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Blizzard Confirms No LAN Support For Starcraft 2
Kemeno writes "Blizzard has announced that they will be dropping LAN support for Starcraft II, citing piracy and quality concerns. Instead, all multiplayer games will be hosted through their new Battle.net service. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by this move, but wasn't LAN play how the original Starcraft became popular? Blizzard said, 'More people on Battle.net means ... even more resources devoted to evolving this online platform to cater to further community building and new ways to enjoy the game online. World of Warcraft is a great example of a game that has evolved beyond anyone's imagination since their Day 1 and will continue to do so to better the player experience for as long as players support the title. ... We would not take out LAN if we did not feel we could offer players something better.'"
So now, aside from locating a place where you and your friends can setup your computers and play - you now get to find someplace with an internet connection that can handle all of them at the same time.
Or you can just pay $60 per computer per month with a 24-month minimum commitment for mobile broadband, like a lot of proponents of cloud computing on Slashdot have been recommending.
You've never been to Korea, have you.
What happened to all the wankers who hooted and hollered about boycotting them after that?
Well, we tried, then this happened.
The enemies of Democracy are
Actually we can just use the original StarCraft itself as an example, or Diablo I and II. We used to be able to spawn a multiplayer-only install of the game for situations like this. It wasn't just easy to do - it was officially sanctioned!
What happened to you, Blizzard? You used to be cool.
This might be enough to get me to not buy the game - despite the fact that I primarily play single-player games.
Where are you getting this information that Battle.net is blocked from universities?
I told him. And I'm a very reliable source.
I wonder if all that extra ad revenue will make up for the fact that a bunch of their core demographic are using university network connections that block access to Battle.net. Somehow I think not...
So they lost a part of their core demographic. Less sales... must be piracy! We must implement more DRM and alienate more of of our customers until eventually nobody will want them. And people won't pirate a game they don't want. Piracy is finally defeated!
I am willing to bet that this budget analysis guys rand the lost sales versus the gained revenue and it came out ahead to do drop the LAN.
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