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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/1YAYt.jpg) “And with that, a mighty cheer went up for the heroes of Blizzard-ville. They had banished the Local Area Network forever…because it was haunted. Now let’s all celebrate with a cool glass of Battle.net.”
Morning. I don't like to shill and I don't like to force my work on others. It's just not my personality. I normally don't bother peddling my work around here unless it's related to StarCraft II. Well, I've written something about StarCraft II. Namely, the Battle.net 2.0 service. As some people here may be familiar, I do not like the service. Back in June of 2010, I wrote a pretty-well-publicized rant about it. Originally, I was going to write a direct follow-up to that article and decided against it. I didn't think that would get the discussion anywhere. I feel there's too much emphasis on what the service is doing instead of why the service was created. So this time, I wanted to explore the course of events that led to the creation of Battle.net 2.0. Not simply the one-and-a-half years that Battle.net 2.0 has been around. I wanted to look at two decades of events and explain how they shaped the service.
The Creation of Battle.net 2.0
http://www.the-ghetto.org/content/the-creation-of-battle-net-2-0-part-one
http://www.the-ghetto.org/content/the-creation-of-battle-net-2-0-part-two
http://www.the-ghetto.org/content/the-creation-of-battle-net-2-0-part-three
http://www.the-ghetto.org/content/the-creation-of-battle-net-2-0-part-four
http://www.the-ghetto.org/content/the-creation-of-battle-net-2-0-part-five
http://www.the-ghetto.org/content/the-creation-of-battle-net-2-0-part-six
I'm not going to be shy about this: This is a very, very long read. I'll do you the favor of giving you the "Too Long; Didn't Read" synopsis (which itself is rather long):
+ Show Spoiler +Battle.net 2.0 was designed to protect Blizzard Entertainment intellectual property rights. To understand why, you have to understand the history of community gaming portals. From the goodwill of third-party gaming portals DWANGO and Kali, Blizzard Entertainment got an eye for the future of computer video games and launched Battle.net. During the most financially-successful period in the history of computer video games, Battle.net became the biggest online gaming service in retail multiplayer products. Blizzard games would sell millions by using the free-to-play network as a selling point. Two entities would pose issues for Blizzard's prosperity. The first was the Korean e-Sports Players Association, who would help to launch a competitive gaming revolution in South Korea where StarCraft became the crown jewel. While "professional StarCraft" would provide a form of free advertising for Blizzard products, tons of money would be thrown into the scene by corporations much larger than Blizzard. Blizzard would not see any sponsorship or licensing fees for the use of their copyrighted content. During this same period of time, a third-party online gaming portal by the name of Garena would become hugely popular in Southeast Asia, using the Warcraft III custom map Defense of the Ancients as a killer app. Much like Kali, Garena is perfectly legal because it does not use any copyrighted game code to facilitate multiplayer creation. However, software piracy had become much easier and much more global since the creation of Kali. Competing third-party services could now diminish the value of the first-party services. To fight both of these problems, Blizzard had a way out. World of Warcraft had become the most popular subscription game on the entire planet and the most lucrative in the entire world. It was lucrative because the business model for the MMORPG was built around closed online gaming systems. As was the norm in MMORPGs, people would create programs to try and cheat in the games. A man by the name of Michael Donnelly had created the "Glider" macro bot for use with World of Warcraft. This would lead Blizzard and Donnelly into a court battle. And in this court battle, Blizzard would make a legal argument that could eliminate the issues with Garena, KeSPA, and Donnelly all at the same time. To paraphrase, they argued that the game loaded into the memory on your computer was protected by the creator copyright and that the End User License Agreement packaged with the game could be used to protect that copyright. If the player committed a violation of the EULA, it could be a form of copyright infringement. The Arizona district court would agree. Two months after the court brought a huge settlement down on Donnelly (in the range of 6.5 million dollars), Blizzard announced that StarCraft II would not be playable on a Local Area Network. StarCraft II multiplayer would be integrated into an always-online gaming service that would become known as Battle.net 2.0. By creating a service which gave Blizzard full control of their copyright, they could fight back against any entity that they believed was detrimental to their bottom line.
When I wrote this, I wanted to make sure that I would never have to write original material on the subject again. If anybody takes offense with my stance on Battle.net 2.0 in the future, I can just Ctrl-V this article and go shoot some hoops. If you're interested in reading the entry and feel I've written anything that is factually incorrect here, feel free to call me out for it. I had to comb a lot of different areas of video game history to write the article and seeing as this is a hub for Western fandom of StarCraft, you guys probably have a better grasp of specific events in the history of professional StarCraft than I do. If you have any feedback or questions, I'll go ahead and see what I can respond to. If you read this article, I hope you feel it contributes to the discussion whether you agree or disagree with it. Enjoy!
 
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wow you put a lot of work in this.
i read the tldr and i may go back and read more about certain sections.
generally makes me have the reaction - "touche"
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I just wanted to make sure that I covered every single one of my bases on this. While I would love to keep my writing brief, the scope of some of these topics doesn't really give me the option. Figured it would be fair to give a synopsis for that reason. If anybody wants to read further, they can do that. I think I ended up writing about 16,000 words. I wouldn't wish that on any college student. I may have to step out of the house for a little bit, but I'll try and respond to as much as I can. If people give me their time, I'll do my best to give them mine.
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I remember reading some of GhettoOverlord's stuff on battle.net, old school troll :D
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Read the whole thing and just wanted to say that I enjoyed it. Thanks for putting in all of that effort and sharing it with us.
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At least there are Chatchannels now... ... ... -.-
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Holy shit that was insanely well written. I really respect the amount of time and effort that went into it.
Should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to comment on Battle.net 2.0 / the state of online games in general.
The way I see it as games and franchises get larger and larger, management will embrace protectionism more and more. Hopefully there will always be smaller developers who will have more to gain then lose when it comes to embracing the community, third party software, mods, etc.
Still sucks for Starcraft 2 though ;_;
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Really great article!
I've only read the last two parts and the tl;dr so far, but it already is looking quite brilliant. It's about time that this kind of article was made, doing extensive research on the origins of the decisions instead of bashing endlessly on the decisions themselves.
A very enlightening read for anyone who is serious about debating the Battle.net 2.0 fiasco.
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I bet the whole thing would make a pretty nice video series, if someone had the time to narrate and edit the whole thing.
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On July 20 2011 05:26 Whiplash wrote:
I remember reading some of GhettoOverlord's stuff on battle.net, old school troll :D
I'm sure all of the people who remember me from those days are looking at this and thinking, "What...the hell?" <3
On July 20 2011 05:31 Flaccid wrote:
Read the whole thing and just wanted to say that I enjoyed it. Thanks for putting in all of that effort and sharing it with us.
Thanks. <3 Not to sound kinda cocky, but I felt this was a little bit too good to sit around tucked away somewhere.
On July 20 2011 05:46 Velr wrote:
At least there are Chatchannels now... ... ... -.-
Yup. Chat channels that the user base has no control over and can't use bots to police or manage. Isn't that funny, eh?
On July 20 2011 06:58 AzTec wrote:
Holy shit that was insanely well written. I really respect the amount of time and effort that went into it.
Should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to comment on Battle.net 2.0 / the state of online games in general.
The way I see it as games and franchises get larger and larger, management will embrace protectionism more and more. Hopefully there will always be smaller developers who will have more to gain then lose when it comes to embracing the community, third party software, mods, etc.
Still sucks for Starcraft 2 though ;_;
Thanks for the nod. I'm hoping somebody makes their personal reading material. I'm tired of reading the Battle.net forums and seeing the same arguments rehashed over and over again regarding StarCraft II and software piracy. While I don't think "16,000-word article" is necessarily the best means to sell my plan to a mainstream audience, I've resigned myself to the idea that if somebody won't read an article because it's too long, the writer wins by default, particularly when the topic has been raging for nearly two years and nothing has really been accomplished.
On July 20 2011 07:14 eviltomahawk wrote:
Really great article!
I've only read the last two parts and the tl;dr so far, but it already is looking quite brilliant. It's about time that this kind of article was made, doing extensive research on the origins of the decisions instead of bashing endlessly on the decisions themselves.
A very enlightening read for anyone who is serious about debating the Battle.net 2.0 fiasco.
Glad you enjoyed it. I agree that this should have been done a while ago. I remember that between Husky's video, the StarCraft Legacy write-up, and my article, we only differed in tone and brought the same argument to the table. I think the one thing that has made this tough to crack is that it's an issue that requires a little knowledge of both StarCraft and the Warcraft franchise, and as we've seen around here, Warcraft III and Brood War are a little bit of an oil and water situation. Though I like both games, Warcraft III is my favorite game of all-time and I prefer it to StarCraft by a pretty hefty margin, even though I'm convinced both games are a pinnacle of the medium. It's probably tough for people to get an idea of how huge Garena is unless they watched Warcraft III's community give up the core game in droves for Defense of the Ancients, and then give up Battle.net in favor of Garena. That latency sold a lot of people on that service.
On July 20 2011 07:22 Sotamursu wrote:
I bet the whole thing would make a pretty nice video series, if someone had the time to narrate and edit the whole thing.
Not a bad idea. Unfortunately, I only have the face for radio. I keep my mouth shut when I do videos. Northern accent is way too thick. ^^
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I like this. Prepare yourself for the expected shitstorm of uninformed people who think that IP laws are designed to screw the consumer out of their God-given right to not pay for things they want, though.
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On July 20 2011 08:55 JingleHell wrote:
I like this. Prepare yourself for the expected shitstorm of uninformed people who think that IP laws are designed to screw the consumer out of their God-given right to not pay for things they want, though.
Really? I didn't even think most people could comprehend the thought process that takes them from "software piracy" to "intellectual property laws". I figured they usually get stuck at the former and lose the minds.
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+ Show Spoiler +Intellectual property rights create rules for the way that the game is distributed to the customer. Intellectual property rights dictate how the customer is allowed to use, modify, and manage his or her purchase. That’s what Battle.net 2.0 is about.
This completely fails to address issues unrelated to IP rights, though. As such it can only ever be a partial explanation at best. There are a number of such issues, for example no proper chat channels and no clan support. These are simply a result of cost-cutting in development, because their effect on sales is infinitesimal (there's a competing explanation, which is that Kotick is the devil...it's satisfying but perhaps not very good).
I think what they overlooked in protecting their IP is the effect on content creators: custom maps such as DotA from WC3 led to full-blown games outside of WC. With Bobby taking away your rights to content uploaded to bnet2.0, there are very strong incentives not to develop for this platform. And so it is: the custom game scene in SC2 is horrible compared to what WC3 had.
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On July 20 2011 14:53 alexhard wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Intellectual property rights create rules for the way that the game is distributed to the customer. Intellectual property rights dictate how the customer is allowed to use, modify, and manage his or her purchase. That’s what Battle.net 2.0 is about. This completely fails to address issues unrelated to IP rights, though. As such it can only ever be a partial explanation at best. There are a number of such issues, for example no proper chat channels and no clan support. These are simply a result of cost-cutting in development, because their effect on sales is infinitesimal (there's a competing explanation, which is that Kotick is the devil...it's satisfying but perhaps not very good).
I allude to this very briefly in the article:
(Part Three) And now, a third-party network had just struck a huge blow to the value of all company-developed online gaming services. Garena devalued Battle.net because it made that service feel ordinary. With a competing service on the market, you don’t win by default. You win by providing a better product. That can cost a hell of a lot of money.
(Part Five) And with these exclusive distribution rights, the company would not have to worry about complaints that the Battle.net 2.0 service was sub-par. They could spend the bare minimum to create a crappy service and it would not matter. Their servers would be the only game in town.
While I wouldn't call that a ten-point answer to your concerns, I guess I can say that I stayed away from discussing it too deeply because I didn't want to get back into specific functions of the service unless I really, really had to demonstrate a point. It slipped my mind to mention the idea that chat channels were a cost-cutting issue. However, I would say that Blizzard was able to cut those costs because they shut out the competition.
I think what they overlooked in protecting their IP is the effect on content creators: custom maps such as DotA from WC3 led to full-blown games outside of WC. With Bobby taking away your rights to content uploaded to bnet2.0, there are very strong incentives not to develop for this platform. And so it is: the custom game scene in SC2 is horrible compared to what WC3 had.
Admittedly, I'm not too familiar with the quality of the custom content on the service right now. The only maps I have played on StarCraft II more than once are Nexus Word Wars and Starjeweled. The former is what it is (I love typing challenges), and the latter is a spin-off of a game that should never ever be spinned off for the love of the entire puzzle genre. I felt their biggest mistake was complicating the World Editor and making it much different than the Warcraft III editor, even if the changes end up being better in the long run. Familiarity is paramount when it comes to good level editing software. Right now, everybody is having to relearn the software. However, I don't doubt that the intellectual property situation with really good custom maps is going to come into concern. Based on the addition of the marketplace, it almost seems like they're setting that up as a tacit "only option" for any quality mapmakers. Blizzard has positioned themselves as though they will go after any custom content that leaves their game engine and becomes a bigger product. They don't want the next Defense of the Ancients becoming its own genre outside of the Battle.net playground a second time.
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Possibly one of the most informative and well written articles I've read.
Thank you for sharing.
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On July 20 2011 17:11 Cuddle wrote:
Possibly one of the most informative and well written articles I've read.
Thank you for sharing.
Thanks a bunch. I was considering publishing this on the StarCraft II General but I combed through the search results and couldn't find any real evidence that self-promotion was permissible on the main forums. While obviously, I wouldn't mind getting a little bit of recognition for the article, I figured it would be preferable to go for the "most comprehensive-and-detailed article" approach. I know that doesn't sell well on the internet, but I felt it was necessary.
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Northern Ireland1200 Posts
On part 3 now. Amazing read so far. Please TL spotlight this blog!
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Northern Ireland1200 Posts
This needs more attention.
Read it all, and really good read. Learned quite a few things. Thanks 
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You wouldn't necessarily have to be the one doing the reading. I'm sure there's someone out there with a great voice who would be happy to do it for you.
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On July 21 2011 21:19 Chewits wrote:This needs more attention. Read it all, and really good read. Learned quite a few things. Thanks
I won't be shy about it: I think this thread deserves more attention too. <3 Thanks for the input. I'm surprised nobody has picked out anything inaccurate. Guess that means I did my homework. o.o
On July 22 2011 00:37 Sotamursu wrote:
You wouldn't necessarily have to be the one doing the reading. I'm sure there's someone out there with a great voice who would be happy to do it for you.
I think a video conversion would pose some very interesting challenges that I've never had to quite deal with before. I've done video editing, but I've never taken somebody else's voice or content and built a video around it. Albeit, I don't think it would be nearly as time-consuming as the things I've previously done, since split-second timing wouldn't be nearly as important. It's something I can keep in the back of my head for the time being. I have a couple of other projects I'd like to begin working on at some point. Also, the real world is a bitch right now. In other words, it's pretty complicated. Something I'll have to keep in the back of my mind.
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Amazing read Thank you, this should be spotlighted
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Northern Ireland1200 Posts
More people need to read this
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On July 20 2011 15:25 MichaelJLowell wrote:
However, I don't doubt that the intellectual property situation with really good custom maps is going to come into concern. Based on the addition of the marketplace, it almost seems like they're setting that up as a tacit "only option" for any quality mapmakers. Blizzard has positioned themselves as though they will go after any custom content that leaves their game engine and becomes a bigger product. They don't want the next Defense of the Ancients becoming its own genre outside of the Battle.net playground a second time.
One of the problems with the closed platform is that the rules governing what you can and can not upload are much tighter. I have seen multiple maps be removed and denied from SC2 for reasons I don't agree with. Mostly this is concerning them wanting a family friendly environment where you only kill millions of critters, which doesn't matter compared to a breast or some jokes.
They are basically limiting the scope of creators and through that limiting the amount of maps and the synergistic effect many creators have.
Well that and the horrible, horrible, utterly horrible popularity system. Which is even worse than WC3's system where almost everything was DotA, until it migrated to other solutions.
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This needs a spotlight. Read it if you haven't.
Thanks for writing this, it's clear you put an enormous amount of time into it.
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I just finished reading the whole thing. First of all, that was really well written and very informative. Since I'm curious and this is the first time I hear about you, may I ask how you get this all this information? I don't know what you do or what kind of connections you have but I figure that I wouldn't just swallow it like it magically came out of no where. There's a lot of logic in your statements and lots of stuff that can be researched online but is that all? A deduction from what's available to the public?
And further thinking on the way people reacted to the Forum's Real ID politics. I think people acted like that because it was really something big and bothered the majority of them, not because they all suddenly felt a necessity to gain something from the company. Can we maybe conclude that everything else, from DLC content to the control Battle.net exercise on customers, is not really bothering people? Deep down, they don't feel they have any power or don't care if their "rights" are overlooked? After all, they still pay for the damn games.
I understand the power I have with my wallet but somewhere down the line I refuse to think that I should not play Starcraft II because we haven't all put our foot down and established what is fair and unfair business. I want to fight for LAN and a better battle.net, I want to fight for the right to do whatever the hell i want with the game I spend money to buy.
And also, that thing about us buying licenses instead of buying a product, I didn't know much about that. That sounds like it shouldn't even be legal. When I buy something, it should be mine and I want to do what I want with it. How can they control the market with regional locks, having people be connected all the time and stuff like that is beyond frustrating.
PS. sorry for my bad English, it's hard to express myself in more elaborated fashion in English.
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On August 01 2011 21:37 Yurie wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2011 15:25 MichaelJLowell wrote:
However, I don't doubt that the intellectual property situation with really good custom maps is going to come into concern. Based on the addition of the marketplace, it almost seems like they're setting that up as a tacit "only option" for any quality mapmakers. Blizzard has positioned themselves as though they will go after any custom content that leaves their game engine and becomes a bigger product. They don't want the next Defense of the Ancients becoming its own genre outside of the Battle.net playground a second time. One of the problems with the closed platform is that the rules governing what you can and can not upload are much tighter. I have seen multiple maps be removed and denied from SC2 for reasons I don't agree with. Mostly this is concerning them wanting a family friendly environment where you only kill millions of critters, which doesn't matter compared to a breast or some jokes. They are basically limiting the scope of creators and through that limiting the amount of maps and the synergistic effect many creators have. Well that and the horrible, horrible, utterly horrible popularity system. Which is even worse than WC3's system where almost everything was DotA, until it migrated to other solutions.
That's where "lack of a perception of ownership" is absolutely killing the custom game scene for StarCraft II. I have absolutely zero interest in creating a map right now. I have no interest in having a map that I created pulled because somebody at Blizzard Entertainment making eight dollars an hour decided that my custom map violated some nebulous criteria for what constitutes offensive or infringing content. I'm sure there are a hell of a lot of people that feel the same way. Companies may be able to get away with ripping ownership of the game from the hands of players, but not something that the player poured significant time and effort into creating. The custom game system is a total mess right now but that fundamental issue is the biggest problem of them all. I skipped over discussing the functionality this time because I did most of that when I wrote the original article back in June of 2010. I haven't played many custom games (and I haven't done that in most Blizzard strategy games), but it sounds like it's a running nightmare that the company doesn't seem interested in fixing.
On August 01 2011 23:49 getSome[703] wrote:
This needs a spotlight. Read it if you haven't.
Thanks for writing this, it's clear you put an enormous amount of time into it.
Thanks a bunch. I'll be blunt: I had to rewrite the thing and I almost felt like I just wanted to kill myself for a short period of time. Good lord, getting the article to that size was brutal. I'm really glad people feel I did something good here.
On August 02 2011 02:54 DGenerate wrote:
I just finished reading the whole thing. First of all, that was really well written and very informative. Since I'm curious and this is the first time I hear about you, may I ask how you get this all this information? I don't know what you do or what kind of connections you have but I figure that I wouldn't just swallow it like it magically came out of no where. There's a lot of logic in your statements and lots of stuff that can be researched online but is that all? A deduction from what's available to the public?
Thanks for the nod. It depends on what the topic is. Most of the conclusions that I come to are generated simply by observation. And while that may be tough on the reader to swallow, I feel quite confident that I'm putting the puzzle pieces together in the proper order. I'm the President of the Occam's Razor Fan Club, so I don't have to do that much stretching to generate the conclusions. Also, I feel quite confident in those conclusions. I wouldn't post them on the internet and then put my reputation on the line if I didn't. Admittedly, it's going to be rather difficult to find material that corroborates the conclusions I've come to in a racket where most of the "journalistic integrity" is spent trying to sell copies of the games. Generally, that's the goal of my writing: Most people still seem to reject the idea of doing significant research or analysis on the topic of video games because "it's vidoe game's why u waste ur lifes on those??" Sadly, this kind of discussion is always going to be treading new territory until video game journalism can become popular and profitable by standing up to the guys that are paying their bills.
As far as sources go, the only thing that I had to discuss off the top of my head was the early history of online role-playing games. There's a surprising lack of content on the evolution and history of MMORPGs that is being lost to history right now, particularly since the major possible outlet for preserving that history (Wikipedia) won't accept those oral histories unless they're properly sourced. I remember the huge, huge fight that Asheron's Call players had over automated programs and third-party user interface enhancements but I'd be damned if I can find any discussion of them on the internet.
On August 02 2011 02:54 DGenerate wrote:
And further thinking on the way people reacted to the Forum's Real ID politics. I think people acted like that because it was really something big and bothered the majority of them, not because they all suddenly felt a necessity to gain something from the company. Can we maybe conclude that everything else, from DLC content to the control Battle.net exercise on customers, is not really bothering people? Deep down, they don't feel they have any power or don't care if their "rights" are overlooked? After all, they still pay for the damn games.
Well, they're not paying for the games like they used to, that's for sure. Sales in the traditional video game market (console, computer, arcades) are down and they're continuing to go down. I don't care much for Steam, but there's a reason that the service has been able to sidestep any accusations that a "phone home" digital distribution service is unethical: It took a product that was a conscious investment and scaled down the price accordingly when it was redesigned to become a consumable commodity. No box, no manual, no CD? It's now worth a quarter of the price. Consumers think that's very, very fair even as Steam is pretty much as bad as Origin or any of these rising digital distribution services. (I would probably go with Good Old Games if I wasn't such a whore about purchasing a copy of the game that comes with a box and physical media.) But you are correct that most people don't really care these topics of copyright infringement and intellectual property. That's how come the fight over Battle.net and StarCraft II is still being portrayed as Local Area Networks versus software piracy. That's why I wrote the article. Somebody needed to explain that it wasn't about those things and it was about copyright and control of the product. o.o I've found it's very hard to do that. Everybody's already made up their opinion even if most people are dead-wrong on the topic.
On August 02 2011 02:54 DGenerate wrote:
I understand the power I have with my wallet but somewhere down the line I refuse to think that I should not play Starcraft II because we haven't all put our foot down and established what is fair and unfair business. I want to fight for LAN and a better battle.net, I want to fight for the right to do whatever the hell i want with the game I spend money to buy.
And also, that thing about us buying licenses instead of buying a product, I didn't know much about that. That sounds like it shouldn't even be legal. When I buy something, it should be mine and I want to do what I want with it. How can they control the market with regional locks, having people be connected all the time and stuff like that is beyond frustrating.
PS. sorry for my bad English, it's hard to express myself in more elaborated fashion in English.
As far as I know, there's absolutely no legal precedent standing in the way of granting users a license for computer software. The concept of licensing has been set in stone and accepted for some time. What has most people incensed are the End User License Agreements, which can allow companies to test the waters for what is legal and what is not. It's carte blanche law. Somebody has to go into court and spend a lot of money on legal counsel before any provision in an End User License Agreement that "1) Owns Your Soul 2) Shits On Your Mom 3) Destroys Your Hard Drive U Clicked 'Agree' So We Did It LOL!!" can be challenged. (There was actually an incident involving a Japanese erotic game where the company uploaded screenshots of players filling out a personal survey after they had downloaded illegal copies of the product. The company defended this by saying it was in the End User License Agreement. While I can't speak for the legality, it shows the intent and what companies are willing to write in the EULA.) While I can't speak for the nature of Canadian law, we have a Supreme Court that has basically gone with a five-to-four partisan split in favor of free market philosophy in cases involving big business. Unless somebody on the court drops dead soon, you can expect that to remain the same way.
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EPT
