Induce Blizzard to add LAN & remove DRM.

I'm over SC2 due to the issues below, but I recently had an idea about consumer representation which I think would work well with SC2, so here I am.

The idea is with respect to DRM and true (fully off-line) LAN.

First up, please read below and post your answer before you add comments.
This will be posted on other SC2 sites, as it could well be deleted on this forum.



The question:

Would you be prepared to pre-pay a third party (part or all of the price) for SC2 on the condition that the game is released with true LAN and/or without DRM, as a form of inducement and/or protest to Blizzard?

Assume you fully trust the third party, and that you will get your money back if the conditions are not met at release (or if it's canned / delayed heavily).

 

I dont play LAN nor do I have any means to.

So no.

 

LAN is awesome, but I'm not doing illigal stuff. And as this is an official fansite, I see no reason for this crap to not be deleted indeed.

 

This is in no way illegal....

 

What, paying other people then Blizzard for the use of software developed by Blizzard? Of course that isn't legal.

Also, I see no reason to pay people for this. There's also this crazy little thing called a petition. I'm quite certain that there already are some of those to request LAN. Further, how would paying a third party help in any way to get a LAN feature? I sense a scam scenario here. There nothing even remotely resembling a plan here.
Seriously, you didn't even mention what the money would be for.

Lastly, there is no way that you, nor anybody else can guarantee that the money will be paid back. Likes that's even remotely possible for anybody to do. You'll need tens of thousands, if not millions of people to do this (whatever it is) if you want to make a difference. That means just as many transactions. Seriously, don't make me laugh. And now gtfo.

I hope that this gets reported to Blizzard, along with your ip, and that you get sued before doing any damage.

 

Ever bought a game from a retail store?
Same thing here. The money is used to buy a legit copy. Blizzard get the money if they meet the criteria. I never stated or implied otherwise. Although you're not the 1st person to assume otherwise so I guess I should've explicitly stated it.

Petitions can be spammed, and aren't a good way of demonstrating that adding X or removing Y will actually result in a lost sale.
This is real money. It's theirs to gain or lose. Since that's the language they talk best, I'm trying to communicate in kind.

There are a number of ways I looked at.
1st: Work with a commercial retailer. They have a reputation and people already trust them with pre-pay money.
2nd: Some form of legal oversight. Require the bank or a legal service to sign off on all transactions.

I hope you feel differently after reading the above explanation.
If not, I you're still under the impression it's illegal I suggest you report it to the NZ police or whoever. My IP is easily traced.

 

Why do we need to send money to someone to fictionally 'force' Blizzard to add LAN again? Would Blizzard go "Oh gosh, these people have all their money, LETS DO WHAT THEY SAY GUYS!"

This plan sucks....go sign the petition.

 

Once there's enough money, yes they would. Money is the main reason they make games.
The money would also be an indication of a greater population of people like me who won't buy the game with DRM, or without LAN.
Once the math shows they'll make more money adding LAN / removing DRM, they'll do that.

 

There are 4 kinds of people involved in this debate. Group A will buy the game no matter what. Group B will only buy the game if their LAN/DRM (they really are one and the same at this point) demands are met. Group C will would rather pirate the game but will buy the game if that is to difficult. Group D will at best only pirate the game. For the purposes of the LAN/DRM debate only groups B and C matter. The reason Blizzard is taking the path it is currently choosing is because they believe when the time comes group C will be larger than group B.

TBH I think they are right, because if your in group B you would prefer to buy the game but you making a stand on principle which requires willpower. If your group C you would prefer not to spend money but you would prefer to have the game more. I may be a cynic but I will bet against willpower almost everytime, especially when I am doing that I am betting on my own enginuity.

Good luck with your plan but I don't think it will work, for two primary reasons, first I think Blizzard is right on the truth of the situation, second even if they are wrong proving it is going to be a ***** because you have to how little Blizzard has to gain by preventing piracy.

P.S. Aurora I think you misundertsood WorldEdit's plan, there is nothing illegal about it.

 

Hmm, I'm kind of greedy... for me, I'll be buying the original game to satisfy myself for waiting a decade for this and 2ndly, will possibly be playing a pirated version for LAN purposes in case that LAN will never be possible.

Worldedit, I don't think that a prepaid LAN will work out coz Im sure that blizzard is also considering this things and might have already got an answer for us. PS Im very much pro for Lan, but if the final product forces me to play multi only via net-connection, only then will I have my considerations for looking up for alternatives like your proposal. Right now, I think we ought to just wait for further updates. Besides, I think that they're really setting up battlenet to exceed lan. And that match-maker is also a plus like when in Streetfighter 4 player tracker. Btw, I think everyone who watched the 2v2 match during Blizzcon 09 understands that they still haven't finished setting-up multi-player as evidenced during their wait for the other player to go to the game room. WIP it is....

 

That's how I see it too, although with a few differences.

Group B doesn't all have to be principled. They don't have to leave it alone if their features aren't implemented, they can pirate just like D.

For group C, the variable is the ease of piracy. This should change over time.
On day 0 there's probably no crack. In a week or two there'll likely be a torrent or something, same as every other game, and no harder than pirating an unprotected game.
Since C only exists when pirating is much harder on a DRM enabled version, after about 2 weeks C won't exist.

Of course there's the option for Blizzard to add in LAN once C disappears. I'd have no problem with them having DRM or holding LAN back if it were only for a few months while C may be significant.

 

It makes no difference whether or not B pirates or doesn't play, either way they still didn't buy the game. C on the other hand while the single player may be cracked quickly, the thing most people want likely won't. The whole reason we having this disscussion about LAN is because it has become a signifcant part of the piracy equation and is much easier to protect on Blizzard's because they can keep part of what allows LAN to work on their servers so it is substantially more difficult to pirate, which it probably will take more than weeks before a pirated game can be played in multi-player.

 

1) I wouldn't call logging in the first time to install the game DRM. That's less intrusive than a CD key. Just because it's new people wanna trip. Besides, this will be removed probably before the game is even in most retailers warehouses days or weeks before it's release date.

2) The only difference between the currently implemented LAN and the LAN you're talking about is that you have to connect through Battle.net in the beginning. Boo hoo. Blizzard removing LAN would benefit me more than having it because I've never once used it in twelve years on StarCraft but Blizzard having more funds (no matter how unnecessarily) would benefit me even more even if they only gave back less than %1 back to the community.

Not to mention, this too is sure to be cracked and implemented. So, in the end through the removal of LAN, the community will still have LAN yet Blizzard will have rights over their game to get their cut of tournament profits instead of what is currently going on .. which is the real reason for the removal of LAN.

-- So, I actually read your master plan. Even if I felt that you were in the right, I would not support this because I'm no where near crazy enough to believe that this will have even the slightest impact.

 

I've read a number of interviews with developers on this topic and most say their charts show if you can hold off pirating for 1-2 weeks you'll see a significant reduction in the damage done to sales.

 

I disagree.
You claimed B would purchase if it has the desired feature set, and that B would be small because it's only full of people with the willpower to not play. There's many who will pirate if it lacks the feature set, but purchase if it has it. No real willpower required.

Why not? Every other game gets cracked fully in a very short time. What gives you the impression SC2 will be any different?
For LAN, all that is needed is a fake authenticator. I'm good enough with encryption coding to know there's little extra difficulty here.

This may sound pretentious, but I don't believe the game companies have their official figures correct.

The reason I don't think they have their figures right is twofold:
First: the press releases and available legal briefs from the digital content sellers (mainly from RIAA) are full of invalid statistics, a few of the major claims that I know of of have been thrown out of court.
Second: there's no way they can tell how many potential pirates are deterred by the DRM into purchasing. Even finding how many pirate copies there are is difficult to do within an order of magnitude.
Each game is different enough and each DRM is different enough that there's too much bias and noise in any statistical analysis to even get close to quality data.

So I see two possibilities. Either the music and movie industries have some reason for their DRM that they aren't telling us for whatever reason, and are putting out piracy as a fake justification, or they practice cognitive dissonance.
While game companies may have more legit reasons for DRM (the two weeks grace before the hack is released), this isn't true of music and movies.
Since the music and movie industry are very likely lying through their teeth about the issue, and the game industry is saying the same things, it's reasonably likely they're lying too.


Note: I'm not in any way trying to justify piracy. I have my own views on digital content distribution but they definitely involve authors getting paid. I just believe that DRM is ineffective and immoral.
Immoral in that it:
1: overrules consumer rights to fair use (eg format-shifting, and to a lesser extent first-sale doctrine).
2: adds requirements to hardware that we end up paying for. (eg HDCP or TCPA).
3: locks out some products that would otherwise be compatible, eg Linux, console emulators etc.
4: encourages piracy (eg all the people who say they'll get the pirate SC2 with LAN - I've seen dozens of such posts), which in turn hurts legit users.

 

Unsurprising as it is, the OP was repeatedly deleted from B.Net even though it doesn't break their Code of Conduct.

I'm now Temporarily Permanently Banned (yes both !?! there's an expiry) from the B.Net forums.
What's odd is that I'm accused of

The offending lines are:

Can I sue for defamation? jk.

 

wuts DRM?
im always confused T.T

 

This thread is hilarious in it's own existence. Give your money to some stranger because you feel that Blizzard will give in to some random demand.....how many people do you honestly think will NOT buy the game because of LAN? I have a feeling there are more people who will buy it BECAUSE it's StarCraft 2 then there are people who refuse to buy because of LAN.

 

No. I don't think this thread is hilarious at all, but it did made me laugh at post #18 for being too narrow... In reality, I think that fans will still buy the original product, but when it comes to mass distribution outside, it will be much likely to happen that this game will be hacked for enabling LAN. It doesn't matter how sentimental legit owners will feel about their copy because in the end, the most important aspect of the game is what the community wants afterall. This attempt to make battlenet the new foundation for multiplayer is a deep challenge for blizzard. I remember them saying that piracy isn't their absolute reason for leaving out LAN from the game but rather to improve and step multiplayer to the next level.. And if so, then why do they have to take out LAN from the start if they are that confident about this attempt? I believe that there are more consumers outside of USA and half of those consumers are willing to be pirates in case the absense of LAN which is highly inevitable. Maybe they should start a poll worldwide to see the hear about the fans voice regarding this matter. I for one will be taking a legit copy and will find means to play on LAN after a while. In the mindset of an SC2 pirate-to-be, they are thinking of one simple thing, getting the game working for LAN as priority. 2nd is probably the most hated reason by everyone especially legit owners...

Still everything is subjecy for change, and as for now, I'm still hoping for LAN.

 

LAN is just playing with someone else without Internet right

Example:
I played halo with 7 other friends with LAN on 2 xbox's in the same match

Is that correct, if that's the case I only see the 3% of the people in the US without Internet that would want LAN play because they have a couple comps and friends that come over alot.