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Are MMOs the pioneers to always on DRM?

TheScavengerTheScavenger Member EpicPosts: 3,321
in The Pub at MMORPG.COM

We have seen a large increase in singleplayer and multiplayer games with always on DRM where you have to have an internet connection to play. No one likes it.

 

However MMOs had this form of DRM since they were first made. Were they actually the pioneers to always on DRM? I'm guessing many companies saw this, and saw that because MMOs have this always on DRM...they can't be pirated at all. So, they made them for singleplayer games.

 

I see no difference from an MMO having this horrible DRM, and a singleplayer having this DRM. Sure, I play MMOs all the time and always have an internet connection to play them. I never am somewhere without internet, because I'm a huge MMO fan. But a singleplayer game should not have this, because sometimes I don't have internet.

 

Again, I honestly see no difference between an MMO forcing people to be online to play, and a singleplayer game having to be online to play. Yeah, I spend hundreds of hours playing MMOs...but I don't want to deal with internet in a singleplayer game or one that has multiplayer.

 

MMOs were the pioneers for this form of DRM? Did they sneak by without anyone noticing? When singleplayer games use it, every MMO and gamer fan hates that, since they have to be online to play said game.

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Comments

  • CalmOceansCalmOceans Member UncommonPosts: 2,437

    This is likely why I won't buy a PS4, because it requires always-on internet access.

    I usually play my PS3 in a place without internet access.

    There are thousands more PS3 titles to buy, and the always-on internet connection has put me off buying one.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,348
    The real pioneers here were the early online games through services like GEnie and CompuServe, long before there were any MMORPGs.  In the early days, however, bandwidth was very expensive and most gamers had no access to it at all, so using it for DRM when you didn't absolutely have to use it for any other reason would have been ridiculous.  As Internet bandwidth has become cheaper and more widely available over the years, using it for DRM has made increasingly more business sense.
  • waynejr2waynejr2 Member EpicPosts: 7,769
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    The real pioneers here were the early online games through services like GEnie and CompuServe, long before there were any MMORPGs.  In the early days, however, bandwidth was very expensive and most gamers had no access to it at all, so using it for DRM when you didn't absolutely have to use it for any other reason would have been ridiculous.  As Internet bandwidth has become cheaper and more widely available over the years, using it for DRM has made increasingly more business sense.

     Those were pioneers but I like to think of the good old days of PLATO for me. 

    http://www.youhaventlived.com/qblog/2010/QBlog190810A.html  

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  • WraithoneWraithone Member RarePosts: 3,806

    MMO DRM?? The entire game is on the MMO server clusters. The client only provides the means to access, interact and display the game.  Always on DRM is just one of the half witted ideas some suit types have come up with.  As is usual with such nonsense, its mainly the legitimate customers that end up holding the bag.  Look at the "issues" that Ubisoft has imposed on its customers, as just one example of the reasons not to use this.

    The real "pirates" have access to people who are MUCH better coders, who defeat these methods with in hours of release. Its always been that way, going back decades.  Each new DRM system thats supposed to be "hack proof" ends up being broken in a very short time.

    Hell, even hardware systems end up being broken. Some people break these types of systems as a hobby.  Its a total waste of time and money, but the suits never seem to learn.

    "If you can't kill it, don't make it mad."
  • aRtFuLThinGaRtFuLThinG Member UncommonPosts: 1,387

    I think as time goes on with the continuing advancement of internet and bandwidth there will gradually be less and less reason to create single player only games, and we will see, while not mmo, more and more games of the breed equivalent to Diablo 3 and such where even single player mode still have a lot of the elements of multiplayer play, and also constant content updates and microtransactions of game modules.

     

    I think online play is an inevitably and DRM is going to be a moot point.

     

    Steam has kinda proven this seems to be the trend already to a certain extent.

  • CuathonCuathon Member Posts: 2,211
    Actually many early MMO games had dozens of pirated private servers. MMO had nothing to do with DRM. Ragnarok is a good example. Many other MMOs had private servers as well.
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