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StarCraft 2's Non-existent LAN Support Explained, Piracy Cited as Key Reason
by Chris Faylor, Jun 30, 2009 7:32am PDTFollowing through on word that StarCraft II won't support LAN play due to "planned technology to be incorporated into Battle.net," developer Blizzard has provided Joystiq with a further explanation of the controversial decision and the planned technology:
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.
The first entry in Blizzard's planned StarCraft II trilogy, Terrans: Wings of Liberty, is planned to hit PC by the year's end, with a public multiplayer beta expected this summer.
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2. If you're a gamer and you don't have internet access, then you aren't a real gamer. And if you go to the woods (or another remote location like in a cave behind a waterfall) to LAN with your friends, then maybe that's not the ideal place to do so.
3. Blizzard will make MUCH more money by disabling LAN play, it's the smart thing to do. Even if there is 1% of people that don't buy it, it will force a massive 30% of people to buy it instead of pirating it.
4. Since when does Blizzard owe you LAN play? Because you paid $40 ten years ago for Starcraft I and it had it? What sense does that make?
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Valve adds incentives to buy their games. (rewards paying customers)
Blizzard completely removes features because they might be used for piracy. (hurts paying customers)
And to make things stranger, EA is now following the Valve route moreso than the Blizzard route. Is it possible EA has become more consumer-friendly than Blizzard??
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They should do what a lot of other companies do or should do. Start marketing for a game half a year before release, NOT 2 years in advance! Hype over too long of a period of time just kind of kills my interest, or changing game mechanics, such as the art direction of Borderlands.
About Borderlands, initially from the E3 demonstration it was an instant day 1 purchase. After the first art change, I was thinking a maybe purchase. 2nd altered art direction was so abysmal that I wanted to gouge out my eyes with a spoon and replace them with magic 8 balls. Oh, and I now have no plans to ever buy that game.
Right now I know pretty much every unit in Starcraft 2, their abilities, etc. and so I'm left thinking "there's nothing I'll be surprised about because they've shown everything half a dozen times." I like being surprised in the games I play, and I usually avoid trailers, reviews, etc. But Starcraft 2, damn. If you go for a week without news about that game, start bringing out your end of the world signs because something is obviously wrong with this world.
On a side note, they should bring back Spawn copies.
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At the point where the cancer of DRM becomes too great to bear, you will forget your own dark deeds and instead blame the game creators themselves for their criminal choice to inject the DRM cancer into their otherwise beautiful creations. Criminal... who is the criminal? and what is the true root of this cancer? Who will win? the cancer of piracy, or the vaccine of DRM?
You see, my pirating friends, as the consumer changes, so must the provider adapt. You have changed from your innocent beginnings, hence, so must the industry. In light of this knowledge, save your self the confusion of holding high a double standard; If you want to revert the current state of the industry, revert yourselves first.
Some of you may wish to boycott and manipulate the industry, but the industry has little patience anymore, they will instead stop making works for the likes of you and simplify their art to appeal to a more honest customer: the casual gamer.
Accept the DRM vaccine for now, dear pirates, and clean your own habits; only then may the future bring us a new golden age of hardcore games.
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Because of piracy our game sucks ,because of piracy our server crashed. Because of piracy we need to release 3 boxes for a game that should only fill one and charge 30$ a pop for them.
Oh and if your reading this blizzard 99% of the games i played of SC1 were on a lan with my friends at my house or the local game center. And for that matter 99% of the games i played of WC1 and WC2 and WC3 were played ....guess what on a LAN!!!!!
Oh and piracy made me type this comment.
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My uncle had a good point with this.. which is gonna cost more 'n make more money, though Blizzard is probably who has to least worried with few people buying and more pirating, with LAN support or no LAN support like they're gonna have, with first part, they could risk more people pirating (though like said, they're probably who have least to worry about with that, though only reason would be cause games cost more, at least here for example gone up like 30-40% since ecnomy started going down) and with no LAN support, as you can clearly see on comments here & kotaku, people are gonna loose interest buying the game (with with this and 3 seperate game-buy-for-all-campaigns.
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This is all about forcing everyone to use battle.net for stat tracking and marketing. And down the line the possibility of pushing a paid service onto the customer base.
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It's been down for SEVERAL minutes this year alone!
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$10 says there will be a hack-patch or some way to redirect/trap traffic to a local service acting like bogus net anyways.
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Who willing distributes their titles without copyright protection, with all the bells and whistles, and makes dealing with their services a piece of cake?
There's no reason why Blizzard can't authenticate once AND support LAN. Piracy my ass, they just think their customers are stupid.
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OR
It will push LAN gaming parties and facilities to start really making sure internet access is available.
OR
It will force Blizzard to patch LAN back in. But hopefully they won't do it too late. Sometimes, by the time the developers patch something in that should have been there, the people who cared about it don't care anymore and forget about the game for quite a while. Then they don't even notice the change.
For instance, Halo 3 was (and probably still is that matter) missing a matchmaker system that connects you with people hosting a custom game. I ranted about it on the forums for a while but then moved onto other games. And now, I've been away from that scene for so long that I have no idea if they ever did anything about it. The new xbox experience helped a little I think with it's party system, but I haven't tried it for halo 3 custom gaming.
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They better at least allow more than on user from the same connection to be able to play online together.
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"StarCraft sold over 9.5 million copies across the globe, with 4.5 million of these being sold in South Korea." -- starcraft wiki
Damn those pirates! If only SC sold 10 million copies, maybe it would've convinced them to keep LAN in.
"Several Battle.net features like advanced communication options, achievements, stat-tracking [...]"
-- You're in the same damn room. How much better advance communication options do you need?
-- wtf am I going to do with achievements?
-- wtf do I care about stats?
Blizzard just made it impossible to play SC2 at my girlfriend's house because her shitty DSL service craps out every 10 minutes. Then again, my cable service will frequently go out for days throughout the year.
We have 3 copies of SC and brood wars because it has LAN play. This was instant two copies for us, however, I see no reasons for us buy this game anymore, since the whole point of buying sc2 was for the lan play.
Blizzard is trying to throw shit at us and justify it. I don't care about the "features" bnet offers. I don't use it, and I never will. We've played SC for hundreds of hours back in the day, and not once did any of us sat down and ask for any of the "features" you've offered. We just want our lan.
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I don't want to play StarCraft 2 with some douchebag on the internet. I want to play it with some douchebag in my house.
For the unfortunate few who legitimately cannot/do not have internet access and want to multi player without pirating - it really does suck.
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It does suck that this is what it has come down to though.
In China most people just live in the lan centres anyway, so who knows, maybe encouraging online only play might be a real winner for them.
I myself would only ever be playing it from home and online anyway. Cant remember the last time i needed lan functionality in a game so yeah. I bet korea is a similar circumstance to China also and we all know how big the gaming market for starcraft is there eh.
What brought a lot of popularity to SC1 does not mean it will bring the same popularity to SC2.
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NO ONE CARES BECAUSE YOU'RE SITTING IN THE ROOM PLAYING WITH THE PEOPLE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CONNECTION!
This is just a futile attempt for Blizz to stifle piracy which in effect will only stifle their player base as pirates always get around stuff like this.
I thought Blizzard was one of the few companies that was still rather smart. I guess WoW turned it's creators into sheep too. How is that for irony?
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If they put out Starcraft 2 and had free battle.net - they would lose subscribers to WoW and they would be getting fewer $15 / month payments.
So, they unified WoW account into battle.net accounts, and your $15 a month now pays for a battle.net account (this merger happened a few months ago, btw). So, even if they lose some WoW interest, they're still grabbing everyone's $15 a month.
Obviously everyone doesn't want to pay $15 a month to play Starcraft 2 online, and as a result, it would develop a huge Hamachi community (Hamachi works through LAN). To end that idea before it even begins, Blizzard decides to not include LAN play in Starcraft 2, or in Diablo 3.
Money talks - Blizzard is a business, and they want to maintain the $15 a month from every Blizzard consumer.
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