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I saw this thread on Reddit, in which a Heroes of Newerth developer explains the reasons why HoN will never have LAN, and why LAN is on the way out for RTS games generally. I thought a lot of people here might find his arguments interesting and worthy of discussion, in relation to SC2's LAN woes.
The main arguments are here:
Not my shot to call. But as an Economist, it's easy for me to see why any company making an RTS-style game will never put LAN in it ever again. Pirates ruined LAN, not us. I don't see why everybody is trying to convince companies to put LAN into games- you're convincing the wrong people. As long as piracy is on the rise, LAN will be on the way out. Simple as that. Put yourself in any business' shoes and try to weigh the advantages against the disadvantages and you will understand why, even on the biggest competitive games like Starcraft 2, there will never be LAN. Goodwill is nice to have but it doesn't pay the bills and any gaming company out there is out there to make money first and make good games second. I'm sorry if this truth offends you but the video game market is an industry and people make games to make money the same way a guy who sells Ice-cream does his job to make money and not to put smiles on people's faces (although I'm sure he does enjoy putting smiles on people's faces). Here's an example of how "goodwill" is received in the gaming community: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/i0otl/pirates_are_scumbags/The majority of the gaming community has a whole has proven to be indifferent about "goodwill". So don't knock on our door, or Blizzard's, or anybody else who doesn't put a LAN feature in their game- it's simple Economics. If I have a choice to add a feature to a game that will reduce revenue by a significant percentage and yield almost nothing in return (money wise) than any smart business wont implement it. And you better bet piracy is on the rise. I'm not blaming anybody, though- just the same way that the smart Business is drawn to removing LAN because of piracy, the smart Consumer is drawn to piracy because it is rational to not buy a game for 30 dollars when I can download almost the same game for free. It's a simple case of two Homo Economicus doing what they do best- being rational in a market. LAN is an unfortunate bystander and is going to vanish in the future as long as it's part of a game that can be abused by piracy. So yeah, I'm listening if you have any good arguments. Let me state for the record that I love LAN, that I wish HoN had LAN, that I think it's lame that tournaments have to be played on-line and not on LAN. But I still accept the inevitability that LAN is going to die.
Discuss!
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that still doesnt explain why they cant allow people to play each other in lan with the necessecity of being logged into bnet/whatever online client.
cheap excuse just to blame it on pirates tbh
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I don't see why there can't be some sort of security feature built in that forces you to log onto Bnet before you can access LAN. Or even have a separate LAN security identifier accessory...i.e. like an identifier key-chain that you purchase in conjunction with your account.
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Microsoft operating systems and office software are two of the biggest pirated softwares and they still make money. This guy tries to act like a realist but he doesn't really have a clue about economics.
The opinions are too pessimistic and overgeneralizes the vast majority of people who purchase games with their hard-earned cash. Pirates don't stop revenue streams pirates were not a consumer in the first place. The assumption that a pirated copy was a sale is flawed imo and his last few personal statements are questionable as I perceive them as a cop-out when his whole opinion was about "simple economics".
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On June 23 2011 07:10 mdma-_- wrote:
that still doesnt explain why they cant allow people to play each other in lan with the necessecity of being logged into bnet/whatever online client.
cheap excuse just to blame it on pirates tbh
What the hell would be the point of LAN if you had to be logged into Bnet? The entire issue with no LAN is retarded internet problems that tournaments seem to constantly have.
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I always wondered why LAN was not implemented in SC2, I've heard plenty complain about it but never really seen any discussion on exactly why Blizzard made that choice. Thanks for bringing this to light; I understand Blizzard's position now and my one bit of uneasiness towards them has been laid to rest. Unfortunate that those of us who pay can't have nice things because of those who don't, but it happens.
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I just wish there was a way for both parties to have what they wanted. Some sort of authentication tied in with LAN support, but that is a very hard task to accomplish.
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bah, people are too convinced that blizzard are just doing it as a personal insult to them to actually take in this article!
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On June 23 2011 07:10 mdma-_- wrote:
that still doesnt explain why they cant allow people to play each other in lan with the necessecity of being logged into bnet/whatever online client.
cheap excuse just to blame it on pirates tbh
Hackers could fairly easily remove all safeguards like a log-in requirement.
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On June 23 2011 07:14 Erionn wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2011 07:10 mdma-_- wrote:
that still doesnt explain why they cant allow people to play each other in lan with the necessecity of being logged into bnet/whatever online client.
cheap excuse just to blame it on pirates tbh What the hell would be the point of LAN if you had to be logged into Bnet? The entire issue with no LAN is retarded internet problems that tournaments seem to constantly have.
It would impact the state of the game less. If the game data could be transferred via P2P rather than via Battle.net, then significantly less bandwidth would be required. If all that needed to be sent to Battle.net was a signal of "I'm alive let me play" this allows for significantly less strain on the internet service of the event.
The problem with this type of system is I believe it would be quite easy to fake this Battle.net authentication, compared to reverse engineering the code required to set up LAN. I know that some sorts of LAN support have been hacked together still, but there is no reason for Blizzard to basically make the lives of hackers easier if they don't have to.
If Blizzard and developers like HoN refuse to include LAN for piracy reasons, they really need to up their game and improve the quality of online services in order to compensate.
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Many developers are not implementing LAN simply because of piracy, yeah that's about it really. A lot of them are afraid of their profits dropping simply of how the game is pirated.
I recall MW2 was pirated over 4 million times in a week or so on the PC version, entirely over dwarfing the number of legitimate copies bought. Many gamers insist that piracy is not a concern however. Its a controversial topic that neither side are willing to agree on with each other.
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Bad argument made by propagandist.
Pirates wouldn't have bought the game anyway, and including LAN would let your game get exposed to new people for free. This is like saying "terrorists ruined travel", even though it's the government ruining travelling.
Not to mention that most of these games have online ladder systems and that's what people buy the game for - The competitive ladder.
What can you really say. As a game developer he has to talk like that because its his bread and butter. But, because of this I feel like his opinion is pretty much not relevant because it's strongly biased without any actual proof/evidence to his claims. Just saber rattling towards pirates.
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He just said what any intelligent person already understands. Obviously companies have good reasons for not putting LAN.
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On June 23 2011 07:17 DeltruS wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2011 07:10 mdma-_- wrote:
that still doesnt explain why they cant allow people to play each other in lan with the necessecity of being logged into bnet/whatever online client.
cheap excuse just to blame it on pirates tbh Hackers could fairly easily remove all safeguards like a log-in requirement.
Fairly easy = couple of hours.
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On June 23 2011 07:14 Erionn wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2011 07:10 mdma-_- wrote:
that still doesnt explain why they cant allow people to play each other in lan with the necessecity of being logged into bnet/whatever online client.
cheap excuse just to blame it on pirates tbh What the hell would be the point of LAN if you had to be logged into Bnet? The entire issue with no LAN is retarded internet problems that tournaments seem to constantly have.
This allows players to practice on LAN environment. Then you give large tournament organizers a "special version" that has true lan. I have no idea how much effort blizz would have to put into this but there are ways for lan to be incorporated
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On June 23 2011 07:14 Erionn wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2011 07:10 mdma-_- wrote:
that still doesnt explain why they cant allow people to play each other in lan with the necessecity of being logged into bnet/whatever online client.
cheap excuse just to blame it on pirates tbh What the hell would be the point of LAN if you had to be logged into Bnet? The entire issue with no LAN is retarded internet problems that tournaments seem to constantly have.
While it´s true that there is no point having LAN with the need of being logged on to battle.net, they could, however, add a feature that somehow connects you to battle.net for some sort of "confirmation" that you indeed have bought the game and then allow you to go LAN-mode.
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i'm genuinely intrigued about the people saying this article is nonsense...
Why are Blizzard not including LAN? Like, seriously, it's annoyed a lot of fans and wouldn't be that difficult technically? For what reason are they deciding not to?
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I agree. Blizzard needs more money.
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Industries have to evolve, not go backwards. Instead of being the next movie industry, maybe the gaming industry needs to re-evaluate its technologies and procedures. There are many ways to approach this, and taking LAN out of games which want to be taken seriously is wrong.
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They think Lan will increase piracy, but there is no way to know until they add lan and see an increase in pirated software coupled with a decline in sales. Else they're just playing a guessing game. Until then they're just spouting bullshit.
Also the reddit link has nothing to do with "goodwill" it has everything to do with the Witcher 2 being hyped as shit among PC-gaming crowd and graphics that uses high end pc hardware.
On June 23 2011 07:20 akaname wrote:
i'm genuinely intrigued about the people saying this article is nonsense...
Why are Blizzard not including LAN? Like, seriously, it's annoyed a lot of fans and wouldn't be that difficult technically? For what reason are they deciding not to?
So they can shut down tournaments that doesn't have a license. To prevent the whole kespa deal that happened with Brood War.
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EPT
