Command and Conquer 4 DRM

[Deadly_Nightshade]

Command and Conquer 4 will require gamers to have an active Internet connection at all times, even when playing a single-player campaign.

[Morgoth]

Can't really say I care. Since EA took over Westwood, I stopped caring for the C&C franchise.

[Deraldin]

You're a little slow. This has already been pointed out in the C&C4 thread.

 

They need to add an offline mod that disables the online stat tracking and stuff. If the internet connection is just for cheating your stats, then turning that stuff off when offline shouldn't be a huge deal. Certainly something I'm going to follow though.

Edited July 16, 2009 by Deraldin

[Magister Lajciak]

I mostly lost interest in the franchise after they implemented online authentication and limited installs in their latest Red Alert game, so I guess I wasn't planning on buying it anyway. Unfortunately, this is likely to be the indication of a new trend for gaming. If it is, perhaps I should find myself a new hobby.

[Magister Lajciak]

In related news, Blizzard has decided to not include LAN support in Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 as an anti-piracy measure. This means that unless things change, I won't be purchasing Starcraft 2, which for me is a primarily multiplayer LAN game, though I will still likely purchase Diablo 3, where I expect the single-player component to be strong enough to justify buying the game on that basis alone. Here is an article on the matter: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-318442.html

 

As a point of interest, the Petition for LAN now has about 70 thousand signatures: http://www.petitiononline.com/LANSC2/petition.html

 

It would be nice if Blizzard changed its mind on this issue, though I am sceptical.

[Morgoth]

In related news, Blizzard has decided to not include LAN support in Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 as an anti-piracy measure. This means that unless things change, I won't be purchasing Starcraft 2, which for me is a primarily multiplayer LAN game, though I will still likely purchase Diablo 3, where I expect the single-player component to be strong enough to justify buying the game on that basis alone. Here is an article on the matter: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-318442.html

 

As a point of interest, the Petition for LAN now has about 70 thousand signatures: http://www.petitiononline.com/LANSC2/petition.html

 

It would be nice if Blizzard changed its mind on this issue, though I am sceptical.

If it is really for piracy reasons, then Blizzard will prolly add LAN functuality with a patch later, after 6-12 months or so.

[Magister Lajciak]

In related news, Blizzard has decided to not include LAN support in Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 as an anti-piracy measure. This means that unless things change, I won't be purchasing Starcraft 2, which for me is a primarily multiplayer LAN game, though I will still likely purchase Diablo 3, where I expect the single-player component to be strong enough to justify buying the game on that basis alone. Here is an article on the matter: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-318442.html

 

As a point of interest, the Petition for LAN now has about 70 thousand signatures: http://www.petitiononline.com/LANSC2/petition.html

 

It would be nice if Blizzard changed its mind on this issue, though I am sceptical.

 

If it is really for piracy reasons, then Blizzard will prolly add LAN functuality with a patch later, after 6-12 months or so.

 

It is for piracy reasons and they state as much, though they are also trying to provide some spin about building a community and providing better multiplayer experience...

 

In any case, if they do release a patch with online-free multiplayer functionality, I will buy the game immediately after I find out such a patch has been released.

[Morgoth]

In any case, if they do release a patch with online-free multiplayer functionality, I will buy the game immediately after I find out such a patch has been released.

And you don't care about the campaign at all?

[Magister Lajciak]

In any case, if they do release a patch with online-free multiplayer functionality, I will buy the game immediately after I find out such a patch has been released.

And you don't care about the campaign at all?

 

I do care about the campaign, but probably not sufficiently to buy the game. I am talking in terms of probabilities, of course, and if the single-player campaign gets such rave reviews from professionals and fans alike that I will consider it worthwile to purchase the game on that basis alone than I will. It's just that by removing offline/LAN-functionality, they have basically removed the multiplayer portion of the game for me, which was the bigger part of the game in my experience, and my possibilities of purchasing the game will have to take that into account, hence the likelihood of my buying it has been greatly reduced and the possibility of day 1 purchase is eliminated (and day 1 purchasing is what I would normally expect to do with non-online [online being WoW] Blizzard games).

Edited July 17, 2009 by Magister Lajciak

[Sannom]

According to that news (in french), it seems that EA will at least make the single player campaign available off-line. They don't say anything about LAN support though :

 

http://www.jeuxvideo.com/news/2009/0003615...nformations.htm

[Monte Carlo]

I too lost interest in the C&C franchise when Generals was released, luckily I've got all the old ones in one big collection for the PC.

[Calax]

According to that news (in french), it seems that EA will at least make the single player campaign available off-line. They don't say anything about LAN support though :

 

http://www.jeuxvideo.com/news/2009/0003615...nformations.htm

Better than Red Alert 3... which required a 'net connection for EVERYTHING!

[Jaesun]

Another DRM thread. My favorite!

[RPGmasterBoo]

I thought SC II not having LAN was about piracy reasons as well. Some clever guy on the Blizzard forums enlightened me. Its not about piracy, its about without having LAN Battlenet becomes the only place to play SCII, and to host tournaments, unlike today when the original SC has plenty lan based pro tournaments, that bring Blizzard no revenue.

Its essentially the way too keep the entire SCII mulitplayer scene under Blizzards thumb, and some people speculate that Battle net will also include micro payments soon enough.

 

Either way, they control all multi for SCII and thats what its about. The piracy is just a cover up.

 

As for C&C4 - they just lost a sure purchase

 

God damn I had high hopes for that game.

[Purkake]

I thought SC II not having LAN was about piracy reasons as well. Some clever guy on the Blizzard forums enlightened me. Its not about piracy, its about without having LAN Battlenet becomes the only place to play SCII, and to host tournaments, unlike today when the original SC has plenty lan based pro tournaments, that bring Blizzard no revenue.

Its essentially the way too keep the entire SCII mulitplayer scene under Blizzards thumb, and some people speculate that Battle net will also include micro payments soon enough.

 

Either way, they control all multi for SCII and thats what its about. The piracy is just a cover up.

 

As for C&C4 - they just lost a sure purchase

 

God damn I had high hopes for that game.

 

Didn't you read the latest post by Sannom? They are backing out of the always online stuff.

[RPGmasterBoo]

Didn't you read the latest post by Sannom? They are backing out of the always online stuff.

 

Right. My bad.

I guess, this is the way they test the public's opinion. Try something unreasonable and look at how strong the reaction will be. Repeat enough times and the will of the consumers might let it slide.

Or not, hmm.

[Deraldin]

I thought SC II not having LAN was about piracy reasons as well. Some clever guy on the Blizzard forums enlightened me. Its not about piracy, its about without having LAN Battlenet becomes the only place to play SCII, and to host tournaments, unlike today when the original SC has plenty lan based pro tournaments, that bring Blizzard no revenue.

Its essentially the way too keep the entire SCII mulitplayer scene under Blizzards thumb, and some people speculate that Battle net will also include micro payments soon enough.

 

Either way, they control all multi for SCII and thats what its about. The piracy is just a cover up.

 

As for C&C4 - they just lost a sure purchase

 

God damn I had high hopes for that game.

 

Didn't you read the latest post by Sannom? They are backing out of the always online stuff.

 

I read the post, but I'll wait until I see something official. I couldn't find anything on the official forum or any other articles that confirmed this.

 

I'm still annoyed by the lack of base building, the population cap and the new method of harvesting tiberium.

[Calax]

to the Starcraft system, I can kinda understand it from a design perspective. They can have tournament and it'll become easier to find exploits and see strategies that they can either force to change (by rebalancing) or leave in but allow the other contestants to see the fight and find new tactics.

[EUIX]

All this DRM is useless nowadays pirated games are so efficient and rips such high quality it doesn't matter. If you pirate you pirate, if you don't you don't. More DRM isn't going to make piracy more difficult and thereby less people pirating because everyone is going to rips nowadays instead of downloading a big fat 8 gig iso and then having to deal with DRM you can just download a highly compressed cracked rip less then half that size that plays "out of the box". Its not even fair to call it a rip anymore since nothing is taken out of the game not even cutscenes.

 

The only selling point of games then becomes multiplayer.

Edited August 7, 2009 by EUIX

[Calax]

Well they're building it into the gameplay experiance. They're constantly tracking your kills and stats as you go through ANY fight or level and is applied similarly to how COD4 does things for it's multiplayer.

[Deraldin]

Well they're building it into the gameplay experiance. They're constantly tracking your kills and stats as you go through ANY fight or level and is applied similarly to how COD4 does things for it's multiplayer.

 

Yeah, but how well did that work out for Infinity Ward? They sold a crap load of copies, but I still remember at least one of them complaining that there was some huge number (1 million+?) of pirated copies playing online.

Edited August 18, 2009 by Deraldin

[alanschu]

I remember when Tribes had more people online playing it than copies of the game that had been sold haha.

[Calax]

Well they're building it into the gameplay experiance. They're constantly tracking your kills and stats as you go through ANY fight or level and is applied similarly to how COD4 does things for it's multiplayer.

 

Yeah, but how well did that work out for Infinity Ward? They sold a crap load of copies, but I still remember at least one of them complaining that there was some huge number (1 million+?) of pirated copies playing online.

*shrugs* I don't know how things worked for IW, but EA decided that every victory and kill you make in ANY facet of the game should be counted towards your "ranking". Thus they're gonna keep track of all your stats on a primary server. You can access the account from anywhere and play your guy from anywhere. IIRC IW kept all your stats and profiles on your hard drive which meant if you wiped your system, you'd loose your multiplayer rank, hich EA is actually gonna prevent.

[Mamoulian War]

Well they're building it into the gameplay experiance. They're constantly tracking your kills and stats as you go through ANY fight or level and is applied similarly to how COD4 does things for it's multiplayer.

 

Yeah, but how well did that work out for Infinity Ward? They sold a crap load of copies, but I still remember at least one of them complaining that there was some huge number (1 million+?) of pirated copies playing online.

*shrugs* I don't know how things worked for IW, but EA decided that every victory and kill you make in ANY facet of the game should be counted towards your "ranking". Thus they're gonna keep track of all your stats on a primary server. You can access the account from anywhere and play your guy from anywhere. IIRC IW kept all your stats and profiles on your hard drive which meant if you wiped your system, you'd loose your multiplayer rank, hich EA is actually gonna prevent.

 

wow... i finaly can get a rank for playing a game... and it will be ONLINE!!! WHAT A REVOLUTIONARY IDEA!!! THAT MUST BE AN AWESOME PIECE OF SOFTWARE THERE!!!!

 

 

 

 

PS: Starcraft had this 10 years ago already and without online only requirement...

Edited August 18, 2009 by Mamoulian War

[Purkake]

Here's a revolutionary idea, Mamoulian War, if you don't want to support the DRM, don't buy the game. It's CnC 4, who cares?