66 ms·
StarCraft 2: help us mourn the death of content freedom
- protomyth 16y agoGreed is probably the motive, but.... I get the feeling no CEO wants to be testifying at a congressional hearing and try to explain that the content some kid saw wasn't created by their company. "This appears in your video game and as we all know (like animation) all video games are for kids" "No sir, that was not created by us....." "You should stop this..."
- macrael 16y agoPenny Arcade covered this wonderfully regarding Little Big Planet: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/10/22/ http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/10/22/
- techdmn 16y agoEspecially after the GTA "Hot Coffee" debacle. That was a different issue of course, but the general public doesn't seem to understand what a mod is, and assume the game publisher is responsible for any and all content, regardless of source.
- njharman 16y agoSeems like HN commenters are confused as to what mod and content are as well... Bethesda was the source of the content for Hot Coffee. It was included in several versions of the game. A mod was made to enable access to this content. As the authors and distributors Bethesda is/was/and should be responsible for releasing that content.
- techdmn 16y agoWhich is why I said it was a different issue. My point was that the public attention that issue received could make publishers more wary of anything perceived as similar.
- papercrane 16y agoRockstar developed GTA. Bethesda made Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3.
- chc 16y agoThe difference with Hot Coffee is that it really was created by the studio and it really was in the game — it just wasn't normally accessible. That's why Rockstar was able to patch it out, which wouldn't have been possible if the entire sequence were actually being modded in. Similarly, somebody who exploited a wallwalking glitch to get to Mount Hyjal in the early days of World of Warcraft couldn't really be said to have added Mount Hyjal to the game — it was definitely Blizzard content.
- sp332 16y agoSomewhat different motivation, but Disney had similar issues making sure no one got harassed on their servers either. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1581628 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1581628
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- patio11 16y agoI know that somewhere in this wide world there must be a heartbreaking work of staggering genius remixing corporate logos, edgy speech, and full-motion video into a mindblowing coming of age story about tolerance and true love that could only possibly be shown in the Starcraft engine, but you know how I read this headline? Starcraft 2: More Zergs, Less Penis. That is a tradeoff I can live with.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- iron_ball 16y agoThe file size limitation is the killer, if you ask me. Starcraft and Warcraft III both had huge mod communities which produced astounding content. In at least two cases, entirely new genres of gameplay: the tower-defense genre began with Starcraft mods, and the WC3 mod "Defense of the Ancients" has inspired several similar standalone games. Anything that limits the capabilities of mod designers is bad in my book.
- Retric 16y agoSorry no: Tower Defense games began in 1990 when Atari Games released Rampart.[6] Early tower defense games later began to appear post-1997 in minigames for other platforms, such as Final Fantasy VII. By 2000, maps for StarCraft, Age of Empires II, and WarCraft III were following suit.[7] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_defense http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_defense)
- wwortiz 16y agoWell tower defense was indeed further defined and expanded in warcraft 3 where it saw its biggest market, and this just further supports modding of games. DOTA however is from wc3 and it is especially amazing that there have been two independent games made from it, as well as many other interesting game types.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mcgraw 16y agoI don't mind this. I like controlled systems because they tend to keep the garbage out of my sight (steam, itunes). If they allow the masses to create really obscene things, it only hurts the developers that spend countless hours creating quality mods and maps because the consumer has to wade through trash 98% of the time. Another point is that the game is still new. That 25 MB limit is probably not a hard limit. It 'could' go up if they start seeing a show of hands with people needing more space.
- protomyth 16y agoI don't think the big issues is what they allow on their servers. I think the bigger issues is that a lot of new games don't allow you to host your own content outside their system. I can see reasons for this (and I am sympathetic), but I do miss the old days of getting a WarCraft map from a friend.
- Qz 16y agoYou can still do that for single-player maps AFAIK -- the Map Editor lets you run any map that you can download.
- mcgraw 16y agoYeah, you can create a map and distribute it for single player vs. the AI. - http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/ http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/ - http://sc2.curse.com/downloads/sc2-maps/default.aspx http://sc2.curse.com/downloads/sc2-maps/default.aspx
- mcgraw 16y agoDon't forget that Blizzard plans to rake in some money off of content creation (for Blizzard and the developers).
- smallblacksun 16y agoThe company that spent millions making the game intends to make money off it? The horror!
- iamdave 16y agoA nasty side effect of consumer-inherent complacency. As long as you keep consumers' appetites satiated just enough for them to want more, this sort of thing by and large will go condoned. People who don't develop Apps on the iPhone didn't care about the crappy developer agreement. People who just log onto Facebook to gossip about Johnny and Chachi didn't care about openGraph. People who only bought Starcraft to build pylons wont care about this. The casual gamers and casual consumers outnumber power users at least 5:1, and that's what allows these sort of things to perpetuate and continue on the rate that they are.
- _pi 16y agoIt's not casual gamers, it's gamers in general. All of my friends who have bought this game ignore issues with it because "IT'S STARCRAFT II!!!!!!!!". Gamers are the weak, and easy to manipulate, they give in, boycotts aren't effective, and for video games you can forget about having any sort of unified front. Back when I still read reddit's /r/pics there'd be a weekly posting of BOYCOTT MWII steam group of some sort and everyon was playing MWII.
- javanix 16y agoI think that's kind of a woeful generalization. The most vocal members of the population certainly have something like that, but plenty of people who play games (myself included) bought SC2 because they were happy enough with the content and not dissuaded enough by the downsides - I'm sure plenty of other people quietly went about their business, passing it up because of the various issues discussed in this thread.
- _pi 16y agoFor most gamers the upside of playing the game overrules the downside all the time. Me? I haven't bought SC2, L4D2 or MW2, because all of them disrespect the platform, and it's users. I want more features than I had in 1995, not less, I want companies to stand by their promises, and I don't want some neutered 1:1 console port, respectively. I also don't want Blizzard controlling the upstream of game content. Bobby Kiotik will want to monetize that, I'm not stupid. There's going to be Starcraft 10$ map packs soon. I refuse to relinquish my rights to companies who have proven that they are untrustworthy, even with entertainment.
- nddrylliog 16y agoAmen.
- baddox 16y agoI've never been so happy to not buy a game. I've also never been so sad to not buy a game.
- maqr 16y agoI bought SC2 and it's a good game. The licensing system is absurd though. The more interesting part is that the license is non-transferable, which is true for almost all MMOs, but this is the first 'normal' game that I think I've purchased which can't be resold. You have to register the game to your real identity, and blizz is 100% in control of what you can do with it. It's by far the least-free software I've ever purchased. As a user, I'm going to let blizz get away with this one, because the game is good and we've been waiting something like 12 years for it to be finished. So I did buy it. But if other companies think that I'm buying their game if they pull this kind of crap, well, it's not happening.
- wwortiz 16y agoActually there is no real used game market for pc games and it has been that way for a very long time, starcraft one was only allowed 1 copy to be on battlenet at a time the only difference now is that games are online so much of the time that they are much more limited. The thing that I don't like is that you have to login to battlenet for anything single player (other than playing as a guest) and this is an issue I wouldn't accept for any other game than sc2.
- someone_here 16y agoYou can play offline single player, but it won't log your achievements.
- phob 16y agoThat sounds completely fair. But you should still by able to resell the game.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- benologist 16y agoC&C4 is worse. You have to be online to play. You can't even start the game if you're not, and if you disconnect during play, on single player campaigns, then your progress and achievements won't be saved because those only exist on EA's servers.
- ultrasaurus 16y agoHow much of this is an anti-piracy measure? If you have to connect to a central sever it gives them a chance to check your account (whether they take it or not). I assume pirates would rather download an anonymous map over HTTP than from Blizzard.
- chc 16y agoA lot of it is an anti-piracy measure. Activision wants games to be bound to their servers as tightly as possible, because that's the best possible defense against piracy. It also creates a kind of lock-in that they hope to exploit to get WoW-style recurring income.
- mquander 16y agoThree separate points: - The 25MB file size limit is absurd and could cause real harm. I can't imagine any rationale at all for this. Storage is so cheap. There's also an arbitrary limit of 5 maps at a time per author, which is hilariously strange; needless to say, the most fun custom maps in WC3 and SC:BW came from prolific authors. - Ars doesn't mention the fact that their current system for browsing and playing custom maps is broken beyond belief. It's more or less impossible to play maps that aren't among the most popular on Battle.net. (details: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=139745 http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=139...) - The change everyone is complaining about stems from an actual good idea. In WC3 and SC:BW, people would constantly make tiny, ineffectual changes to custom maps, resulting in a profligation of one million versions of those maps, each of which you would have to download when you encountered them. You also had little assurance that someone had not modified a map to let them cheat it. The centralized distribution system is a real convenience, as it has the potential to avoid these problems (although they are still present right now, thanks to Blizzard's horrific design.) Unfortunately, it makes Blizzard somewhat responsible in the eyes of consumers for the content on the system.
- jlgosse 16y agoThe game was just released. Blizzard does a great job of releasing incremental updates for their games and servers. I remember BATTLE.net changing significantly over time when I was playing the original SC, from pretty horrible to pretty fantastic. I'm pretty sure the same thing happened with WCIII as well. They will listen to their community and continuously make this thing better, I guarantee it!
- mquander 16y agoI would sympathize if this was Blizzard's first networked RTS with a modding community, but it's hard to understand why they would decide to throw away ten years of aforementioned incremental improvements to SC:BW and WC3's community features and implement a far worse system from scratch.
- 16y ago
- m_eiman 16y agoDoes anyone really think that "prevent obscenity" is the real reason, and that it has got nothing to do with the fact that pirated copies will have a hard time connecting to Blizzard's servers? Seems pretty obvious to me.
- d0m 16y agoWith war3, we always had to download 10 different maps manually and put it in the "right" place to watch a replay. For instance, the replay wanted the map in: maps/download/(2)blabla and not maps/frozen throne/(2)blabla. I honestly hope that blizzard will fix that by hosting everything. And I'm sure that if 25mb is not enough, blizzard will increase it.. It's one of the few game company that encourage users to create maps and fan art. Lastly, in my 10 years playing starcraft1 and warcraft3, I've never seen a map with mature content or things like that.. so in my opinion, it doesn't make a difference whether blizzard control maps or no.
- thecircusb0y 16y agoThis is fine, while companies like Infinity Ward / Activision / Blizzard censor artists and developers and remove creativity from PC Gamers, companies like Id, Epic, and Valve are filling in the gaps. Valve just released Alien Swarm for free with all the dev tools needed to modify the game. Blizzard, you need to return to your roots, and remember your fans, not your wallets.
- sprout 16y ago>Those of us who remember looking through Duke Nukem 3D fan pages for a new, great map to play and share with friends know what we've lost here, and, to put it bluntly, it sucks. Every now and again you'd trip over a swastika, but the Star Wars total conversions, the Predator sound packs, and the maps based on Star Trek ship layouts were always a good time. Those days are behind us. Only if you buy this shit. I've got a large library of games with minimal DRM and large modding communities. Graphics stopped adding to the experience five years ago. I am quite content to battle away on Age of Mythology, Morrowind, Neverwinter Nights, Age of Empires III, the original Jedi Knight, and a dozen others. When I game at all. It's just appalling that people so casually accept censorship in this day and age. As Ars says, this isn't a simple matter of keeping the trolls at bay: >There is also the matter of the rating: StarCraft 2 is rated Teen, and if Blizzard doesn't keep Mature-rated content out, there could be a serious backlash. Good content will be banned to keep the environment at a teen level. This is disgusting, and make no mistake it is censorship.
- potatolicious 16y ago> "Good content will be banned to keep the environment at a teen level. This is disgusting, and make no mistake it is censorship." Actually, it's irrelevant anyways. Note that games have explicit disclaimers that online play is unrated by the ESRB and may be effectively higher than the game's box rating. The ESRB acknowledges and accepts this - games are rated based on predictable content (e.g., dialogue in singleplayer) and do not include unpredictable player-generated content within reason (e.g., people swearing in multiplayer). So, the whole ratings argument is bogus - SC2 will not suffer a ratings change even if its users distribute obscene user content.
- johngunderman 16y agoI think that the statement made about Benjamin Franklin is rather inaccurate. Ben Franklin was a printer, publisher, and writer for most of his life, which puts his occupation at a parallel with what Blizzard is currently doing. However, Ben never displayed censorship at this level. In fact, he published plenty of pieces which were considered quite racy and controversial by the day's standards. It is true that he would not publish articles that were malignant in nature, but I have a hard time believing he would condone the censorship that Blizzard is currently demonstrating.
- Marticus 16y agoI just like how everyone is nerdraging about how bad Blizzard is, etc, and have completely overlooked possibly that you live in an era where offensive crap is automatically blamed on the company. Think, if you will, what the hell Fox or CNN or someone would do with a SCII map that utilized suicide bombers or something. Good christ. Talk about giving the idiots that think that all of us gamers are off to kill hundreds of innocent people because we do it in a video game a carton-load of ammo. Then we'll have any good or "innovative" games completely yanked, and you'll bitch more about "losing" freedoms because some company didn't cover their ass. Swear it's like a bunch of bickering high school kids in here sometimes.
- Marticus 16y agoHN: If you don't agree with the collective, gtfo.
- smallblacksun 16y agoWell, the Zerg do have suicide units....
- steveklabnik 16y agoSeems like we need to get that conversation started, so that society can move forward, then.
- crystalis 16y agoI'm pretty sure your post was downvoted because of your immature tone and your downright ridiculous arguments - Starcraft II "innovative"? Ha! You're right though, that it is sometimes like high school, with the unsubstantiated arguments that are mostly just appeals or assertions, and the general lack of professionalism. Gillian Anderson couldn't do anything about Adobe Photoshop, and if the anti-videogame crusaders couldn't manage to do anything significant with Manhunt and Hot Coffee, custom content for SCII isn't going to be any worse. (For that matter, "GTA Raoul Moat" fetched Rockstar an apology from the Daily Mail. http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=256635 http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=256635)
- 16y ago
- gte910h 16y agoI honestly, after seeing what Uno is like on XBoxLive, completely back blizzard in this.
- senjin 16y agoA friend just sent me an SC2 map. We're going to try to make a small custom game together. I'm at work so I can't open it, but I was surprised to see it in my mail box after reading the article and comments.
- loup-vaillant 16y agoBlizzard it taking more control than ever. The users can't tinker with it. The same happen to many games. Of course, this is only possible because those game are are proprietary. Did anyone thought about free game engines?
- Aaronontheweb 16y agoListen dudes - if these limitations ACTUALLY impede the community's ability to enjoy the game, rather than just IN THEORY which is what this post and most of these comments are arguing about, then Blizzard isn't going to sit there and watch its potential sales of the next two StarCraft 2 games and other parts of the franchise slowly die because people are getting bored with multiplayer due to lack of innovative community-content as a result of these restrictions. Let the market decide - if most devs have trouble making a fun map / scenario / mod that's under 25 megs in size, then obviously blizzard will change it. That being said, 25 megs is probably sufficient anyways. Relax.
- jasonkester 16y agoAnybody who's ever run a site with user-generated content quickly changes their opinion about free speech. The internet has all the freedom you'll ever need, but you shouldn't expect to have that freedom everywhere you go on it. You can post anything you like to your blog, but I can't post anything I like to it. I have to do that at my own. Deleting obnoxious custom maps from a video game is no different from trimming Ugg Boot spam from the front page of HackerNews. It's not impinging on anybody's freedom in any meaningful way. It's just making the game universe a better place to be.
- theoden 16y agoDamn, there goes my ZergNigger mod.
- 0ffworlder 16y agoso what, just torrent it and sooner or later there will be private servers/maps/lan. blizzard is too greedy from the WOW gravy train.
- jquery 16y agoIs all this nerdraging warranted? The game is worth $60 without any custom maps at all. It's probably worth $60 without multiplayer. It's the most satisfying game I've played in years. I think some people, judging by the comments here, have a giant void of actual problems in their lives and have nothing better to do than to complain about everything.
- nkassis 16y agoBut everyone is judging it by what SC1 did. SC2 won't, in my opinion, have the half life (pun intended) of the original because of this. E-Sport companies are restricted by the new EULA. Modders can't do what they use too. In the end, Blizzard isn't protecting anyone, they are trying to gain control on the whole user experience and they will want to monetize it. Map Packs, paid tournaments, .... I bought the game and like someone else said, if this wasn't blizzard I wouldn't have bought it. Same with the iPhone, how many would have bought it knowing the restriction if it wasn't made by apple. Same hardware, same software, same management.
- elblanco 16y agoI guarantee that at some point in the future, if Blizzard doesn't get their heads out of the asses, somebody will crack some future rev of the software to allow LAN play and custom multiplayer maps and such, and that that will become the de facto version that everybody plays and shows up on Korean Starcraft channels. All this is is really a fantastically complex DRM scheme designed to keep the "we're in control" ball on Blizzard's side of the table.
- elblanco 16y agoBizarre. It's like they took everything that made Starcraft a decade's long phenomenon, and decided to try and put a fence around it so they could control it. Mind bogglingly stupid and guaranteed to turn SC2 into just another RTS that disappears in a year or two unless they fire whoever is responsible for such a brain dead idea and revert back to a more sane model.
- devonrt 16y agoThe article conveniently ignores every other game that does not have the same restrictions on user generated content, and then claims the "death of content freedom." Starcraft 2 is one datapoint. Where was the article trumpeting the "renewal of content freedom" when Alien Swarm came out?