If your goal is to get the achievements and even touch the Auction House for items [1], then yes, an online component is required. Diablo 1 and 2 had issues with client-side item duplication cheats. With server-side handling of item generation, that is no longer possible.

The only solution I can think of is letting players create entirely "single player only" characters, which will never be available online. Otherwise there's no (guaranteed) way to verify the save data hasn't been tampered with.

[1]: The Auction House dramatically amplify your statistics, as itemization is always behind your current level. So the idea is players ahead of you can sell items they find to the people behind them. Ultimately those ahead of everyone are not finding 'gear' for their level [2].

[2]: Okay, so "Inferno" mode is a "flat" curve where everything is technically your level, but the difficulty still ramps up, and item quality is still behind the curve.

This is overstating the (very real) problem. While there are certainly classes of games for which this is true, the majority of games work totally fine offline forever.

Your example, Overwatch, is an online-only multiplayer game. Yes, it's bad you bought a disk that's now just a coaster. But, I don't think it's representative of the vast number of single-player games for which servers don't even exist. There are certainly single-player exceptions (GTA V, the recent Hitman trilogy, etc), but.

There's also a set of PC games from the early aughts that depended on the now-defunct Gamespy servers to run. There's a fairly complete list here (https://old.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/22fz75/list_of_games...). While that's certainly not 0, it still doesn't strike me as "almost everything".

Also worth noting that I'm not defending these systems - just nothing that it's not as bad as you make it out to be.

I generally dislike multiplayer in games and only really play single player games. I don't have much interest in multiplayer games at all really - I find other players ruin my experience and wreak the immersion. The only games I like to play multiplayer now are Minecraft and Terraria. I do occasionally play first person shooters multiplayer, but its fairly rare. In fact, the last few times it was two player split-screen modern warfare with someone who was sitting beside me.

So it should be obvious that I have nothing to gain from requiring a constant internet connection. I saw somewhere that Blizzard were saying they are requiring this so you can migrate characters between single and multiplayer without the risk of players cheating - this is just not a use case for me at all because I will never migrate my single player character to multiplayer. I'd much rather have an option to make a single player only character that doesn't require constant internet.

So besides not wanting or needing that feature, why else do I not want to be forced to be online all the time? I don't usually play games on a laptop while traveling, so that doesn't apply to me, but while I do have reasonably fast internet, over the past year I have had random disconnections (mostly due to issues with wifi, including wireless adapter breaking and wireless interference) and the occasional outage. Usually when my internet isn't working, since I use it for work, I will fire up a game for a little while until the internet is working again or until I feel like fixing it. I've already been bitten by steam a few times so I now default to leaving it in offline mode, only going online when I want to check for updates or buy/install a game. In the past three months, I've been irritated more than a handful times that I couldn't play certain games because I didn't have an internet connection for whatever reason. While this alone wouldn't put me off buying a game, coupled with my overall distaste for multiplayer, I don't see why I should have to pay (in frustration) for being online when I play a single player game.

So, for those reasons, I will never buy Diablo 3, even though I was looking forward to it.

That's no longer the case. I'd say about now, there are more multiplayer games that you can play, as opposed to ones you can't play.

See: https://areweanticheatyet.com/ as reference, but it's not very up-to-date, so https://www.protondb.com/ would probably be a better reference.

I disagree with this. EQ and WoW are fundamentally multi-player games. Without multiple players, the game ceases to be anything special. In both cases, there is extensive content that you cannot complete without large raiding teams.

The Diablo series however has always been a single-player game with an added multiplayer component. You don't need teammates to access any of the content, and you never have. A large portion of players play the entire game alone, which is something you could never even hope for in EQ or WoW.

I think a more apt comparison would be to something like Borderlands, which is a single-player game that can be played cooperatively with friends.

How else would online multiplayer work? I suppose there's the community-run server model, but you're asking vendors to potentially do some pretty major re-architecting.

GOG's games are entirely DRM-Free for single-player and local multiplayer. For experiences that are inherently tied to online services, the concept of DRM-Free ownership doesn't really work.

Of course there is. Many modern multiplayer games are unfeasible without dedicated servers, and many games are multiplayer by default as a design and production choice. Making a game that is designed for multiplayer first and foremost also able to run on a player's computer is not always a trivial task.

I was a lead at an open-world game that was supposed to run without dedicated servers on players PCs, and it was a very FUN task to actually get it there. Changing it to run on dedicated servers from the very beginning would save a LOT of production costs and time, I honestly wish this was the case.

Well, who cares. Try playing Star Craft II in 20 years or whatever it takes Blizzard to go out of business. All while v1 will keep working, even in multiplayer (LAN mode over VPN).

The problem is that most people's perception is that it really doesn't need to, that the core engine could have been implemented to run entirely locally and the online-only features would be optional.

It's all well and good if the game has social features or other enhancements that are only enabled if you are online. But could the game have been implemented such that the core single-player gameplay is available without an internet connection?

Most people perceive the answer to that question to be "yes". If the answer truly is yes, then implementation of the game in this way is DRM.

>> this is a primarily multiplayer game

If that's true, I'd say the one-star reviews are just as justified. This game was marketed as the continuation of a series that has been predominantly single-player. I'd say there's a reasonable expectation that the game should work without an internet connection. I wouldn't expect World of Warcraft to work without an internet connection, but I expect SimCity to. I wouldn't expect Dead Space 3's co-op to work without an internet connection, but I would expect the single-player campaign to work without one, and it does.

Except there is - have you played recent games like Watch_Dogs 1 or 2? Your single player gaming is interrupted/sprinkled in with online events. And it works really nicely sometimes. You'll go to start a single player mission, but someone is hacking you, so you have to stop them first.

Of course you can turn it off in the settings..

It was a single player game. There was never anyone to play against. The online aspects were for DRM only.

Well, if the players still had to be connected to the servers (always-on) to play, maybe the same problems would arise even though the players wouldn't be interacting.

The strange aspect of this is that their infrastructure seems to be static. In this modern age of cloud computing, why not make the number of game servers elastic? That would bring safety to them and savings by reducing the number of idling servers when demand is low.

I never played Diablo 3 (because it's online-only) so I honestly don't know if the auction house is available on single player or not, but I'm going to assume that it is. OK. What if I have no interest in the auction house? What if I'm somewhat interested in it, but would much rather not be forced to connect to any service in order to play and consider not using the auction house a fair trade? It would be trivial to design the game so that it only connects when you try to use the auction house and to remain offline otherwise. In fact such an implementation is much simpler than to arbitrarily move critical components of the game onto a remote server. The only reason to do that for an optionally single player game is copy protection.

So yes, people nowadays expect online features, but this is a fact that's convenient for companies. And no, it's not a conspiracy. A conspiracy is an agreement between parties to perform an illicit act. What we have here is various separate parties independently converging on the idea that eroding private property rights (namely, your ability to play the games you bought unimpeded by any external factors) ensures future profits. If you haven't seen it, I recommend Ross Scott's series on dead games, to see how destructive this practice is.

I don't think this is ideal by any means, but I do think it's a reasonable compromise.

For better or worse, many/most modern multiplayer games are architected to use a centralized, company-run software. The server software is not built to be deployed by end-users, and getting it to that state would involve very significant engineering effort. It's just not a reasonable ask.

Split screen multiplayer evaporated for many reasons. Besides business it's also technology.

I'm not sure you'll find a single indie split screen multiplayer game that uses a modern, queued graphics pipeline (Unity HDRP or Unreal 4+). Even among big commercial games, Fortnite notably supports 2 player split screen, but Rocket League, Borderlands and Gears of War are all Unreal 3 I think.

I’ve played every Diablo game since, including the latest Diablo Immortal. Multiplayer is fine when it’s optional. What I hate is forced parties. Dungeons where I have to have 2+ more players to even participate despite my 9,000 combat rating.

Forced multiplayer is bad. Developers shouldn’t assume every player has 7 friends who also play. “Always Online” is also bad. What if I want to play during a flight or traveling where I have a few days down time? What if I want to play when I don’t have access to the internet? Sucks to be you…

The vast majority of my experience playing D2 was solo, single player. The vast majority of my experience with D3 was solo, single-player. Even in DI, I run around ignoring party requests and playing how I want to play but there’s tons of content I can’t enjoy because I don’t have a party of 8 and refuse to party up with random 14 year old kids.

I like how some MMO’s just threw you into a raid group if you were in the area. GW2 (requires a little bit of effort) and old Warhammer Online had this. When done right it was great. Run to area event, get roped into the raid group, beat the big bad boss creature, get rewards, leave raid group.