I think people are looking at the Diablo 3 DRM from the wrong angle.

[Elamdri]

1: To make life as hard as possible for pirates. Yes, people are still going to pirate. However, you have to remember that there are some people who fence-sit so to speak. They might buy the game if it's too much trouble to pirate, but if it is easy to pirate, they'll go ahead and pirate the game.

But for the end user it's always been easy. Once it's cracked, you just download it and replace a .exe file. Done.

Cracking games may be more trouble, but theres no "on the fence" groups out there. Skidrow don't sit there and turn away a challenge because it's going to take long. That's not how they operate.

Diablo 3 is a different beast altogether since it looks like it's not going to be cracked for a long long time, but you seemed to be speaking in general terms so meh.

Well I think that is the point on the Online-DRM. For most games, yeah you are right, it is pretty much download a cracked .exe. But for the online server authentication, you have to set up a emulated server. Now for most l33t hax0rs, that's probably not much of a challenge. But someone like me? F--- that. I would gladly pay 60 bucks to avoid that hassle, and I think that's the point.

They aren't going after hackers. They're going after script kiddies.

 

[Bostur]

I think they are trying to pave the way for complete integration of games in general into the online sphere. It's not something new from Blizzard, WoW, BattleNet, RealID and SC2 were other steps on the way. They may have many reasons to do this, some may be related to piracy and monetization of services, but I also think they have reasons to believe they can make better games that way.

Microsoft, Sony, Valve, EA and UBISoft are doing the same in their own ways. I'm not exactly exhilerated by the development, but I see some advantages as well from the consumer point of view.