Given EA's track record, a healthy dose of pessimism is pretty well justified. That way, on the miniscule chance that it's good, we'll be pleasantly surprised.
Research that matter a little bit and you'll see why. What it mostly boils down to is, when you need to be connected to the internet to play you are now completely at the companies mercy.
That, and also not everyone has high-speed internet all the time. I spend most of my summer free time at a cabin in the woods (really!) where I have only a slow and patchy 3G connection - but I still bring my laptop to do some writing and photo editing and occasionally gaming. I won't buy a game I can only play when I'm in the city.
These DRM services don't require much bandwidth. Just enough to validate the license and record achievements.
My internet was down all morning, I only just got online. Thankfully, Minecraft allows me to play offline.
I like games that don't require me to be online. That's not to say that I don't have a good Internet connection or that I don't enjoy any online gaming. But sometimes I don't have internet or I just want to be somewhere away from the internet.
I saw your post, but I still remain unconvinced. It's the same as a keycode or a CD check (which they're doing away with, but used to be standard practice). While I agree it's stupid to require and that, if you don't have a stable internet connection and likely would experience long periods of time where you can't play the game, you should factor that in, but I still think it's a tempest in a teapot if you otherwise think it will be a game you want to play.
I don't like those things either, but neither of them allow the corporations to monitor my activity. If we allow them to control when we can play our games then they can take that ability away from us whenever they want and for whatever reasons they want. In what sort of universe is it okay for EA to ban people from playing singleplayer games that they legally purchased because they added a singleplayer mod? This isn't some conspiracy theory about what they might do in the future, they are already doing this. I'm curious, would you be okay if your DVD player had to connect to the internet every time you tried to watch a movie? What about every time your MP3 player tried to play music? When you try to read a book on an e-reader? Where's the line for you?
The most obvious example being EA releases an expansion, maybe one thinks its lame or they don't want it, BZZT! EA decides to no longer validate the non updated game. I still play SC4, if it had online validation does anyone think they would keep validating that when 5 comes out?
I think there's a slight difference. MP3 player isn't quite accurate. It's more like, would I buy an album that I need to connect to the internet? The difference I'm not entirely tethered to the internet.
This is good to see, SC4 with Rush Hour and some Mods is damn near perfect and awesome. God, I hope this comes out good.
I'm confused about what you're trying to say here. Are you saying that it's not comparable because MP3 players are portable? So are laptops. But okay, for the sake of argument, replace the portable MP3 player in your mind with a stereo system. Would it be acceptable for your stereo to require online verification for every CD that you own before you can play them?
No, my point is the requirement I go online is the exception not the rule and I can independently evaluate whether it's worth it for that specific exception depending on how much I value the product. If all my music required an internet connection, that would suck because I do listen to music on the road. However, I don't need to listen to every song while on the road. If my MP3 player came with an internet connection that would work on the road, I'd also consider that a plus.
The problem is that EA wants to make an always-on connection the rule for most of their games, that's why I refuse to purchase any such games. As a consumer, that's the best way I can make my displeasure at this kind of DRM known to them. What will you do if EA bans mods from working with the game by preventing access to the game for anyone that has a mod installed? This practice is common for multiplayer games and EA have apparently prevented singleplayer mods in ME3, so it's not a far-fetched scenario. Since the supposed reason for the always-on connection is to track your stats for other players to see, they could easily decide that mods are verboten as they'd mess with your stats. Would you be okay with that?
My plan is to deal with each stage of the slippery slope on a case-by-case basis not just assume doing one thing will mean I have to accept everything.
I don't care about slopes or stuff like that. The game isn't an MMO, I don't want someone looking over my shoulder whenever they want to see if I'm doing what they want me to do. I wouldn't buy cookie dough if Duncan Hines required me to update them on how I was using it.