Well said. I hope you and others reading this who are fed up with DRM will join the Defective by Design campaign against it. We encourage people to vote with their wallets, and to voice their objections to executives at the companies pushing DRM. If we want it to go away, we have to keep making it an issue, so it gets covered in the media and so companies know they will get negative press for going that route. Companies certainly don’t advertise that their products have DRM, and regulators have not been good about requiring that information to be provided, so the only way people can have informed decisions is for 3rd-party groups, individuals and campaigns to publish the info.

Thanks for the post!

@ Luke Maciak:

There were two online game modes. Battlenet and Openbattlenet. On normal battle.net ladder all saves are stored on bnet servers, also server logic is running on bnet.

In the openbattlenet character files are stored locally, making it easy to modify/cheat. But with openbattlenet character you could play single player and multiplayer.

And with the normal battlenet character you could play singleplayer by just creating game with password and not giving it to anybody.

@ k00pa:

Agreed. In fact, isn’t that how the old Diablo online play worked? I’m pretty sure you were not allowed to import your single player character into online games.

@ Luke Maciak:
Not a good excuse, you could make offline characters that can’t never go online/use the item auction store. Then have separate BNet characters for the multiplayer and auction.

@ Liudvikas:

Well, at least Diablo 3 has an excuse for the online-only thing: the in-game trading thing. Sigh…

@ MrJones:

Heh. those are the games from gentler and saner times when publishers tried to convince kids not to copy that floppy by rapping about it.

@ MrPete:

Yep, the always-on thing is rather harsh if you happen to have an unreliable connection, bad wifi or you like to play video games while traveling (hotel wifi is not always game friendly).

Harhar, I just read the post in the ubi-forums you linked to.

quote:
[…]This development time is required as we are working to ensure that those who have already started the game, and who’s progress is currently saved on our servers, will receive and save their game information locally.[…]

That was a real laugh for me. Several people knowing From Dust said that for them the “synchronising save game” screen was just a waste of time because it decided that it was unable to contact ubi-servers after 3-5min.
And to be honest: It’s not that much that could be lost if you can’t get at your savegames which accidentally are not on the ubisoft servers…

I (foolishly) bought From Dust after seeing the short ad on steam.
Steam in itself is great for me, loads of nice little indie games and the occasional games bundle (heck, all Star Wars titles for not even 50$?) make it worthwile.
From Dust though was the first game where I wished not to have bought it. Or read some forums/google-fu before clicking “add to cart”.
Privately I’m connected through a “flaky WiFi connection that fades in and out” at times. That really screwed the first some hours of playing From Dust due to it stopping and skipping to a nice gray screen telling me it’s waiting for an active connection. That might not be that bad if it wasn’t for said connection. What really angered me that even with a connection coming back online and me checking mails and some Rock Paper Shotgun rants about From Dust it still kept telling me “no active connection”. And that damn screen popped up every ten or so seconds.
And before you ask: as long as you’re in that screen no ESC-key will work. You’re simply stuck in there waiting for ubisoft to recognize you’re doing something else in the internet. Only the good old monkey grip and forcing the task manager to minimize the game work…

Meanwhile I added a repeater to my wifi connection, so I guess it had some good sides. More stable bandwith is always nice.
And with the improved connection even From Dust is playable. And not even that bad as a game…
And if ubisoft now really removed the DRM I’m interested if they’ll distribute that via forced steam update or if you have to go and grab it from their website while presenting your ID so they know your piratey address and can send some goons to tell you never to doubt their DRM again…

The only games on my computer are skifree32 and simtower, i just assume they are without DRM.

Talking about diablo 3, there’s currently closed beta for http://www.pathofexile.com/ I got in, haven’t played that much, but it’s everything that diablo 3 should be. It’s still online only, but at least it’s free. :)

@ k00pa and @ jambarama:

For #2 I meant we shouldn’t review the game, post game play videos or rave about it on social networks. Spreading negative buzz about crappy DRM is ok though. That will send a clear message. :)

#3 was supposed to be sort of tongue in cheek, but now that I re-read my post, it deos seem like I’m dead serious. You are right though, it is not the best solution.

@ icebrain:

Very true. But, I can live with Steam, because it actually provides a service of sorts. For one it binds games to an account rather than to a machine, so I can move my games around. It offers cloud services for some games, automatically syncing saves between machines. It allows me to keep copies of my games on their servers, and re-download them on demand at any time. They have killer seasonal discounts. They provide an in-game overlay clock, and a screenshot taking app that allows you to post snapshots directly to your online profile as you play. Not to mention their support team is responsive, and actually is allowed to help out the customers, rather than just being used to deflect them away from the company.

You get tons of benefits for the inconvenience of not actually fully owning the games. And I can live with that.

For comparison, Ubisoft’s DRM is all stick and no carrot. You get absolutely nothing in exchange for the inconvenience of not being able to play your game without internet connection.

@ jambarama:

I actually slipped up on Arkham Asylum. Did not do research and bought it on Steam sale. Good game though – I enjoyed it.