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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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EPT
