By now I’m sure you know that Blizzard doesn’t plan to support LAN in StarCraft II. There’s a petition going around that politely asks Blizzard to reconsider. Said petition has some 65,000 signatures on it. You should sign it, too.
Blizzard says it won’t support LAN in order to focus on “building Battle.net to be the ideal destination for multiplayer gaming with StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games.”
What, where’s the standard “piracy made us do it!” rationale?
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.
Oh, there it is. Phew.
Wow, I guess the rogue in me sees this in the complete opposite way. That is, the lack of LAN will actually encourage piracy. Why pay for a game when the company is treating you like a potential criminal? (I suppose you could just skip out on the game altogether, but that’s not nearly as dramatic.) “Sorry, son, we can’t support LAN because we want you to connect to Battle.net every time you double-click the game’s icon so we can authenticate your copy.” Besides, it’s not like RELOADED or whomever won’t crack the game days before its retail release.
If we’ve learned anything, it’s that pirates will figure out how to work around anti-piracy measures. Better, I think, to ignore that segment of the population and instead play to the people who are—or were—100 percent prepared to spend $50+ on the game.
But I’m not a fancy exec in a corner office, so all of this can safely be ignored.