Battle.net preventing Starcraft II piracy

By Ellie Gibson Published 10 August, 2010

Blizzard pats itself on the back.

Blizzard executive Michael Ryder has been bigging up the company's online network, Battle.net, saying it's helping them win the fight against pirates.

"For World of Warcraft we have been able to work well around the piracy issue and we think we'll be able to do the same with StarCraft II," he told MCV.

"The Battle.net solution provides several things. It provides better continuity for the players and it gives them a stronger way to participate in an overall Blizzard community. But what also goes hand-in-hand with the Battle.net solution is that we work really hard to offer a tailored, regional business model, so it reduces the incentives to go to a pirated solution."

Ryder's also been chatting about how the company's changed since the 2007 Activision merger - saying that, in short, it hasn't.

"We operate in pretty much the same way we always have. Since we have been working with Activision we continue to be who we are. We make the same decisions in the same way we always have, and the relationship with Activision hasn't changed that," he said.

"For example, we often talk about play nice and play fair, which has to do how we work with each other and our partners. Preserving that Blizzard culture is a key part of our ability to continue to deliver great games."

Blizzard's most recent release, Starcraft II, is indeed great. Read our review for more info.

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About Ellie Gibson

Since joining Eurogamer in the mid 2000s, Ellie has written about subjects as diverse as the fall of Gizmondo, the rise of Hollyoaks actresses in Red Alert games and the noise a bear makes under NSFW circumstances.

Read more articles from Ellie by visiting the Ellie Gibson archive page.

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Comments (42) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Kerome #1 2 years ago

    Obvious exec's comments are obvious. Plain to see it was part of the plan from day one.

  • dingo75 #2 2 years ago

    Crack is out to enable offline single player and skirmish.

    Big pat on the back that you secured multiplayer with B.Net
    (just like about every other mutliplayer mode of games released in the last years).
    Kotick will be happy!

  • Cherub007 #3 2 years ago

    "But what also goes hand-in-hand with the Battle.net solution is that we work really hard to offer a tailored, regional business model, so it reduces the incentives to go to a pirated solution."

    Eh? I don't mean to be rude, but any chance of a translation of that?

  • Branoic #4 2 years ago

    I quite like his little dig at Activision's "mean bully" rep in the last paragraph there.

  • Sulphur #5 2 years ago

    @Cherub007: What he's saying is that he's really happy to limit you to playing the game only with people from your region. If your box is for the UK, you can forget about playing with anyone in the US, and vice-versa.

    The rest of what he says is the usual, obvious PR spin and a thinly-veiled response to accusations of Blizzard being beholden to Activision and little prick Bobby Kotick in their freedom-limiting and money-grubbing decisions around BNet 2.
    Edited by 1 at 10/08/10 @ 09:16

  • Ryboy #6 2 years ago

    Ha! My [RELOADED] says different.

  • bad09 #7 2 years ago

    It's good that they seem to have some success in the pointless battle against piracy, I already got into a big debate about this so not looking for one today but the loss of battlenet emails to phishers put me off your anti piracy solution Michael.

    Valve have my details, EA have my details and Ubiscum have 'em. Enough is enough and personal details DRM is a big no from now on I'm afraid. Still at least you let people play their game offline so kudos for that.

  • jack_klugman #8 2 years ago

    @Cherub007

    I assume he means the subscription model they're offering in South Korea as an example of a distribution model tailored to a particular region:

    http://en .wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft_I...

  • Chaser #9 2 years ago

    I for one welcome our new overlords...

  • kar #10 2 years ago

    The irony is the 'tailored regional' offerings in one of the biggest incentives for people to pirate. I have mates in Australia and the US, and with my EU copy of SC2, I cannot play with them _at_all_.

    So as soon as the bnet server emulators come out (and they aren't far away) bnet numbers will drop like a stone.

  • Buran #11 2 years ago

    Love to see that the Acivision merge will not change the Blizzard politics, because changing from being item x money transactions totally forbidden in Diablo II to the 25 $ per Celestial Stead in WoW was a "Kotick utterly owns me" moment.

  • mingster #12 2 years ago

    Battle.net seems really good. I like the cloud based saves. The fact you don't need a CD in the drive and you can install it anywhere. The matchmaking is great. Autopatching is handy. It's got to be the best anti-piracy method that exists better than all the other horrible DRM methods.

  • TVoJ #13 2 years ago

    just wondering? can you sell starcraft 2 on or does it only alow for one activation?
    Great game and all I just dont think i'll be playing MP so I think I'd rather finish SP, trade it in or sell it on and do the same as Ryboy if I ever wanted to playt again.

  • butler` #14 2 years ago

    @Kar

    While I understand the desire to play with friends wherever they are in the world, I'm sure the vast of people would perfer a regionalised, and thus relatively lag free system to play on.

    I'm sure Blizzard would love you to play with your friends too, but sadly they don't own the internet.

  • mingster #15 2 years ago

    Don't think you can resell it..this is the only down side.

  • mingster #16 2 years ago

    Yup i prefer it being regionalized. Less lag. Very impressed with the speed of MP.

  • ignatiusjreilly #17 2 years ago

    I'm sure the vast of people would perfer a regionalised, and thus relatively lag free system to play on.

    I think most people would prefer the choice.

  • butler` #18 2 years ago

    can you sell starcraft 2 on or does it only alow for one activation?

    You can't sell it on. You pay for the key, you bind the key to account, much like WoW.

    It's two birds with one stone in that respect, remembering that publishers/developers don't profit from second hand sales.

  • Tricky2050 #19 2 years ago

    Would this game have cost me £35 if it wasn't for the Activision merger? It's the priciest pc game ive ever paid for. Also its been pirated as much as any other game, although the battle.net system does work well.

  • rochyroch #20 2 years ago

    i was going to buy this game but
    RRP of £44.99
    and cheapest i can find it is around £35
    its to much for a pc game, oh well.

  • butler` #21 2 years ago

    I think most people would prefer the choice.

    Of course, if you're a yank, you can just buy a eu copy of the game and go nuts with your 300 ping.

  • ignatiusjreilly #22 2 years ago

    Buying a different copy of the game for each region wasn't exactly what I meant...

  • Nuronv #23 2 years ago

    @mingster
    I quite like battle.net system too, you aren't on your own.

  • TeaFiend #24 2 years ago

    This is the first PC game I have bought in about 18 months. I am pretty sure I have paid £35ish for one before.

  • TVoJ #25 2 years ago

    Can I not change the email address connected to my battle.net account then sell it with the details attatched?

    edit. just looked, yes you can change email address linked so that pretty much means I can sell it on provided whoever buys it dont care for the achievments ive already got. yes?
    Edited by 1 at 10/08/10 @ 10:08

  • kar #26 2 years ago

    The lag argument is a little dodgy.

    Because the way bnet '2.0' works, you're directly connected to a dedicated bnet server (and didn't activision have a been with those for mw2 btw? why the change of heart? :))

    That means that is there is lag, it's only the remote player that will suffer it, not his opponent. So if you want to take the lag hit of playing on SEA, or Korea then so be it. You should have the choice.

    For most of us in Europe, it wouldn't be a big deal playing on US servers.

    But that's also part of the problem. Blizzard wants to keep these servers vibrant and populated. If people could play wherever they want, you would get ghost servers with no one on them.

    The best players would play on Korea, and no one on US West.

  • sneetch #27 2 years ago

    So it prevents it the same way that Steam prevents piracy by providing other services (and a community) that complement the game? Sounds reasonable.

    @butler`
    Of course, if you're a yank, you can just buy a eu copy of the game and go nuts with your 300 ping.

    I dunno about that, I've played TF2 on US east coast servers at about the same ping I play on UK servers (50-60 ms), quite often the first clue you get is the accents on the servers (of course if it has .co.uk in the name that's a hefty hint).

    The option would be nice, I believe they're "planning" on implementing it. I wouldn't hold my breath mind you.
    Edited by 1 at 10/08/10 @ 10:36

  • kar #28 2 years ago

    The thing is, activision/blizzard (same diff) in one breath talk about peer to peer being fine (for MW2 for example) and yet insist on dedicated for starcraft 2.

    I would have thought latency would be a bigger issue and bandwidth a more significant limiting factor for a FPS, not a RTS.

  • SpaceMonkey77 #29 2 years ago

    That's cool that tying Bnet to the game is cutting piracy. However, when Activision get big boots and do things like making a PC game regional (can anyone count the last one?), that will immediately go against their anit-piracy methods. Gamers determined enough, still want their PC freedoms to be reasonable.

    I'd hate to see such a regional trend follow PC games, as the whole perk of PC gaming is playing with anyone. Gimping it, console style, will not help things.

  • sneetch #30 2 years ago

    @kar
    The thing is, activision/blizzard (same diff) in one breath talk about peer to peer being fine (for MW2 for example) and yet insist on dedicated for starcraft 2.

    It's whatever gets you onto their service and away from your own. In both cases they've removed the ability to "host your own" (dedicated servers in MW2, LAN in Starcraft II) which makes you rely on their service and cuts down on the "perks" of pirating (you have a massive legit community vs. a smaller pirate one). Not saying it works or doesn't work, or that it's right or not right to do so that's just the intention as I see it.

    Personally, I thought that SC II was peer-to-peer and you only needed Battle.net to perform the matchmaking.
    Edited by 1 at 10/08/10 @ 11:40

  • sneetch #31 2 years ago

    @Milky1985

    It's definitely early days so far, some of the features like opening a chat window so you can see everything the other party said are there (in the main menu at least) but seriously awkward to even discover and it's completely insane that the Battle.net UI doesn't overlay the game menus rather than the other way around to enable you to chat (a separate pause for single player would work too). I've no doubt they'll be tweaking this for years but it's pretty bad at the moment.

    I don't think we'll ever see offline achievements though. :(

  • butler` #32 2 years ago

    Pretty sure the actual matches are p2p? The 'dedicated' bit is the matchmaking.

  • makariel #33 2 years ago

    "You can't sell it on. You pay for the key, you bind the key to account, much like WoW."

    Of course you can sell it. Just sell the account, then you don't even have to hand over the box because it's possible to download the client from battle.net.

  • Mooglepies #34 2 years ago

    I don't play the game online (other than a few games with friends) so B.net as a whole is utterly irrelevant to me.

    I suppose that if I played league matches against randoms I'd be grateful for the lack of lag though; I remember DoW2 being horrible for matching up my team of UK-based idiots against ub3r1337pr0 players from the other side of the universe.

    /care, to be honest.

  • Dylbot #35 2 years ago

    So, is it just me, or is this pretty much Blizzard dangling their dick in the face of the piracy community, and therefore BEGGING for Battle.net to be emulated or otherwise circumvented as quickly as possible? In a kind of "nyeah nyeah you can't crack us!" "Sounds like a wager to me!" situation?

  • LFace #36 2 years ago

    Ha! My [RELOADED] says different.
    You need a shave son, want to borrow my RAZOR1911 ?

  • swills #37 2 years ago

    The B.Net Read ID thing has actually been useful for me. On a couple of occasions I've had friends playing SC II while I'm in WoW and a raid starts to form and I send them a quick message that they get in SC II asking if they want to come. Yes, I'm sure we could all just use MSN or something but just seeing if they are free and chatting while in two different games is nice.

    I'm sure it'll be better still when we're all playing Diablo III in 2017 too.

  • SpaceMonkey77 #38 2 years ago

    SC does does loo cool. but I can never make that jumped, from playing a single/lan/multiplayer game, to this Actiteet online suckling, that gamers are now bound by.

    It all seems like a strange game of diminishing returns, where Activision jester Kotick is getting the last laugh.

  • Sunyavadin #39 2 years ago

    I don't get what people find so impressive about cloud based saves. It's nothing special. People have done it for years.

    Dropbox remotely stores all my game saves for me, for every game I own.

    When I want to play one I whip the USB drive out of my pocket, plug it into the nearest PC, double click the registry backup from my home system and grab the save from the internet.
    Edited by 1 at 10/08/10 @ 14:32

  • Lee_Morris #40 2 years ago

    I doubt Blizzard and Activision have much of a relationship at all. It seems Kotick and crew just leave them to print money. WoW will give them a pretty loose lease to do what they like.

  • darth_paul #41 2 years ago

    not in single player... ahem

  • Lord_BeeJee #42 2 years ago

    @bad09
    If I send you a mail asking for your steam login/passwd and you reply sending me those details, are you going to blame valve when I hijack your account?
    Edited by 1 at 10/08/10 @ 16:21