Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
"losing millions of sales"->"losing millions of potential sales"
That assumes that people in china would still be buying a game that old if they couldn't get it for free.
I bought start craft because of its convenient at-home LAN licensing and advanced map editor (it had great triggers at the time). I already had wc2 why did I need another RTS?. I won't be buying SC2 with out it (partly because I don't get the same fun out of RTSs anymore).