Total War: Rome 2 will require Steam, according to a new report by Eurogamer.
Although, Creative Assembly's new strategy action game will utilize steam, lead designer James Russell confirmed the game will not require users to be connected to the internet at all times to play. While the studio isn't considering the always-on DRM for Total War: Rome 2, Russell did leave the option on the table for future titles.
"I wouldn't comment on ever," Russell told Eurogamer, "but it's certainly not something we're planning to do for Rome 2."
"It's always upsetting to see your game being pirated," he explained. "Certainly we do suffer from that. We've got a lot of players who haven't necessarily activated. But at the same time it's arguable how much that harms sales."
"We don't like our game being pirated and so we take steps to try and stop that happening. We wouldn't want to take Draconian steps to alienate our core player-base that are buying the game."
Always-on DRM is something more and more PC games are resorting to in order to combat piracy, but it remains unpopular among consumers. It's not for reasons you'd think though. It's not the pirates that are upset, but the ones who legally purchase the game and then are unable to enjoy it when the game launches because of server issues. Just look at Diablo 3 when it first launched. Millions of players were unable to even play the single player campaign at launch due to server overloads.
"Times are challenging in many ways for boxed products and the way that people are consuming entertainment software is changing," Russell went on to say. "We see very healthy sales on Steam. There's always going to be place for that big, lean in, epic experience that we deliver."
"But we want to be more accessible, not just to people seeking a more casual game, but to hardcore gamers who don't necessarily always want to be sitting down for hours on end," he concluded. "So we want the game to be playable in perhaps shorter sessions."
While I'd consider it a win for consumers that Rome 2 will not use always-on DRM, how do you feel about it requiring Steam?
