The State of Blizzard's Union

Gamasutra has an extensive interview with Senior Vice President Frank Pearce (one of the company's original founders), and Starcraft II producer Chris Sigaty. They discuss some elements of the the company's future. They discuss their expectations for Starcraft II, some hints of what's to come in World of Warcraft, and word that 50 people are working on the mysterious 'Team 3' game. "Pearce: Our global headcount is like, 2700. Most of that is customer service for World of Warcraft. I mean in terms of development staff... it's probably around 350. For all of Blizzard. World of Warcraft development team is about 135 people...40 for you [indicates Chris' Starcraft 2 team], 50 for ... Team 3 ... Gamasutra: Team 3? What's Team 3 working on? Pearce: Team 3 is working on something really awesome. I will totally tell you, it's really awesome ... Nope, can't give you any hints. Gamasutra: Well, as long as it's awesome."

Comments

Couldn't ... care ... less

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I mean, it's probably great for someone in the industry to know, so I read it, but as a game player, I just don't care.

Blizzard lost all credibility as far as I am concerned with bnetd.

Re:Couldn't ... care ... less

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People could ALREADY play each other online. It didn't enable anything that they already didn't have. You could already play other people online via one of several methods. The only thing you got from battle.net was a lousy MATCHMAKER service as well as a way to store characters.

I severely doubt you can back up the assertion that the primary users of bnetd were people who pirated their games. I bought and paid for every copy of Blizzard games I had in my possession (multiple copies, even). The people I played with ALSO had purchased their copies. So, as far as *I* am concerned, that assetion is pure grade A bullshit.

I'm sorry, I don't share your rose-colored-glasses view of Blizzard. Evil is as evil does.

I understand perfectly the situation they were in; it didn't justify their actions in the least.

Lastly, while I don't expect you to believe anything I say (and I really don't care), I've been in the corporate software development world for 30 years now, so I understand the issues of piracy intimately.

Hardly..

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It was about control.

The primary motivation to buy the game was to PLAY it. If you pirated it, you could still PLAY it with your friends via several methods. The difference was that you couldn't use their "official" matchmaker service. The existence of BnetD had, at most, a negligible impact on the level of piracy.

They also didn't demand the key checker; they OFFERED to use whatever keychecker Blizzard was willing to give them access to.

It was a valid fair use case, killed off by venue-shopping.