DRM

My last post I mentioned that there were 2 reasons I’d stopped playing World of Warcraft. One was the community being jerks and the other, is DRM.

Now obviously I’ve had to log into WoW since the beginning, every time I played I had to enter my password – hell in ‘ye oldin days’ the client didn’t even remember your account name. I’ve been fine with that however, I expect to have to log into an online game. It’s not an issue. Then I got hacked. I don’t have any idea how, I’ve never given my login information to anyone, virus scans didn’t show anything nefarious. Still happened though and I added an authenticator. This adds an extra step to the login process, one that requires me to grab my ipod which is usually charging across the room. Call me lazy, and I do myself, but this is extremly annoying. I can’t count the number of times I’ve started a game, logged in, and then been asked to log in again. WTF?? It’s even worse with single player games. Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, I’m looking at you. I have zero interest in getting my ass kicked in MP, why the hell do I have to log in to play my single player game?

This is not an anti Blizzard post. Rockstar makes me log into a ‘Social Club’ to play GTA4. I don’t care, just let me play the damn game when I double click the icon on my desktop.

I’m not against DRM itself, I’m against annoying DRM. DRM should be invisible once started. Steam is handy this. Also Dragon Age Origins is a perfect example here. There’s online activation and then there is a little box ‘Login automatically’ I can check so I don’t have to deal with this crap anymore.