It didn't sell to me either. I did, however, buy a 4-pack of its primary competitor, Torchlight 2 for $60 (the cost of 1 copy of D3) so that I could play with 3 of my friends. Torchlight 2, incidentally, was developed by the same team that developed Diablo 1 and 2. Funny how things work like that sometimes.

I personally see no need for online requirements for a single player experience. EA, Blizzard, or any other developer/publisher/whatever doesn't matter - the point is I won't buy games that require an online presence for a single player experience.

As far as I know, speaking German isn't illegal anywhere...?

Tell that to the MAFIAA.

This. I can see using ads to monitize free/OTA programming, but I refuse to pay to watch ads, which is why Hulu doesn't get our money either.

Running joke or not, that's the truth of it.

Ever tried buying Burger King, or even gasoline, with a $50 bill or higher? These notes are supposed to be legal tender for all debts, public and private, yet certain denominations are not accepted at certain establishments. I'm not suggesting that these places should or should not be allowed to accept/reject whatever denominations of currency they choose, but I'd say that the guarantee you speak of isn't as solid as one might believe.

I don't know that there's a double-standard about Steam specifically, but I definitely see one with Console vs PC gaming and, honestly, I'm ok with that. If I want games I can trade in or play multiplayer on a split screen, I buy it for console. If it's something that I want maximum performance on (Skyrim) or am OK with never trading in (i.e. 75% off sale on Steam), I'll get it for my PC.

Honestly, though, most of the games I play are PC only anyway, so it's a fairly moot point for me anyway.

A right which I practice daily! :)

But... there's no backwards compatability with PS3 so there's no reason to identify if a PS3 game is used or not.

A quick google search only supplied that information as a rumor. Do you have a citation for that?

Really, though, why would a customer of that retailer voluntarily be burned by this tactic more than once? Other than stupidity, I can't think of a reason. Consumers buying products/services like this only serve to tell the retailers that the market will, in fact, tolerate this behavior. The solution is simple - don't tolerate that behavior and stop giving money to companies that are consumer hostile.

While I agree with your sentiment, I don't see it really progressing to the degree you're predicting. When games/apps/whatever start going that route, it will likely leave a vacuum for indie developers to come in and not have to compete with the large development shops that are currently entrenched there. In that scenario, I'd see that the smaller developers that are catering to what the gamers/users actually like will start to grow like crazy and the shops that were consumer hostile will find that very few are still willing to buy their product(s).

Let's hope that's how it works out anyway...

Unlikely unless that feature is reinstated with some kind of formal statement saying they are encouraging the use of said feature.

Shouldn't be an issue - Minecraft runs, by default, on port 25565 and can be configured to run on any port you like.