A select group of PC gamers has long cried out against DRM. They have said it will bring on the downfall of PC gaming. They say the very thing the producers are using to combat piracy will end up consuming far more resources developing than recouping and will alienate the good, honest gamer. The rational folks, like you and I, laughed at those uninformed doomsayers and enjoyed our PC games with little added hassle.

Doomsayers rejoice! Your day has come. What was a small annoyance has now turned into gaming blasphemy. Ubisoft and now our beloved Blizzard have announced plans to institute the most invasive DRM ever scribbled onto the surface of a videogame disk. Gone are the days of finger pecking in a CD key, simply inserting a disk into the drive, or even a single activation of the product online. Ubisoft and Blizzard inform us we must now be connected to the internet at all times to play our games... even single player.

Blizzard's method at least makes some sense. The player must be logged into Battle.net to play on their profile and to access their saves (still debatable if there are offline saves). Since SC2 is primarily an online multiplayer game and there are incentives for being online such as voice chat, achievements, etc, then it somewhat flows well with the game. Blizzard has not said what happens if a player goes linkdead, but I will speculate it won't be nearly as bad as...

Ubisoft. You have long been a decrier of piracy and instituter of hair-brained DRM, but your new measure is like using the sandwich a fly just landed on to kill the fly. It not only kills the fly (good job!) but it ruins the sandwich!!! Now no pirate plays the game, but at the same time no one wants to play it period. Let's break this down. The player installs the game. The game then activates over the internet. Okay, great now we play the game. "No", Ubisoft says. We must now activate it again, and again, and during the entire time you are playing the game. If the player loses connection, bam game stops. The player loses their progress and must start at the last check point.

The DRM activist says, "No big deal man, who doesn't have internet these days?" That's not the point. I went to the store. I laid down 50 dollars. I installed the game. Now, while I play the game Ubisoft keeps swatting me with sandwiches. It is far too much. I expect to go linkdead while playing MMOs, but certainly NOT from a single player only game!

So where does that leave us? Piracy is a problem and it needs to be dealt with. No one is saying it isn't. Remember the old saying, "honey attracts more bees than vinegar"? It certainly does. EA announced great success with Dragon Age and ME2 by including exclusive DLC with each legit purchase of the game. This avenue needs to be explored more than draconian DRM that hampers the honest gamer while the pirates get a DRM free cracked version 2 weeks before launch. They can't expect to totally eliminate the problem, but they can reward the legitimate customer thereby enticing more people to purchase their games. The last thing they need to do is destroy the market they are trying to save.