Piracy Concerns Behind StarCraft II LAN Cut
When Blizzard announced yesterday that LAN play would be cut out of StarCraft II, it disturbed a hornets' nest of fanboys and hurried to explain itself:
We don't currently plan to support LAN play with StarCraft II, as we are building Battle.net to be the ideal destination for multiplayer gaming with StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games. While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy.Several Battle.net features like advanced communication options, achievements, stat-tracking, and more, require players to be connected to the service, so we're encouraging everyone to use Battle.net as much as possible to get the most out of StarCraft II. We're looking forward to sharing more details about Battle.net and online functionality for StarCraft II in the near future.
That's great for Blizzard, which has Battle.net to rely on - and can expect us to rely on - but what about smaller devs who don't have a larger infrastructure to act as middleman? It's definitely not great for the LAN party crowd, who may have trouble using Battle.net as a LAN party stand-in when logging multiple PCs through the same IP. Let's hope Blizzard takes the Steam route and facilitates "virtual LAN parties" through the Battle.net client.
Unsurprisingly, StarCraft II LAN Cut Due To Piracy Concerns [VE3D]
tiny dancer
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 30 June 2009
· Comments (5)
Other stuff like this: blizzard, lan party, piracy, starcraft ii
And another developer doesn't get it. The more these companies make these stupid decisions, the more people fight against them. All they're doing is encouraging more piracy. You can bet that there will be ALOT of 3rd party programs and workarounds to get past this nonsense.
Blizzard are merely continuing what it started with Warcraft, it wouldn't surprise me if Battle.net ended up pay to play, about par for the course given how badly PC gamers are treat these days.
There goes any chance of me buying it, considering how many hours I and a load of my friends played Starcraft, and their friends etc, that's a lot of pirated copies.
I'll be downloading it for certain now, as will everyone I know, and just about everyone they know.
Well done Blizzard, keep towing the line, eventually some idiots bound to believe you.
[It should be noted it's been years since I played Starcraft and I never played online so never experienced Battle.net]
Wow, good to know that self entitled pricks are still going strong on the web! Want to play something but don't pay for it! Just make up a reason to be outraged and you to can rationalize stealing from anyone. It's ok! Everyone is doing it so should you!
My thoughts exactly, Matthew.
Thinking that you are "screwing over" a multibillion dollar company by pirating the game (and depending on how they do the CD keys, that might be nigh on impossible) doesn't really do much other than set yourself up for prosecution and a lawsuit.
Besides, Neo, you say you've NEVER used battle.net but are so irate about that being the only multiplayer option that you are willing to break state, federal, and international law over it? Someone needs his diaper changed.
I played on b.net and also had LAN parties, but I must say they LAN parties where the best.
On that note, I might buy it... I might download it... really depends on how fast he hacks get out and the games that are circling around at the time of release.
But since Blizzard decided to split the game in 3, I think it would be kind of dumb to buy it straight out of the shelf, so I will probably download the games as they come out, and if I still consider them fun enough, buy the 3 game bundle at the end.
As far as the internet police goes, just lolz.