The Evolution of Multiplayer Games and Online Play

Ranga14 writes "The recently announced Command & Conquer 4 seems to be following the same path of Blizzard's Starcraft 2 in having no LAN/offline multiplayer. They will require users to be logged in at all times to even be able to play any facet of the game. What will this mean for LAN parties, gaming events and those who don't play online? Is this a sound business decision, or do EA & Blizzard not get that this method of attempting to thwart piracy will fail like others have?"

Steel Battalion all over again

[sargon666777]

This is a risky move on their part. If you want an example of what can occur when a company does something like this, and then decides that it may not be as profitable as it hopes look no further than Steel Battalion: Line of Contact from Capcom. That game was only out for right about 1 year before they shut down the campaign servers. After that a large portion of the game became unplayable. I doubt the Command & Conquer franchise will die, but I would be willing to venture a guess that in a few years the game may no longer be playable once the company realizes they have no obligation to keep these servers up and running.

Re:When was the last LAN party you went to?

[Trouvist]

I think you need to read up on Steam. Personally I like it, though it does definitely have its pitfalls. However, the main point you argue about it (thinking you would lose access to it, is negated by the ability to burn ANY of the games you download to a CD/DVD and you also have access to the cd-keys that come with YOUR game). If you want references:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=892928/ [steampowered.com]
Also, offline works great for some games. I have bought Fallout 3 through steam but I don't play it anymore. However, my roommate still hasn't beaten it, so he plays it on his computer through steam in offline mode while I play TF2 or any other game I've got at the same time. No hassle, no worries, and of course I've got the Fallout 3 and Orange Box DVD's sitting right here, burned directly from Steam, which work perfectly.

Re:When was the last LAN party you went to?

[torkus]

Forget research, just look back at the client count for the Spore torrents. For a week or two there was 10-20k concurrent leechers and nearly as many seeders. For anyone who doesn't remember, Spore made the news for some of the most restrictive DRM on a PC game to date - and the backlash resulted in them loosening the restrictions on several follow-up games including (go figure) C&C 3.

Re:Why won't Blizzard do this?

[Tukz]

It doesn't really matter.
If you're behind a routed local network (eq DSL or similar), all your packets will stay on the local network and will be essentially the same as LAN.

Only difference is that you all need to authenticate and use Battle.net lobby system to create the actual game.
Once the game starts, it's local area play.

Though, when IPv6 kicks in, I'm not so sure how it's gonna work, I only got a degree in IPv4 routed networks.