Ī major disadvantage of always-on DRM is that whenever the DRM authentication server goes down or a region experiences an Internet outage, it effectively locks out people from playing the game, hence the criticism. This later received even more criticism, with users stating that these updates could potentially render the game unable to be played. Tim Willits at id Software has also defended the use of always-on DRM, arguing that it would make updates easier. Its developer, Maxis, initially defended the practice as being a result of the game's reliance on cloud computing for in-game processing, but it was later confirmed that cloud computing was only necessary to support the inter-city and social media mechanisms. As with Diablo III, SimCity (2013) experienced bugs at its launch due to always-on DRM. Reviews of Diablo III criticized its use of always-on DRM.
Popular video games such as Diablo III, Super Mario Run and Starcraft 2 employ always-on DRM by requiring players to connect to the internet to play, even in single-player mode. This section may need to be rewritten to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards.
