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On June 23 2011 10:21 Alsn wrote:
Too all you people attacking pirates. Argue with this:
I am deeply disappointed in Blizzard for not having LAN, a lot of enjoyment that I personally could have had has been lost due to the feature missing. I will not buy further products from Blizzard after I stop playing SC2(which, admittedly, will probably be for quite a while still). As a paying customer I am appalled that they would value short term gain(which they have no proof that no-LAN has actually increased anyway) over long term goodwill(me and others being happy customers).
No matter where you stand on the piracy versus no-piracy issue, the fact remains that their product is worse than it would have been with LAN support, thus directly punishing their actual paying customers.
Not to mention the fact that there's no proof whatsoever that adding LAN would actually lower total sales, which is the only thing that counts in the end. Who cares if 5 million instead of 3 million pirate the game if you still have the same amount of sales but higher goodwill for the future of your company?
To sum up, I, as a paying customer, has gotten a product that is worse than it would have been with LAN. I could care fuck all about people pirating the game since I, a paying customer along with all other paying customers, is the one who is ultimately responsible for Blizzard employees being paid, and I am a little less happy than I could have been.
Stop being melodramatic. For you and 99% of all other players, LAN has no effect. LAN would be optimal for tournaments, but Battle.net gets the job done.
All of you people complaining about being a 'paying customer' and suffering because of pirates are rightfully mad, but at the wrong people. You should be mad at pirates for causing this. Or do you go to the airport and bitch and moan about going through airport security because you aren't a terrorist?
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On June 23 2011 10:36 TheLink wrote:
Didn't our good friend Bobby Kotick say that e-sports games like SC2 are barely worth it due to the cost of running and maintaining the game? Why is a desperate need for total control the best way to make money? by all means give the damn game to Kespa or ICCUP and charge whatever fees you can get with zero maintenance.
Yes he did. That's why it is best to outsource it and cut cost.
There comes a time when developers stop supporting their products. The longevity of B.Net is an exceptional case and products on the old B.Net get updated/patched rarely, but Blizzard still supports it. B.Net 2.0 costs a ton to run and it will only get worse with every new release. SC2 will go at the back of the list like every other game they've made.
The best features were always made through third parties. The community knows best. Once you put the product into our hands we find ways to improve and enhance the experience. It is what we do and we're quite good at it.
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Unfortunately it's true. Games that require an account to be logged in like sc2 are proven by statistical evidence to be pirated less.
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On June 23 2011 10:52 Indar wrote:
If they didn't believe piracy was an issue then lan would be implemented.. I'm fairly certain that the companies have more insight,knowledge and stats on the situation then most the people here trying to act smart and call BS.
They dont have more insight, they simply look at the existence of piracy as the only real reason that they could be having declining sales which is incredibly arrogant. How many times would a company say, "you know...we didnt sell well because we made a shitty product and didnt genuinely try to make a game our fans would like." They always point to piracy because it acquits them of all blame. It's never the developer's fault, they're NEVER the the culprit but always a victim in their eyes.
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On June 23 2011 10:58 starcraft911 wrote:
Unfortunately it's true. Games that require an account to be logged in like sc2 are proven by statistical evidence to be pirated less.
What statistics can't tell you is how gamers feel about a game they've waited 12 years for having no basic LAN function. I personally felt like Blizzard were to a lesser extent emotionally blackmailing me into online only play.
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On June 23 2011 10:58 starcraft911 wrote:
Unfortunately it's true. Games that require an account to be logged in like sc2 are proven by statistical evidence to be pirated less.
That is true but the real question you should ask is would they sell less with LAN support? They would be pirated more but perhaps sell better aswell, it´s difficult to say.
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On June 23 2011 10:54 Ocedic wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2011 10:21 Alsn wrote:
Too all you people attacking pirates. Argue with this:
I am deeply disappointed in Blizzard for not having LAN, a lot of enjoyment that I personally could have had has been lost due to the feature missing. I will not buy further products from Blizzard after I stop playing SC2(which, admittedly, will probably be for quite a while still). As a paying customer I am appalled that they would value short term gain(which they have no proof that no-LAN has actually increased anyway) over long term goodwill(me and others being happy customers).
No matter where you stand on the piracy versus no-piracy issue, the fact remains that their product is worse than it would have been with LAN support, thus directly punishing their actual paying customers.
Not to mention the fact that there's no proof whatsoever that adding LAN would actually lower total sales, which is the only thing that counts in the end. Who cares if 5 million instead of 3 million pirate the game if you still have the same amount of sales but higher goodwill for the future of your company?
To sum up, I, as a paying customer, has gotten a product that is worse than it would have been with LAN. I could care fuck all about people pirating the game since I, a paying customer along with all other paying customers, is the one who is ultimately responsible for Blizzard employees being paid, and I am a little less happy than I could have been. Stop being melodramatic. For you and 99% of all other players, LAN has no effect. LAN would be optimal for tournaments, but Battle.net gets the job done. All of you people complaining about being a 'paying customer' and suffering because of pirates are rightfully mad, but at the wrong people. You should be mad at pirates for causing this. Or do you go to the airport and bitch and moan about going through airport security because you aren't a terrorist? Who gave you permission to speak for me? LAN has an effect, me and my friends have LAN parties at a location where there is no internet connection, SC2 missing this feature has made it so that we can't use that location for our LAN parties. Thus, a missing LAN function has a direct impact of my enjoyment of the product and that's just one(out of many) examples. Get off your high horse claiming it has no effect when it most certainly does.
Everyone who watched MLG Dallas was disappointed while if LAN was possible, they wouldn't have been. Everyone who watched IEM Cologne was disappointed because a great game ended in a disconnect. There is no way that you can argue that the product is better because there is no LAN. Sure, most of those disconnects were not Blizzards fault(most of the time it is because of error prone venue internet connections), but having LAN would fix most of the issues and make it a more enjoyable experience for the hundreds of thousands of people who actually follow tournaments. Maybe not by much, but it would be an improvement.
Blaming the pirates is such a ridiculous argument I don't know if I should even be responding to it. But just look at Valve, they've realized that a happy customer is worth more than some douchebags pirating the game when they could have actually afforded it. Everyone who wouldn't have bought the game anyway is a moot point, no matter how many/few those happen to be. Like others have brought up, Spore is the perfect example of where punishing the customers for actions out of their own control hurt the company making the product.
Just because SC2 made a profit doesn't mean I can't be pissed of at Blizzard for behaving like assholes. In the end, the customer is always right, the pirate shouldn't even be in the picture.
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It also affects actual paying customers when the company who makes their favorite game can't put as many resources into the expansion or sequel because they're losing too much potential profit from piracy.
(They should have a very limited special LAN tournament edition, though.)
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What some people here don't understand is that there are different types of pirates. There are those who would like to play the game and would be willing to buy it, but only if the game price is below the current retail one. The other type of pirates are the ones who don't really care about the game and would never consider buying it. Now, the first type of pirates are a LOSS to game developers, because they are potential customers. If SC2 had LAN, then private servers will be more than enough for the price sensitive pirates, therefore hitting Blizzard's pockets. Currently these people will either buy SC2 when the price is right for them, or already have the game. I see no problem with the lack of LAN support to be honest and yes Blizzard needs the money, because unlike other shit studios they actually care about their products and protecting their properties means more awesome games for us. Win/Win all around.
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On June 23 2011 10:40 Alsn wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2011 10:36 SKC wrote:On June 23 2011 10:29 branflakes14 wrote:On June 23 2011 10:27 Whitewing wrote:On June 23 2011 10:22 branflakes14 wrote:On June 23 2011 09:35 Alaron wrote: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 Think logically. It makes perfect sense from a business standpoint. Pretty much anyone can find a way to pirate a game that has LAN just by googling it. Whether or not a game has LAN has absolutely zero effect on whether or not it's pirated. Starcraft 2 doesn't have LAN but was heavily pirated. Modern Warfare 2 doesn't have LAN but was heavily pirated. Spore doesn't have LAN but was heavily pirated, the list is endless. Not even DRM that forces a constant connection will stop piracy (Looking at you Ubisoft), all it'll do is piss of actual customers which is exactly the wrong thing to do. You're wrong. It doesn't have absolutely no impact whatsoever, it does have an impact, and it is a factor. It just isn't the ONLY factor. Here's how security works: You build a security system to make it sufficiently difficult for anyone to breach that they don't have the time or resources to break it, or want to bother breaking it. It is impossible to make something completely unbreakable, anyone sufficiently determined will eventually manage. LAN makes it much easier to pirate it. Lack of LAN does not make it immune, but it makes it a lot harder. Thus, one can logically conclude, that the inclusion of LAN will increase the rate at which the game is pirated. As much as it provides a stumbling block, I'm still yet hear to hear of a major game that hasn't been cracked, leaving pirates playing the game and customers stuck with DRM. Portal 2 has actually broken the 3 million sales mark despite very heavy pirating. Valve don't even consider piracy to be an issue at all. Starcraft 2 multiplayer. HoN? Maybe not major, but it definatelly is quite famous. The single player being cracked may not actually be that bad, because a huge part of the players plays for the multiplayer, so someone that really likes the single players is very encouraged to buy the game. If the multiplayer was cracked, though, not only would they lose that incentive, it could become another WC3. That's the most hilarious thing I've read in this entire thread. It could become another WC3, like that's a bad thing? Despite all the piracy and garena bullshit that made blizzard go all butthurt, wikipedia has the following to say about WC3:
"The game proved to be a best seller and one of the most anticipated and popular computer game releases ever, with 4.5 million units shipped to retail stores and over one million units sold within a month."Which game developer in their right mind wouldn't want their game to be like WC3?
Of course SC2 would still sell millions of copies, LAN or not, cracked or not. The problem with WC3 also is much more recent than that, so it isn't exactly lauch sales that were affected. These servers weren't that famous until much later, primarly after the Dota explosion. What I meant is that Blizzard probally saw thousands of players playing on a cracked server, battle.net empty in comparison, and though "well, that sucks, shouldn't we try to prevent that?". I would definatelly not want that happening if I were a developer.
Maybe WC3 wasn't a great example of piracy actually affecting a game, like what happened with Demigod's launch, but it's probally one of the bigger things Blizzard saw and used as a motive to change things. Huge games like these are going to sell well no matter what, but what happened to WC3 lately isn't good for the developers. Everyone knows Blizzard likes to be in control of their games, more than usual. Now, that those plataforms already exist, who knows how that would actually affect, or not, sales.
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On June 23 2011 11:05 zarepath wrote:
It also affects actual paying customers when the company who makes their favorite game can't put as many resources into the expansion or sequel because they're losing too much potential profit from piracy.
(They should have a very limited special LAN tournament edition, though.) Losing too much potential profit? Which dreamworld are you living in where PC games aren't a massively profitable industry, in spite of piracy? According to this link which I found after very little digging on google(top result) says that PC gaming is projected to grow by 9% and in fact did grow by almost 20% in 2010. Compared to pretty much anything a 20% revenue growth is absolutely amazing and 9% is well above what you could expect in the current economic climate. If you think PC gaming companies can't afford to make sequels you are quite frankly delusional.
In the end the only reason they don't release LAN is because they feel like they absolutely must milk every last cent out of their product, regardless if they piss off their customers. From an economical point of view that's an outright stupid thing to do(goodwill = higher likelihood of future sales) but I guess most companies nowadays only care about short-term gain, not long-term growth.
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On June 23 2011 10:20 dc302 wrote:
I'd have to agree. Unless there's a way to stop piracy (which there probably isn't with lan) then even I, if i were the head of some company, would not release games with lan and have half my customers gone.
Seriously? Half the customers? Don't make me laugh. You've been pumped like chicken meat with propaganda it seems. It's all about control.
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While I think we all agree that LAN would be a boon for tournaments, custom servers, etc, I can understand this argument about pirating - if I was in charge of a business and understood the situation I would probably do the same thing with a game, since its not good for the game but as a large corporation like Blizzard you can't be losing huge amounts of money to pirating.
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If the only thing that's wrong with battlenet is lag--then that's the internet connection's fault, not the Blizzard.
If LAN does nothing more than allow you to have what Battlenet Provides, why have LAN?
Which means the only people who would complain about no LAN are the people who are trying to not buy SC2.
The question should not be "Why is there no LAN?"
The question should be "Being that BattleNet provides us what we need, why do we need LAN?"
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On June 23 2011 10:51 hashaki wrote:
Now, there are ofcourse diffferences when it comes to games, but are there good games out there that didn't make money? I don't really see an issue here, good games -will- sell.
Yes, actually, there are good games that don't make money. There are also shit games that do make money. This is the case before piracy, and it is the case after.
The difference is this: before piracy, a game that didn't sell would sell more than now. It would have made more, even though it didn't sell well. The same goes with good games; there will always be assholes who could have afforded the game but pirated it simply because they could.
That is true but the real question you should ask is would they sell less with LAN support? They would be pirated more but perhaps sell better aswell, it´s difficult to say.
There are many people who purchased SC2 just to get multiplayer. That is, they would have pirated it if they could have gotten multiplayer over SC2.
Do you honestly believe that the number of people who didn't buy SC2 because of a lack of LAN play is greater than the number of people who would have pirated it if they could have gotten the full experience without buying it?
But just look at Valve, they've realized that a happy customer is worth more than some douchebags pirating the game when they could have actually afforded it.
They also bundle every single one of their games with DRM. Or what did you think Steam was? Sure, it may be very nice DRM that has very nice features and utility for the user. But it's still DRM.
(They should have a very limited special LAN tournament edition, though.)
That sounds like a fine idea... right up until you realize that people can just pirate that. Once the code is out there, you're screwed. Some pro player may, while doing a keyboard check, just slip a USB drive into a convenient slot and start downloading the tournament-edition. And then we're right back at where we started.
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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/us-government-finally-admits-most-piracy-estimates-are-bogus.ars
None of this is to say that piracy and counterfeiting aren't real problems. The GAO accepts that the problem is "sizeable," but it also points out just how much bad data is used to produce these studies. Actual dollar figures and job loss numbers should be handled with extreme care and a good bit of skepticism; the GAO also noted that numerous experts told it that "there were positive effects [from piracy on the economy] and they should be assessed as well."
Basically....piracy is much more complicated than people think and I don't think one economist has more resources than the government to properly assess it and more importantly make an ACCURATE interpretation of the data.
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The fact is that no one know how or how much piracy affects sales.
In some cases piracy brings exposure and sales, in others it makes buying redundant. But piracy has always been around, and the gaming industry got HUGE in a relatively short ammount of time, so i think it's safe to say that, while potentially harmfull, piracy doesn't even scratch the industry. Make a good game, provide a good service, your game will sell, the better it is, the more it will sell. period.
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On June 23 2011 11:07 SKC wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2011 10:40 Alsn wrote:On June 23 2011 10:36 SKC wrote:On June 23 2011 10:29 branflakes14 wrote:On June 23 2011 10:27 Whitewing wrote:On June 23 2011 10:22 branflakes14 wrote:On June 23 2011 09:35 Alaron wrote: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 Think logically. It makes perfect sense from a business standpoint. Pretty much anyone can find a way to pirate a game that has LAN just by googling it. Whether or not a game has LAN has absolutely zero effect on whether or not it's pirated. Starcraft 2 doesn't have LAN but was heavily pirated. Modern Warfare 2 doesn't have LAN but was heavily pirated. Spore doesn't have LAN but was heavily pirated, the list is endless. Not even DRM that forces a constant connection will stop piracy (Looking at you Ubisoft), all it'll do is piss of actual customers which is exactly the wrong thing to do. You're wrong. It doesn't have absolutely no impact whatsoever, it does have an impact, and it is a factor. It just isn't the ONLY factor. Here's how security works: You build a security system to make it sufficiently difficult for anyone to breach that they don't have the time or resources to break it, or want to bother breaking it. It is impossible to make something completely unbreakable, anyone sufficiently determined will eventually manage. LAN makes it much easier to pirate it. Lack of LAN does not make it immune, but it makes it a lot harder. Thus, one can logically conclude, that the inclusion of LAN will increase the rate at which the game is pirated. As much as it provides a stumbling block, I'm still yet hear to hear of a major game that hasn't been cracked, leaving pirates playing the game and customers stuck with DRM. Portal 2 has actually broken the 3 million sales mark despite very heavy pirating. Valve don't even consider piracy to be an issue at all. Starcraft 2 multiplayer. HoN? Maybe not major, but it definatelly is quite famous. The single player being cracked may not actually be that bad, because a huge part of the players plays for the multiplayer, so someone that really likes the single players is very encouraged to buy the game. If the multiplayer was cracked, though, not only would they lose that incentive, it could become another WC3. That's the most hilarious thing I've read in this entire thread. It could become another WC3, like that's a bad thing? Despite all the piracy and garena bullshit that made blizzard go all butthurt, wikipedia has the following to say about WC3:
"The game proved to be a best seller and one of the most anticipated and popular computer game releases ever, with 4.5 million units shipped to retail stores and over one million units sold within a month."Which game developer in their right mind wouldn't want their game to be like WC3? Of course SC2 would still sell millions of copies, LAN or not, cracked or not. The problem with WC3 also is much more recent than that, so it isn't exactly lauch sales that were affected. These servers weren't that famous until much later, primarly after the Dota explosion. What I meant is that Blizzard probally saw thousands of players playing on a cracked server, battle.net empty in comparison, and though "well, that sucks, shouldn't we try to prevent that?". I would definatelly not want that happening if I were a developer. Maybe WC3 wasn't a great example of piracy actually affecting a game, like what happened with Demigod's launch, but it's probally one of the bigger things Blizzard saw and used as a motive to change things. Huge games like these are going to sell well no matter what, but what happened to WC3 lately isn't good for the developers. Everyone knows Blizzard likes to be in control of their games, more than usual. Now, that those plataforms already exist, who knows how that would actually affect, or not, sales. That point in particular is a flawed argument. Even if their game was pirated to hell and back, in the end the only thing that matters is: Would we have sold more copies by making an inferior product(removing LAN)? I would wager that the answer to that is no. Who cares if tons of people are playing it for free when honourable people are paying and very happy with the product they received? If that's the reason, then I feel even more pissed that they would remove LAN for me(paying customer) just out of pure spite towards garena players(non-paying customers).
To calm down a little though, I don't really see a way of proving one way or the other if LAN would decrease or increase sales, because the only way to truly prove it would be to go back in time, release it with LAN, and then compare the separate timelines. In the end, I'm still pretty damn pissed that I'm receiving a lesser product purely because they feel butthurt about pirates.
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On June 23 2011 11:12 Spacedude wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2011 10:20 dc302 wrote:
I'd have to agree. Unless there's a way to stop piracy (which there probably isn't with lan) then even I, if i were the head of some company, would not release games with lan and have half my customers gone. Seriously? Half the customers? Don't make me laugh. You've been pumped like chicken meat with propaganda it seems.
Agree..
Lets look at WoW for example.( Not a player, not a huge fan either)
The thing is that there are MILLIONS of private servers, yet still they are the biggest MMO in the world.
So i don't buy the piracy thing. The only thing is that Blizzard won't be able to make their own ladder and SC2 as they like.
ICCUP would eat them in few days, cuz they know that at least 60% of the players hate the ladder map pool, hate everything blizzard really do.
They are stuck, and waiting for miracle...
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On June 23 2011 10:54 Ocedic wrote:Show nested quote +On June 23 2011 10:21 Alsn wrote:
Too all you people attacking pirates. Argue with this:
I am deeply disappointed in Blizzard for not having LAN, a lot of enjoyment that I personally could have had has been lost due to the feature missing. I will not buy further products from Blizzard after I stop playing SC2(which, admittedly, will probably be for quite a while still). As a paying customer I am appalled that they would value short term gain(which they have no proof that no-LAN has actually increased anyway) over long term goodwill(me and others being happy customers).
No matter where you stand on the piracy versus no-piracy issue, the fact remains that their product is worse than it would have been with LAN support, thus directly punishing their actual paying customers.
Not to mention the fact that there's no proof whatsoever that adding LAN would actually lower total sales, which is the only thing that counts in the end. Who cares if 5 million instead of 3 million pirate the game if you still have the same amount of sales but higher goodwill for the future of your company?
To sum up, I, as a paying customer, has gotten a product that is worse than it would have been with LAN. I could care fuck all about people pirating the game since I, a paying customer along with all other paying customers, is the one who is ultimately responsible for Blizzard employees being paid, and I am a little less happy than I could have been. Stop being melodramatic. For you and 99% of all other players, LAN has no effect. LAN would be optimal for tournaments, but Battle.net gets the job done. All of you people complaining about being a 'paying customer' and suffering because of pirates are rightfully mad, but at the wrong people. You should be mad at pirates for causing this. Or do you go to the airport and bitch and moan about going through airport security because you aren't a terrorist?
have you never played a game on LAN settings compared to online? The difference is ridiculous, besides it also makes it possible to just...you know play with internet required!
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