First, you claim online-only singleplayer is required to prevent exploits. Not at all. A simple separation of singleplayer and multiplayer characters would be sufficient. Multiplayer characters and all their items would be stored server-side, so there could be no exploits. If you want to play with a multiplayer character, you would need to be online constantly, just like now.

On the other hand, a singleplayer character would not ever require an internet connection to create or use. However, it should be possible to use SP chars in LAN multiplayer.

Second, you claim online-only games are comparable to games with singleplayer modes. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In an online-only game, server-side storing of your progress is a feature. It’s an effective way to prevent exploits. But if a game has singleplayer, then not letting you play offline is not a feature, but intrusive DRM. No one is trying to stop MMOs, clearly. Gamers simply want to play an offline mode… well… OFFLINE.

This seems quite obvious and you seem to be aware of it in your article, so I’m clueless as to why you would make such a statement. Maybe someone is paying you to act stupid?

Third, you claim this battle has been fought and lost in the past. As I said above, you either don’t understand what the battle is or pretend not to. The real battle, against singleplayer online DRM, has been fought for years and still isn’t anywhere near over.

The main criticism against Steam remains the existence of its DRM. Over the years it’s become a great, if still rather buggy program, but its main function is still DRM. And I doubt many people would use it if not for the big sales. What’s ironic is that Steam’s DRM is pointless. Nobody gains anything from it. Or, at least, I’ve not not heard any arguments in its favor.

Games for Windows Live is another example. However, unlike Steam, GFWL successfully alienated the majority of the gaming population and now there is a significant amount of people that outright refuse to buy anything that requires GFWL activation.

Ubisoft and EA are other examples of bad DRM schemes causing an outcry and lost sales.

The fight is still on and not about to end anytime soon.