DRM practices by publishers are something that does not mingle well the gaming audiences, and rightfully so. Given the nature of DRMs, which are used to protect the game’s release, the chances of them becoming unusable sometime in the future are always high. It seems Diablo 2: Resurrected, the remaster of Activision Blizzard’s classic isometric RPG, might be one such case.
Pointed out by the Twitter account Does It Play?, which comprises of a community regularly testing and checking video games and consoles for playability without an online connection (they maintain a very useful Excel sheet covering the games and consoles they have tested), Diablo 2: Resurrected on consoles has a DRM check where the game needs to go online at least once every 30 days for it to be playable offline. This means that if a user’s console is completely offline over 30 days, the game has to connect to the internet for it to do the necessary security check with the authentication server before it can be played.
This is concerning, given that in a situation where the authentication server goes down, the game will become unplayable. Similarly, if any of the consoles lose their internet functionality, the game is just unusable. The issue plagues both the offline physical disc and the digital version of the games.
As mentioned the aforementioned tweet, it does set a dark future for the preservation of video games, as DRMs like these risk the game into going to obscurity because of an online check.
No official statement by Activision Blizzard has been made about the issue yet.
In more news regards to the company, Activision Blizzard is being acquired by Xbox.