Let me start off by saying Diablo 3 is a good game. Maybe even wonderful. It has a lovely soundtrack, unique skill system, and intriguing plot that keeps fans and newcomers entertained alike. But sometime between the game’s conception and launch, something went terribly wrong. The people over at Blizzard thought DRM would be a wonderful way to prevent piracy. Here’s a hint: DRM is a horrible, horrible way to prevent piracy.
As players logged in for the first time on the May 15th, they were greeted to all kinds of errors as they were disconnected, booted, or unable to connect in the first place. Someone without internet would be unable to play at all, and anyone who experienced a waver in their own connection would be booted out of the game. Initially I had no problems logging in, but I was quickly booted from the server for ‘emergency maintenance’ which lasted longer than their expected amount of downtime. After finally logging in again, I joined a queue, and a few chapters of a book later—I was worried exiting my window would pause the process—I noticed I had been disconnected from said queue and would have to restart the waiting process again.
Now, it’s not like I was playing multiplayer. I didn’t want to chat with anyone. I just wanted to play the game through in a few intense sessions, like I usually do with my games. Yet even after confirming that I bought the game legitimately—even after connecting to their website at the login screen—they would not allow a play of the game in single-player mode or otherwise. To excuse it by saying the auction house or chat rooms require it is a joke. Those are optional and not part of the game for many players—it would only make sense to connect when a player attempts to access those small parts of the game, rather than the whole thing.
Diablo 3’s Metacritic ratings have taken a huge hit, with their user score sitting at 3.7/10 at the moment of writing. This is all because they wanted to protect their game from piracy, rather than serve out the game to people who legitimately paid. The honest truth is that pirates will still be able to circumvent the DRM installed with the game and access the game for free. There’s no way of preventing it. The hundreds of thousands of people who preordered Diablo 3 were unable to play their game, and it’s likely no one gained anything from the anti-piracy efforts.
In 2008, a similar situation happened with Spore—you also had to activate your game through the internet, and while it didn’t require a constant connection, it limited the amount of activations to three. After a huge amount of protest, EA changed their DRM policy and extended the amount of activations to five, while making users able to deactivate the game from computers without calling customer service. However, it was too little, too late—the game soared to most pirated game of the year as players protested, and is likely one of the most pirated games of all time.
DRM policy is an obvious way to show which a company values more: money, or customer service. And in this case, Blizzard chose money. Despite strong preorder sales and large amounts of hype surrounding the game, they chained their game with DRM and made it inaccessible to legitimate players. While they might attempt to appear benevolent—they recently rescued quite a few Australians who lost their preorders—their DRM paints an entirely different picture. Like Spore, if they want to improve their image, it’s a little late. The score on Metacritic is unlikely to reach the one this game deserves—because it definitely is a good game, if you manage to play it. If.