The lack of a LAN feature in StarCraft 2 is something that has annoyed a lot of the game’s fans. And even though Blizzard was previously hiding behind words and excuses, StarCraft 2’s production director Chris Sigaty admitted that the company removed that feature – mainly – due to piracy. Something that doesn’t shock us at all, as pretty much everyone thought so in the first place. It’s nice though to finally see Blizzard admitting the real reasons behind the lack of it.
In a video interview with GameSpot, Chris said that there were two main things that pushed Blizzard in dropping LAN. One of them was the fact that the company wanted a connected and not isolated experiences, and the other was piracy.
Chris stated that Warcraft 3 is still one of the most popular games in the world, mainly thanks to DOTA, and it seems that Blizzard was annoyed by the fact that gamers have been using pirated copies in order to play it. Obviously, the company lost a lot of money but on the other hand, that might be one of the reasons why DOTA became so successful. That was also one of the reasons why Counter-Strike became popular. Sure, some will say that it was the mechanics that made those games this popular, but deep down we all know that they wouldn’t be played by all those gamers if it wasn’t as easy to pirate the game – that they were based on – as it was back then.
Chris added that piracy played a factor and is a reality, and even though they want to offer a great experience to their players, LAN is not coming back to StarCraft II anytime soon. Chris explained that Battlenet 2.0 performs great on eSports and although there are fans who can’t access Internet, Blizzard wants a connected gaming experience no matter what. In other words, it’s Blizzard’s way or the highway.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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