Not a surprising decision.
Piracy on the PC is just one factor that will continue to kill off the PC gaming business. Many factors negatively impact games made for what used to be arguably the best gaming platform in the world. PC games are still successfully released, but with online checks and balances to ensure that the game is not adversely impacted by hackers. AAA Single player and multi player games hosted on player's PCs are in my opinion gone forever on the PC/Windows platform.
1. Supporting multiple gaming environments. The ability to create a challenging game that works for single player, multi player, and online players is difficult and expensive. The game balance is different when playing single vs multi player vs online. The cost to test and achieve game balance is costly both in amount of code and game testing time.
2. The increased testing matrix on the PC is hard to support, especially when you compare the PCs testing matrix to that of any of the consoles. Consoles have fixed hardware (relatively speaking), whereas the PC is wide open to millions of combinations of hardware from many vendors: system boards, chipsets, video, input devices, etc.
3. Unfortunately, the open environment that brought masses of developers to the PC (Windows) platform has also allowed hackers to break almost any security system on the PC, which then leads to piracy, cheating, and ruined game economies.
4. The cost of producing a AAA title these days is on par with that of a blockbuster movie. Who's going to risk that kind of investment on a platform that can be compromised by hackers. Piracy, game economy, cheating, are all aspects that hackers attack on the single player or client-hosted multi player PC game. Putting the game online allows developers to detect and control piracy, cheating, and game economy; which are some of the more important attributes that are critical to the success of a game.
5. Piracy. Software only hacks such as break once break everywhere (BOBE) spread easily and have little risk to the casual pirate to use. BOBE attacks are difficult to detect and remove, unless there is some online presence to the game. The efforts of one hacker can be used by literally millions of casual users. Software companies dedicate a huge amount of resources to fighting piracy, but not nearly as much as the hacking community. It's a cat and mouse game that will continue as long as the PC/Windows platform is open and has no secure mechanism for booting into the operating system (secure boot/hypervisor). Even then, the hackers will always be there...looking for a way to wedge their way into the system.
6. Cheating. No one wants to play a game where others are cheating and profiting at your expense. Many hacks on the PC are focused on cheating to gain an unfair advantage over other players, which can quickly take the 'fun' out of a game.
7. Game Economy. A game with a balanced economy is critical to keeping players interested and engaged in the game. When hackers can get the best weapons, artifacts, spells, etc, they destroy the game for others and frankly for themselves. the challenge to win the game switches from actually winning by the game's rules to the challenge of winning by hacking.
