"For the love of all that is holy do not rely on a digital distribution method if the above occurs!"
By that astounding lack of logic, no company should ever use digital distribution. Try coming up with decent arguments this time.
Why u no read the word rely. An alternative mechanism to distribute and verify a product is not unprecedented nor impossible. But since Blizzard forced everyone to use Battle.net 2.0 the onus is on them.
Well, you can play on pirate servers. I've done it before. But let's be honest--pirate servers suck. They don't have the numbers or update schedule that make WoW worth playing.
In Diablo 2, with a pirated copy of the game, you can do everything except battle.net play. That means single-player and LAN games aren't hampered at all by pirating. With Diablo 3, you either have to substantially modify the pirated copy of the game, or you have to edit it to connect to a pirate server. Which, just like WoW and the pirate servers for every other game, will suck in comparison.
Such a method hampers piracy, but does not stop it. Merging the problems of multi-player and single player is simply not worth it. I will introduce two concepts here: vindictive piracy and challenging piracy.
Challenging piracy – is piracy for the challenge of it, bragging rights, lulz, ect. The scene and organized groups commonly embody this concept.
Vindictive piracy – is piracy spurred by perceived or real grievances by a consumer base, it is reactionary in nature.
Those pirated servers, once up, are not going to be as sucky (population wise) due to the backlash against Activision-Blizzard.
So... I'm ignorant of Korean culture... because I think it's stupid for people to pay a webcafé money to access a brand new online-only game during the first few days after its release, when access to that game is pretty much guaranteed to be unreliable?
Webcafés are much more prominent in Korea due to socio-cultural differences.
You do realize that webcafes do not buy a copy of a game per customer right? Take a look a Blizzard’s EULA, multiple people using one account is called account sharing. Blizzard can effectively shut them down.
Blizzard post Activision merger has gone after competitive teams that play eports (they they sponsored even!) using their games because they used a shared team account to practice. See HuK for a very early example.