StarCraft II LAN Dropped Thanks to Piracy

News
By Kevin Parrish
published

More information has surfaced in regards to LAN support-- or a lack thereof--in StarCraft II.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that Blizzard's long-awaited RTS game StarCraft II would not offer LAN support when the first installment eventually goes retail.  In fact, Blizzard's VP of game design Rob Pardo confirmed the company's lack of support during a recent interview with IncGamers, making a firm statement that Blizzard has no plans for LAN support whatsoever. To add insult to injury, Pardo didn't--nor anyone else over at Blizzard--bother to explain the reasons behind the non-existent LAN support decision.

The news caused a negative ripple effect across the gaming community, with many heated fans vowing to boycott StarCraft II and condemning the company, and even lit up the local Tom's comments system. A petition soon found its way online, asking Blizzard to insert LAN support within StarCraft II rather than forcing gamers to rely on Battle.net alone for multiplayer action. The petition has a current total of 16,398 signatures, and even lists five reasons why Blizzard should reconsider LAN support.

However, yesterday Bob Colayco from Blizzard's PR department further explained the company's reason. According to his statement to Joystiq, Blizzard is focusing primarily on Battle.net as the multiplayer gaming destination for all Blizzard titles. '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,' he said.

Colayco went on to provide minimal details regarding Battle.net and StarCraft II, saying that advanced communication options, achievements, stat-tracking and additional features require the player to be connected to the service. 'We're encouraging everyone to use Battle.net as much as possible to get the most out of StarCraft II,' he added. 'We're looking forward to sharing more details about Battle.net and online functionality for StarCraft II in the near future.'

StarCraft II fans will get their first taste of the multiplayer portion sometime this summer with the release of a public multiplayer beta. This first installment of the StarCraft II trilogy, Terrans: Wings of Liberty, is expected to ship by the end of the year, with Zerg: Heart of the Swarm and Protoss: Legacy of the Void to follow thereafter.

Kevin Parrish
131 Comments Comment from the forums
  • icepick314
    geez...and i was looking so forward to this game...

    guess it's a pass for me....
    Reply
  • eklipz330
    i think this is a worthy reason to boycott a game rather than bullshit about some other recently announced game

    *cough**cough**L4d2**cough*
    Reply
  • velocityg4
    Well that is just ridiculous. What happens when Blizzard no longer runs compatible Battle.net servers? Or if Blizzard goes under.

    I won't buy this just like any MMORPG.

    If I buy a game I enjoy. I expect to be able to play it any time in the future. Assuming I can find and want to assemble still functioning compatible equipment 20+ years from now.

    Mostly I play single player games. However, the few games I enjoy multiplayer on need to allow LAN play. Such as Age of Empires.
    Reply
  • sstym
    Correction: Instead of "LAN dropped thanks to piracy", you should have titled this article "LAN dropped thanks to Blizzard's ineptitude".
    Asserting that Piracy is the direct cause to LAN being dropped is about the same as saying Time Warner Cable's decision to not upgrade its network is a direct consequence of the uproar caused by the introduction of its tiered service. It is neither a logical nor an appropriate response.
    There are many ways Blizzard can prevent their games for being pirated, and this is a rather silly one.
    What is going to happen is someone is going to create a pirate patch to implement LAN whether Blizzard is ok with that or not, and then Blizzard will scramble to implement LAN in an official patch.
    Pitiful.
    Reply
  • neodude007
    Why are people crying about this so much?? Blizz is spending years making this game and people are crying that they have to use the interwebz to play it??? Jesus. It is called a business model. They are requiring people to use Bnet now for sever reasons, 2 of which are piracy and $ from ads.

    StarCraft 1 was so popular on LAN because basically only 56k was around back then and internet use was not as common. Get over it people. If you are not buying this game because you can't LAN it up with your kid sister downstairs then you got issues.

    If friends want to have a LAN party with SC2 they can, just on private Bnet games... and those friends should all have a copy of the game anyways... so who cares?
    Reply
  • turboflame
    "StarCraft II LAN Dropped Thanks to Piracy"

    Moar liek "StarCraft II LAN Dropped Thanks to a Company That Doesn't Care About its Customers and Uses Pirates as a Scapegoat" amirite?
    Reply
  • JeanLuc
    I'll admit, I'm not really into all this 'LAN Gaming' deal so the fact Starcraft II lacks LAN support doesn't really bother me however I do recognise LAN gaming and LAN parties has been an integral aspect of PC gaming for over a decade now and this really is a sad to see.

    Also by not supporting it you will only encourage other publishers to follow suit and this will risk killing a whole micro industry that generates money and employment.

    As for piracy................some how I don't think the directors of Blizzard are to concerned about piracy when they go and collect their wages in wheelbarrows from the mountain of cash they earn every month from World of Warcraft subscriptions.
    Reply
  • baov
    Yeah well Starcraft II dropped due to lack of LAN! Fuck you blizzard.
    Reply
  • mcnuggetofdeath
    Called It. The issue is and will be piracy. Blizzard is the new EA. Rather than provide those customers who did pay for Starcraft with a quality product that they can use long after Battle.net servers go offline, Blizzard decided to make it slightly more difficult for those who wouldve stolen the game anyway to get their own servers. Its not like people who pirate games can crack activation and set up their own servers that mimic Battle.net. *cough* WoW *cough*

    All this does is make it less enjoyable for actual customers.
    Reply
  • Grims
    Look at the newer age games. None of them work on a LAN and their servers are going down all the time. That always pisses me off. What happens when it is no longer cost effective to keep the servers going because the game doesnt sell anymore?
    Reply