Yet another reason why DRM is bad overall, what pisses me off is that all Blizzard had to say was "we're sincerely sorry", no they're not, that's the usual canned response for every problem. Surely the government is partly to blame but not more than the developers for using such a disgusting protection to play the single player portion of SC2 and D3.

When I purchased SC2 a couple of years ago I didn't know about all the battle net registration, ended up uninstalling the game and reselling it since I didn't use the cd key. That was when I drew the line between me and Blizzard and will not touch another game made by them unless it has a 100% DRM-Free single player option.

Absolutely, I'm sure the more savvy and even the less have figured out "ways" to play if they want too. It's more of a moral vs practical thing. Purchasing a new copy of the game from another country would also be an issue. Blizzard probably won't accept payments from Crimean accounts. You would have to do some legwork just to buy a license to play, which would technically be contraband. An out of country contact would be invaluable to you, to buy an account so that you can access it from the vpn.

But like I said, it's unfortunate, because it's just a game. In the case of Diablo and StarCraft you should at least be able to play single player without such shenanigans. I also wonder if Blizzard made any effort reimburse those people for the accounts they lost, but I doubt it because the license agreement no doubt says they don't have to.

"Sorry about your luck."

This is a great example of the difference of purchasing licenses to play vs owning drm free content.

If it makes an original decent feature film, I might pay to see it. :)

Hmm, I wonder if Blizzard is offering refunds? I think this is a good case to test the pro-DRM folks' theory that:

- if the service provider makes your games inaccessible so that you can't play them anymore, you can always demand a refund.

- failing that, you can always get the games from a torrent site and keep playing them.

Or is this some kind of special case where those arguments don't apply?

Exactly, and one of the main purposes of that stunt was educating people on DRM and showing that a store like GOG shutting down is always a possible reality and people should keep backing up their DRM free games in advance.

It's not about the 'acquiring' of the game, many people can have local copies of it somewhere on their machine. The major concern is about: a) the game trying to "phone home" and connect over the internet to either validate or update itself; b) the game using the internet in any way shape or form to transmit information about your computer to 3rd party sites.

While case (a) seems to be harmless, it can be annoying if your game decides it should not play if it cannot connect remotely. On the other hand, others consider (b) to be an invasion of privacy. Other forms of DRM include asking for passwords or answering questions in a game, but those are moot if you download all the content.

In a world where "Radio Shack" and "Tiger Direct" (a/k/a 'CompUSA') are closing down their "brick & mortar" shops, I can see that.

However, GOG isn't brick & mortar like Amazon, Google or others that have a large on-line presence. I think if we keep supporting them (and I think they have a great Web site for old game sales by far), they could be around for a long time.

Well, the only way how I see GOG possibly going down is if they suddenly expanded irrationally and then collapsed under their own weight. But so far they seem to be growing at a healthy pace so I don't think that's really a risk. Then again, CDPR's ambitions are growing pretty quickly. Their projects are becoming more and more expensive and they are basically going all-in with each release. We all know that even the biggest players in the industry can easily fuck up a major release in a genre and franchise they have tons of experience with, those guys can usually take a hit, though, CDPR not as much. I'm sure The Witcher 3 will fare very well but CDP's luck can run out and I guess a botched CDPR game is quite a possible threat to the entire company including GOG.

As long as they don't "bite off more than they can chew", I think they'll do fine.

In this case, it likely doesn't apply. Blizzard didn't make them unavailable. Government policy did. Not so different than an 'act of war' clause in your homeowner's insurance policy. And they would likely claim that it's temporary.



Now, Blizzard could always tell the government to go screw itself, but it probably wouldn't need to say anything. Just keep providing access until someone notices (officially known as the "It's Easier To Beg Forgiveness Than To Ask Permission" clause). Pretty sure Senator Dipwad from Bumfuzzle, New York, isn't going to find out that people in the affected regions are still able to play their games. That is, until some "gaming journalism" site breaks the news and ruins it for those customers.

I feel Blizzard can take a chunk of this blame.
- Not Blizzards fault or problem -
The US government is once again throwing another hissy-fit to upset the general public in another country, and trying to get them to then incite civil unrest so that a war can be fought. For the betterment of the people, obviously.

- Blizzards fault -
Blizzard deliberately make their games on PC require always online because it makes "better" gaming (even though PS4 does not need this for Diablo 3).
It is there fault when players cannot play the games they have paid for, not the players. There are not enough servers aside for times when a lot of people play games en mass - fist week of release, bank holidays, Christmas - and this impacts the players, not Blizzard.
Therefore they are a company who openly ignore the needs of their customers, and even go so far as to lie to them about why they have to suffer for Blizzards short sighted greed and paranoia.


I have a copy of Diablo 3 from when it came out, but as I have poor internet and their servers were always loaded that first week, so I spent more time being disconnected from a single player game then playing. So I gave up and played games I had bought from other sites.
Blizzard have not made any relevant single player games since Warcraft 3, and put simply I have no interest in them any more. I hope whole-heartedly that they get taken over by a company with some real vision and business sense, but that would be too much to ask for.

I'm surprised nobody brought up Valve in this conversation, considering they blocked Steam in Crimea for the same reason back in January. Or any of the other american companies that are doing the same thing due to the order (some much bigger than Blizzard, like Apple).