[Darvin]

The idea is that tools like Hamachi extend LAN capacity over the internet, allowing people to side-step BNET altogether. That won't stop people altogether, as someone will eventually reverse-engineer the program and create a solution.

Frankly, I find publishers are shooting themselves in the foot over draconian copy protection. It's trivial to find a torrent for pirated games; copy protection in every case gets cracked. The people who have to grin and bear it are the legitimate consumers, who have to cancel LAN events because some idiot decided you needed one unique license per computer to play over LAN. Guess what, your game wont be shown at my LAN event which means that my friends wont get to try it out. It's free advertising you're throwing away, just to inconvenience legitimate consumers and give yourself the illusion you're stopping pirates even as they download your product (sans "protection") before the actual release date.