Legal Opinion: How Cloud Gaming Turned Piracy Into Espionage

[Nekosan]

No they The difficulty modes though not as diverse as mods can be will keep players moving though, Inferno looks good.

You can only play the same content for so long before you need a change, upping the difficulty level doesn't help.

[TRB]

It's called Diablo 3. It's the next installment in the series.

Because Dragon Age 2 was clearly the next in the series from Dragon Age: Origins, right? its not like they were two totally different games completely unconnected to each other with the only link being 'Dragon Age' in the title, right?


pro-tip: having an indexed name in no way dictates any direct relationship between 2 games, you'll need better reasoning then that.

[Bluefire]

First some notes because people seem to take it the wrong way.
1: I already own two copies of d3, both came with a $0 price tag.
2: I will be playing this online/lan (lan prefered) 100% with my wife. If we play it, we may ignore it completely if she doesnt enjoy the game.. $0 price so we dont car).
3: For me shared bank was enough for me to not care about online-only.

With that being said.
-First point.
Multiplayer = Other players REQUIRED.
Singleplayer = Other players _NOT_ REQUIRED.
Agreed ? Anyone care to argue that point at all ? Anyone retared enough to somehow think that singleplayer requires more than one person ?

-Second point.
Core content in a "Hack n' Slash" game.
Combat, Level up, More combat.
Many "features" exist in the differnt hack and slash games, core stays the same across them all.
Anyone care to argue with that ?

Anyone manage to argue with those points in some way ?
So...
You do _NOT_ REQUIRE multiplayer to complete any core content in diablo3.
Yes it encouraged for marketing reasons aka RMA
You personally may enjoy the OPTIONS present in online play.
Encouragement and options aside it is _NOT_ REQUIRED.
If multiplayer is the ONLY reason for a network connection.. and multiplayer is NOT REQUIRED.
A network connection is also NOT REQUIRED.

Real reasons for always on internet connection.
1: DRM.
2: Marketing.
please refer to notes at top of post before you qq

[exe3]

Is this what you think they're doing or a stated goal of theirs? If a stated goal i'm honestly shocked as as a developer of multiple genres they should know better than most that not everyone likes every genre so having the goal that every customer owns every game is unfeasible. You will naturally get a lot of overlap sure but it shouldn't be an outright goal.

Not stated, but it's kinda obvious.

1. Diablo 3 is offered free to WoW players in return for an annual sub.
2. You couldn't get into the D3 beta without another Blizzard product.
3. D3 shows your BattleTag in game, not your character name, and the BattleTag is across every Blizzard game.
4. There's a huge crossover between different games, including the upcoming BlizzardDota.
5. The art style across all Blizzard games is exactly the same. When you buy one Blizzard game, you buy into the same aesthetics as all of them.

And 6... every business has an ideal customer. The best market to these customers, and these only. I'd be very, very surprised if the top marketing talent at Blizzard was ignoring this. While a business can have multiple ideal customers, it's not as efficient if you can just sell everything to one. In this case, people who like online-only games are the logical ideal customer.

1. Just a small incentive for those who already own the game, hardly uncommon.
2. I hadn't heard this one.
3. So? You think they're going to make a different and seperate Battle.net for each game they release? That's like EA making one version of Origin for Battlefield 3 and then another one for Crysis 2 etc
4. What crossover? You mean injokes or joke references to other games? It's done for fun. And Blizzard DOTA is just a crossover of characters nothing more.
5. So? They're a single company that's figured out an artstyle for themselves, what does this have to do with anything?
6. Just because an MMORPG player likes MMORPG's DOESN'T make them a huge RTS player at the same time, they should know this, if they don't i'm a bit shocked.

I don't think the reasoning is 100% based on DRM. Looking back at D2 some people got burnt having to deal with a third party to purchase in game items. Blizzard saw a need and wanted to fulfil that with a secure way to trade items and fairer game play. Answer to that is online only to make it fair on every user.

The problem here is that offline mode and an auction house are NOT mutually exclusive. They're treating it as if it is for weak hacking reasons when as I said they could have had different code for offline and online to make hacks impossible and no it wouldn't have been a big task to do this, now it would be since sp has already been permanently merged with the mp but during development it wouldn't have been.

Regardless, this is happening whether it's right or not. I won't be playing because i'm not interested in the game hence why I haven't posted in most of the thread but some of the arguments I saw I felt were fundamentally flawed so I decided to add my 2c keeping in mind all of gaming and not just this singular game.

[Mekon]

The problem here is that offline mode and an auction house are NOT mutually exclusive. They're treating it as if it is for weak hacking reasons when as I said they could have had different code for offline and online to make hacks impossible and no it wouldn't have been a big task to do this, now it would be since sp has already been permanently merged with the mp but during development it wouldn't have been.

But it adds extra complexity to the codebase... it's much more sensible to KISS. End of the day, Blizzard believes that restricting the game to online only won't dramatically affect their revenue (supplemented as it is by the RMT auction house fees/commission).

Sure, some customers will be annoyed that they can't play offline, but as long as enough customers aren't too fussed, Blizzard don't care. They aren't in the business of always keeping everyone happy - they are in it for the money. Sure, some might argue that including offline will make them more money - obviously they feel the extra income doesn't offset the drawbacks of split codebases/business model.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Sure, some customers will be annoyed that they can't play offline, but as long as enough customers aren't too fussed, Blizzard don't care. They aren't in the business of always keeping everyone happy - they are in it for the money. Sure, some might argue that including offline will make them more money - obviously they feel the extra income doesn't offset the drawbacks of split codebases/business model.

Exactly. Blizzard and every other game developer make calculated judgements as to the cost/benefits on the features they implement. I have no doubt they know that online-only will piss off a number of gamers (I'm not a big fan of it myself), but it is clear from the hype surrounding the game that this decision will not slow down sales whatsoever and they will still make gajillions from it. The hundreds of millions on their bank account statement is going to say more than a few unhappy words on an internet forum.

Bluefire, can I ask whether you've resorted to playing a pirated copy of BF3 in order to circumvent the Origin requirement?

You can ask and no I havent, Ive played a mates copy at his place (and gave him **** about origin)
Hence I still want the game.

Sorry, I asked this question a few pages back but by the time I got round to checking back the thread had exploded by about 5 more pages. The point of my question (and my post back on page 4) was that if people don't like the game or whatever feature it comes with (i.e. Origin, DRM, subscription) then don't install it! Seriously, stay the **** away from it. Justifying piracy because you don't like a feature of the game smacks of hypocrisy.

[Marius]

Encouragement and options aside it is _NOT_ REQUIRED.
If multiplayer is the ONLY reason for a network connection.. and multiplayer is NOT REQUIRED.
A network connection is also NOT REQUIRED.

So just like multiplayer is not required to enjoy the core content of MMOs - which is single player levelling.

Given I don't do any dungeons or raids in MMOs, are you saying I'm somehow ignoring core content? How is that even possible by your definition that core content is everything that's required?

Your definition basically calls WoW single player, because anyone always has the option to play it as a single player game, and no one is forced to do multiplayer - i.e. multiplayer WoW is optional. So go get upset with WoW forcing you online always.

As I said back on the other page, core content is subjective. I see group stuff in MMOs as pointless wastes of time, and you see the same as Diablo's action house... and I see the auction house as core content.

Anyway, clearly we're not going to agree with each other. Maybe we should just leave it at that.

The problem here is that offline mode and an auction house are NOT mutually exclusive. They're treating it as if it is for weak hacking reasons when as I said they could have had different code for offline and online to make hacks impossible and no it wouldn't have been a big task to do this, now it would be since sp has already been permanently merged with the mp but during development it wouldn't have been.

To add onto what Meokn posted above... Except that every time the game gets patched Blizzard needs to create two separate builds if they go this route. That's a ton of recurring extra work, that in all likelihood won't bring them in any extra revenue.

[exe3]

How so?

[Marius]

Because patches can't just be slapped on top of two different code bases and expect the same result... that sounds like a great way to cause bugs.

[exe3]

Wouldn't the sp operate separate to the mp? So an mp patch shouldn't be going to the sp code in the first place?

[jerichosainte]

The problem here is that offline mode and an auction house are NOT mutually exclusive. They're treating it as if it is for weak hacking reasons when as I said they could have had different code for offline and online to make hacks impossible and no it wouldn't have been a big task to do this, now it would be since sp has already been permanently merged with the mp but during development it wouldn't have been.

Ahhhh they are mutually exclusive in this case. If you have an offline mode people would exploit/hack this to obtain items to sell in the auction house. SP has to be monitored for this reason.

[exe3]

How? It would be a simple case that an offline profile can't have any interaction at all with an online profile.

[Fireslide]

Blizzard don't want people interacting with their game offline and not being able to use half the features they've put into the game. Even giving people the option to play offline will hamper that. There may be a significant portion of players who only want to play single player initially. But as they get hooked on the game, they might want to complete an item set, the way it's being done, those players get converted to online players using the auction house and participating in the community.

If all you do is play solo, and don't auction anything or interact in multiplayer in any way. Then you aren't blizzard's target customer. A player that's playing online with other people, and adding items and gold to the online economy has far more value than one that just plays solo. That player by continuing to play actually adds value to the multiplayer component. Since now there's more items to buy and more people to sell to and more people to play with.

[jerichosainte]

I'll reiterate.

Ahhhh they are mutually exclusive in this case. If you have an offline mode people would exploit/hack this to obtain items to sell in the auction house. SP has to be monitored for this reason.

[Marius]

Wouldn't the sp operate separate to the mp? So an mp patch shouldn't be going to the sp code in the first place?

Didn't you just ask 'how so' in relation to my comment that this would require two separate patches and thus more work?

You're going round in circles.