We don’t currently plan to support LAN play with StarCraft II, as we are building Battle.net to be the ideal destination for multiplayer gaming with StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games. 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.
Several Battle.net features like advanced communication options, achievements, stat-tracking, and more, require players to be connected to the service, so we’re encouraging everyone to use Battle.net as much as possible to get the most out of StarCraft II. We’re looking forward to sharing more details about Battle.net and online functionality for StarCraft II in the near future.
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I Live Mondays For 03/15/2010
Nothing will snap you out of your post-GDC haze faster than a live broadcast, I always say. |
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Hands-On With The PlayStation Move
We're movin' on up to... motion controls on the PlayStation 3. |
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A First Look At EA's New Medal Of Honor
No epic beard guys were evident in our first demo, but here's what we did see. |
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Batman: Arkham Asylum Gets GOTY Edition
And now it's coming to North America. In 3D. |
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We Are The (Sports) Champions
This Move minigame collection is a good place to start. |
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Chibi PlayStation Dudes ModNation Attack!!
120%! |
|
|
Hands-On With The PlayStation Move
We're movin' on up to... motion controls on the PlayStation 3. |
|
|
A First Look At EA's New Medal Of Honor
No epic beard guys were evident in our first demo, but here's what we did see. |
|
|
I Live Mondays For 03/15/2010
Nothing will snap you out of your post-GDC haze faster than a live broadcast, I always say. |
|
|
Batman: Arkham Asylum Gets GOTY Edition
And now it's coming to North America. In 3D. |
|
|
We Are The (Sports) Champions
This Move minigame collection is a good place to start. |
|
|
Chibi PlayStation Dudes ModNation Attack!!
120%! |
|
| Assassin's Creed II PC - March 16, 2010 |
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| God of War III PS3 - March 16, 2010 |
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| Metro 2033 X360 | PC - March 16, 2010 |
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| Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening PS3 | X360 | PC - March 16, 2010 |
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| Perfect Dark XBLM - March 17, 2010 |
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| Resonance of Fate PS3 | X360 - March 16, 2010 |
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| Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight PC - March 16, 2010 |
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| Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon WII - March 16, 2010 |
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| Infinite Space DS - March 16, 2010 |
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Edit: Finally, solid proof that only the honest consumer gets hurt by piracy.
Edit: Clearly I was first. Now I can elaborate.
@mrsmiley said:
I agree with you both. Its an incredibly stupid move on their part. I think it will ultimately affect their sales even more than whatever piracy through hamachi could have. As for achievements they would simply just need to make them unnatainable offline. BUt yes the only time I would multiplayer Starcraft was through LAN and this is a horrible, horrible choice which I hope does not also carry over to Diablo, but here it would be leess of an issue.
That is all.
Figures.
The reasoning behind it is that the replay value of starcraft is in the multiplayer, and in fact some people will get the game to play just the multiplayer and the problem occurs with LAN because since it doesn't connect to Battle.Net they can't always authenticate that the game is a real copy. This can be seen in starcraft, I know TONS of people who never bought that game and just pirated it so that they could play the LAN, of course they couldnt play the online matches but the LAN was enough for them, so thats where the concern about piracy comes in. Of course they could use other forms of protection like SecurROM, however these are easily cracked and circumvented, as well as provide not only an inconvienence to the user (such as install limits) but also have a stigma associated with them that can kill a games popularity, having to force someone to connect to Battle.Net to authenticate is more secure. I'm not saying this is the right move though, but I can't think of any other alternatives that wouldn't just be easily circumvented. (Also I assume that the reasoning behind only allowing achievments to be got through online play would be because there will most likely be cheat codes in single play)
...and so begins the reformation of Korea against the western world...
At least they aren't going to have DRM that forces you to call support after 3 installs and installs rootkits on your computer. (Anno 1404)