Monday, March 21, 2011
Smart DRM—Starcraft 2
People should be paid for their work. Technology has fundamentally changed the way we use media, yet unimaginative, manipulative executives believe that monolithic copyright laws and ineffective DRM technologies will keep their antiquated business models alive. Video games are among the most pirated software: the key verification algorithm can be reverse engineered, and key generators can be developed. Blizzard's Starcraft 2 has a better approach to this problem. You can take your Starcraft II disk and install it on any machine you want. However, in order to play you must log in with your battle.net account, which you have associated with the Starcraft II licence you purchased. The key verification algorithm is safe(r) on Blizzard's server, and you can play from wherever you'd like without having to worry about keeping track of your key; everyone wins. The key is adapting business models and copyright laws to the technology—not the other way around.
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2 comments:
I don't think that Blizzard got it totally right. The lack of a LAN option, all in the name of preventing piracy kept me from buying Starcraft II. I would only consider buying a game if both my wife and I could play at the same time. I'm not gonna shell out $60 for the game, and then another $60 so she and I can play together online.
Software is weird because it costs nothing to produce or copy after the coding is complete. So charging people for software distribution makes no sense. Blizzards has accepted this by charging not for software products but for the service of producing and maintaining them.
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