Well, there's PLENTY of buzz going on all over the web about the pirated release of Starcraft 2. I haven't tried this for my-self, so I can only speak on what I've read on various web-sites, which I will Not post links to here, but I can at least talk about what I read.
Apparently the pirating group known as RELOADED has already hacked SC 2. Normally when games are pirated they loose All multiplayer functionality but this appears not to be the case with SC 2. The pirated copy doesn't connect to BattleNet but it can supposedly do "Challenge" matches, the single player campaign works with saves and loads functioning, and the editors are working.
Since the editors and single player are meant to work offline, that isn't particularly surprising. The game doesn't have strong DRM and thus will be pirated quickly. Don't we normally consider lack of DRM a good thing?
I'm not even sure why "PC game gets pirated" is even news worthy at this point.
This makes me wonder if people are going to try to sell Mods made with pirated tools? This can't be good news for Blizzard since they have so much riding on this one being a blockbuster. Then again most of us who bought it wanted it for the multiplayer anyway.
Starcraft 1 didn't have much in the way of DRM and was easily pirated. It did alright. I don't think Blizzard has to worry.
I do how-ever think it's a pretty dickish move by Blizzard to sell the game 3 times with campaigns for the 3 different races. Seriously, they couldn't have given us all 3 campaigns in one game? That just seems like trying to milk the customers if you ask me. I'm seriously hoping when the next two games come out they'll be at reduced price if you bought Wings of Liberty.
This is flat out wrong (and I've corrected this misinformation so many times on this forum that it's getting old). The campaign in Wings of Liberty is triple the size of any campaign in SC1, and has MUCH better production values and storytelling quality. The amount of content in total for single player is similar, only this version is better in every way.
The other two "games" are in fact expansions, and will be priced as expansions. Did people really expect no expansions for SC2, given that every Blizzard game since Warcraft 2 has had at least one? All they did differently is announce the expansions ahead of time, which seems to have set people off in a remarkably irrational tizzy.
So, you're getting similar amounts of content (at a higher quality) then SC1 for what after inflation is actually less money... and you think they're ripping you off by releasing expansions with more campaigns, which they also did in SC1? How does that make ANY sense at all?
With everything the government is doing to fight piracy right now, maybe this will open some eyes and show some people that the government is going after the wrong people when they need to be going after the groups putting these things out (like Reloaded).
Also wrong, but for different reasons. This thinking is the basis behind the strategy of the "war on drugs", which is an abject failure and always will be. Same with prohibition and prostitution. So long as a demand exists for something, criminals will find a way to supply it.
That's especially true with piracy, where the main actions used to reduce the supply (really restrictive DRM) also make the product less palatable to customers and thus drive up the demand for a pirate version.