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In esports, piracy was essential for the Starcraft: Brood War competitive scene. Players around the world, and specifically PC Bangs in S Korea, installed pirat

In esports, piracy was essential for the Starcraft: Brood War competitive scene. Players around the world, and specifically PC Bangs in S Korea, installed pirated copies of the game on their various machines, allowing numerous patrons to play at once. This piracy was part of a multi-factorial exponential growth in the popularity of the game there, and led to fame/success for Blizzard's SC2 release a few years later.

rchaud 7y ago
While that's true to an extent, you could also say that Blizzard learned its lesson with Starcraft and Diablo 2 piracy and designed future games like World of Warcraft and Diablo III such that you had to connect to Battle.net to authorize your copy, even if you only wanted to play offline (Diablo 3). A full-featured copy of Starcraft will be playable 50 years from now, regardless of whether Blizzard is still around or not. You can't guarantee that for most games these days.
- choward 7y ago
  > Blizzard learned its lesson > you had to connect to Battle.net to authorize your copy, even if you only wanted to play offline Didn't work for me. This is one of the major contributors to me giving up on gaming. That and pay to win. IMO I should be able to buy a single player game that's all inclusive and not have to be connected to the internet to play it.
  - rchaud 7y ago
    Same here, although my gaming is limited to FIFA and the Borderlands series. FIFA IMO is unplayable now because the whole experience is built around Ultimate Team which requires buying "cards" for the top players. The game would be unrecognizable to someone who last played say, Fifa 2010 which still had a standard team-based play structure without these additional in-app payments.
reroute1 7y ago
What if Blizzard went under before they could capitalize? Not everyone has the resources to pump out another AAA+ product if their first one isn't profitable.

rchaud 7y ago

While that's true to an extent, you could also say that Blizzard learned its lesson with Starcraft and Diablo 2 piracy and designed future games like World of Warcraft and Diablo III such that you had to connect to Battle.net to authorize your copy, even if you only wanted to play offline (Diablo 3). A full-featured copy of Starcraft will be playable 50 years from now, regardless of whether Blizzard is still around or not. You can't guarantee that for most games these days.

choward 7y ago
> Blizzard learned its lesson > you had to connect to Battle.net to authorize your copy, even if you only wanted to play offline Didn't work for me. This is one of the major contributors to me giving up on gaming. That and pay to win. IMO I should be able to buy a single player game that's all inclusive and not have to be connected to the internet to play it.
- rchaud 7y ago
  Same here, although my gaming is limited to FIFA and the Borderlands series. FIFA IMO is unplayable now because the whole experience is built around Ultimate Team which requires buying "cards" for the top players. The game would be unrecognizable to someone who last played say, Fifa 2010 which still had a standard team-based play structure without these additional in-app payments.

reroute1 7y ago

What if Blizzard went under before they could capitalize? Not everyone has the resources to pump out another AAA+ product if their first one isn't profitable.