-featured platform that people want to play on, where their friends are, where the community is.
“We need our development teams focused on content and cool features, not anti-piracy technology.”
Speaking as a consumer who feels that most forms of DRM only punish those who bought the game, Pearce is definitely making sense to me. More than that though, DRM is almost like admitting that your game doesn’t have what it takes to make players want to part with their cash and stay invested. Cool features with clever online components, as opposed to lazy and unimaginative DRM, has proven successful. Simply going “rawr rawr you are all thieves and we don’t trust you” has proven to breed naught by contempt.
Blizzard: DRM a ‘losing battle’ [Videogamer]
