xXBatmanXx wrote on Aug 10, 2011, 17:45:
...There are games that are 10+ years old that people still play...

Creston wrote on Aug 10, 2011, 17:50:
I honestly can't wait for someone to "Sony" battle.net the day after Diablo 3 goes live.

The howls of fury from all the people who claim that "if it's down, you go play something else! Who cares?!" will be like sweet, sweet ambrosia.

Creston

Fibrocyte wrote on Aug 10, 2011, 17:37:

D_K_night wrote on Aug 10, 2011, 17:08:
honestly WTF is your problem ppl. If you're playing a game on your GAMING MACHINE, you're connected. Yes, you are. You're a big fat liar if you actually unplug yourself before you start the game up.

Gaming on the go? What's your iphone for? You really gonna lug that big, bad laptop with you to go camping? lol

Hey! There is no room for common sense in this thread. Soon they'll start calling you a troll.

D_K_night wrote on Aug 10, 2011, 17:08:
honestly WTF is your problem ppl. If you're playing a game on your GAMING MACHINE, you're connected. Yes, you are. You're a big fat liar if you actually unplug yourself before you start the game up.

Gaming on the go? What's your iphone for? You really gonna lug that big, bad laptop with you to go camping? lol

ItBurn wrote on Aug 10, 2011, 14:42:
I think that the always online thing is great. It allows developers to protect their games from pirates and it doesn't have the negative side effects of most DRM methods. This is perfect DRM. I don't know a single person who isn't online 100% of the time. Sure there will be some people negatively affected by this, but there's also a lot of other advantages and I think that this is a step forward.

jsmith wrote on Aug 10, 2011, 14:31:
Seen on Zenimax / Bethesda's Rage forums. I smiled at the last part.

Confused Fan wrote on Aug 10, 2011, 14:13:
Why Mr. Willits would you condone 'always on' internet connections for PC games? Do you really feel it necessary even for games with single player components? How about single player only games with zero multiplayer interaction?

I personally am surprised to see a man from a company who primarily makes games with a decent amount of emphasis on single player suggest 'always on' necessity. Ubisoft was demonized for attempting this policy, especially with single player games. Whether it was the fact those without constant access to the internet (laptops, traveling, various locations around the world, et cetera) or the fact that the Ubisoft servers had authentication issues from time to time and prevented people playing the game for extended amounts of time, the general consensious was extremely negative. So much so that while Ubisoft tried to claim it was successful against piracy, they changed their policy for a number of game releases. Could it be to a lack of PC sales?

As for Diablo 3, did Mr. Willits not see the 'surprised reaction' by Robert Bridenbecker towards the negative backlash the 'always on' announcement garnered? Even with a game such as Diablo 3 where the real emphasis is on multiplayer (and now flat rate fees from the real cash auction house), people still want the option to play solo. They could be traveling, out at a cafe without wifi support, at home with the internet out of commission, in a dorm room with essential ports blocked by the network, or just anti social, people want the option to be able to play single player games or single player portions of games without the need of an internet connection. And in Diablo 3's case, all data would be stored server side (characters, items, ingame currency, et cetera) and with no way to introduce single player items into the online portion of the game, there doesn't seem to be any reason not to allow offline access. It worked just fine in Diablo 2. Could the 'always on' connection just be an attempt to 1) stop piracy with this intrusive DRM and 2) attempt to get even a small fraction of the normally offline players to take a look at the real money auction house? After all, money is money and profitability seems to be the number one goal for today's businesses.

And for always being up-to-date, PC games are not updated like top end antivirus software. They do not get updated 10+ times a day, week after week, month after month. Steam seems to do a great job at keeping software current, and it also allows players to play offline. At the very least, why not just have an optional phone home feature to look for updates, which players can choose to use if they have access to an internet connection. This style of updating is all that is really needed for keeping games up-to-date with the latest patches.

Please do not go down that road Mr. Willits, or try to bring Id Software down that road. Activision, EA and Ubisoft have already won the awards for screwing with the PC playerbase with numerous actions over the years. Why not stand in the corner of the PC gamers and become a champion of the people? I think Valve is getting awfully lonely over there.

Ruffiana wrote on Aug 10, 2011, 13:40:

ASeven wrote on Aug 10, 2011, 13:25:

Ruffiana wrote on Aug 10, 2011, 13:12:

This is the future. Anyone not wearing blinders saw this coming a decade ago. Adapt, or get a new hobby. Cause no amount or raging in the comments of gaming news sites will change the minds of the suits ponying up the money to make our digital crack.

Thank goodness we actually have an alternative with the indies, huh? You know, those devs that treat gamers with respect and not as their private wallets. It's this kind of decisions that pushes gamers to indies, and thank god you're in the tiny majority in accepting this. Be with mainstream games, the rest of us will be having fun playing rreal fun games. You know, indies.

And good strawman use by throwing pracy. Notch doesn't care about it, he's become rich nonetheless.

Notch doesn't care about piracy because he's didn't invest hundreds of millions of someone else's money into making his game.

Come talk to me about Notch in 20 years when his ambitions have reached beyond what he's capable of personally bankrolling. Remember that id started off as an indy as well and its first games were shareware. People don't care about piracy if they're making money hand-over-fist. It's when they stop making a big return on the investment that they start looking at all those illegal copies in the hands of people who didn't give them a cent.

There's no reason outside of combating piracy to require a persistent connection to play a single-player game. None. Patching, DLC, initial authentication, all that can be done without a persistent connection. So if you think bringing piracy up is a sraw-man...I simply have no response. It's the primary reason, and all of the benefits are convenient side-effects of attempting to control piracy on one of the highest profile games that will be released this decade.

Dades wrote on Aug 6, 2011, 18:28:
Just what we all wanted, 15 different logins and clients for every developer and publisher combination out there. Next up the UPlay client from Ubisoft and the Activision offering Call of Download.

Dave Rpri wrote on Aug 3, 2011, 19:40:
Im surprised it took this long...the one that stopped me cold was the very clear statement that 1 year after purchase they no longer have to provide you the game to download, regardless of your account status.

Dev wrote on Aug 3, 2011, 19:07:

^Drag0n^ wrote on Aug 3, 2011, 18:59:
It almost hurts to say this, but consoles are looking like the only way you can ""own" your copy of the game nowadays.

That's certainly not the case. You can get banned and stuff taken away on consoles too. In fact here's a hilarious page that where people lie and beg and try to get unbanned from xbox bans (its copied from official xbox forum) http://whywasibanned.com/
Or with PS3 lose access to stuff you bought for months when the online services went down, they took a bunch of games with them since some of them had extra DRM layered on top that made you login to PSN to play single player games.

RollinThundr wrote on Aug 3, 2011, 18:25:

StingingVelvet wrote on Aug 3, 2011, 17:55:

Creston wrote on Aug 3, 2011, 17:35:
Steam says that they CAN cancel your account for whatever reason they deem valid, yes. They do NOT say that if you're absent for two years, they'll just delete it.

Sure, but either way if you have a problem with companies having the power to take your games away you should be against both. Similarly if you have a problem with games only being available on certain sites or being kept as exclusives you should dislike Valve doing it as much as EA.


No matter how people want to paint it I am not some defender of EA and Origin. I don't like ANY of these fucking DRM platforms that get people to accept them due to social networking bullshit I couldn't care less about. I am not a fan of ANY company having power over your access post-purchase, be it Valve or EA or anyone else. The hypocrisy comes in when one company is allowed to do without much complaint and another can't.

This ^

Silicon Avatar wrote on Aug 1, 2011, 18:35:
Blizzard seems to be trying really hard to spin all this as a good thing and it doesn't really add any value for me. It doesn't really affect me negatively either. It just kind of makes me go "meh".

If I were on dial-up, cell phone, satellite, or some metered internet service I'd probably be pretty unhappy.

Creston wrote on Aug 1, 2011, 18:32:

^Drag0n^ wrote on Aug 1, 2011, 17:51:

"It's evil until we figure out how to get a piece of it..."

That's kind of the way of everything, though... :|

StingingVelvet wrote on Aug 1, 2011, 17:41:
BE PART OF A SOCIAL NETWORK OR FUCK OFF!