I missed this story at Slashdot when it first broke, that the game maker was planning on a DRM scheme that relied on a continuous network connection. Not just a network connection to occasionally validate keys for play or on first launch only–all the time.
The folks at PC Gamer have had a chance to try out a couple of the games using the new system. Their experiences are exactly as bad as you’d guess from the description. Sure, network access is getting there but it is far from ubiquitous. And the requirement precludes many quite reasonable circumstances, such as gaming while on a long haul flight or to pass some time on a gaming laptop while out of pocket.
This takes treating gamers like mere license holders instead of owners to a whole new level.
Updated: Ars has some new information which tones down the extreme cases somewhat but it still does nothing for the totally disconnected play I speculated about being impossible.
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