In fact, according to a recent interview Videogamer.com conducted with StarCraft II producer and Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce, fighting pirates with DRM is a "losing battle." Pearce states that it's due to the disparity in size between development teams "and the number of people out there that want to try to counteract that technology, whether it's because they want to pirate the game or just because it's a curiosity for them."

Pearce says that Blizzard is focused on other ways to discourage piracy that are antithetical to recent DRM initiatives from companies like Ubisoft, and the problems they can create for paying customers. "The best approach from our perspective is to make sure that you've got a full-featured platform that people want to play on, where their friends are, where the community is," he explained.

That's not to say that StarCraft II will be free of protection. Players will still need to register an account with Battle.net and use a one-off activation code to play. Once their copy is activated, players won't need to be connected to the internet to play the single-player campaign, though Blizzard is also banking on the hope that the the connection to friends, achievements, and multiplayer offered by an improved Battle.net service will compel potential pirates to make a purchase instead. On a related note, it's already known that LAN support won't be included in StarCraft II due to piracy and other concerns, much to the chagrin of some hardcore fans of the series.