Total War: Rome 2 will require Steam, but not always-on DRM

Total War: Rome 2 will require Steam, according to a new report by Eurogamer.

Although, Creative Assembly's new strategy action game will utilize steam, lead designer James Russell confirmed the game will not require users to be connected to the internet at all times to play. While the studio isn't considering the always-on DRM for Total War: Rome 2, Russell did leave the option on the table for future titles.

"I wouldn't comment on ever," Russell told Eurogamer, "but it's certainly not something we're planning to do for Rome 2."

"It's always upsetting to see your game being pirated," he explained. "Certainly we do suffer from that. We've got a lot of players who haven't necessarily activated. But at the same time it's arguable how much that harms sales."

"We don't like our game being pirated and so we take steps to try and stop that happening. We wouldn't want to take Draconian steps to alienate our core player-base that are buying the game."

Always-on DRM is something more and more PC games are resorting to in order to combat piracy, but it remains unpopular among consumers. It's not for reasons you'd think though. It's not the pirates that are upset, but the ones who legally purchase the game and then are unable to enjoy it when the game launches because of server issues. Just look at Diablo 3 when it first launched. Millions of players were unable to even play the single player campaign at launch due to server overloads.