Blizzard All-Stars held up by new business model

We haven't heard much from Blizzard's own entry into the Dota clone arena, Blizzard All-Stars, since the developer settled/lost its trademark dispute with Valve, but fear not, "it's still actively being worked on." That's the word from StarCraft 2 production director Chris Sigaty, who says it's held up while Blizzard works on bits for its business model. While Blizzard still won't formally confirm it'll be free-to-play, it's looking awfully likely.

"A lot of the stuff that's remaining right now that we need to focus on are the systems necessary to pull off a game with a different business model than StarCraft 2," Sigaty told Eurogamer.

"StarCraft 2 is a box. We intend to do something different with the business model in Blizzard All-Stars, something more closely resembling the other types of games in that genre, the MOBA-style games that are out there today, and being able to sell smaller amounts of things to players, the things they want."

The standard MOBA model is a free-to-play game which makes money from selling character unlocks and cosmetic pretties like skins and hats, as seen in Dota 2, League of Legends, and heaps more. Blizzard All-Stars was originally planned as a free custom game mode for SC2, but plans have grown as time wore on.

"We'll go into more details about that in the future but I suspect you will not have to have StarCraft 2 to play [it]," Sagity said. We're definitely emphasizing it as its own product in the future."