StarCraft II to allow paid-for mods

By Oli Welsh Published 22 August, 2009

Creators to profit from marketplace.

As part of Blizzard's ambitious plans for the new version of the Battle.net online platform to launch alongside StarCraft II, the company's design chief Rob Pardo revealed plans to allow the mod community to sell content on a StarCraft II Marketplace after launch.

The Marketplace would be a forum for publishing and downloading both free and Premium maps. "A portion of the revenue" from Premium maps would go to the creator.

Pardo envisaged that this would eventually lead to much more highly-evolved mod content from creators with a budget, drawing a comaprison with the Day of the Defeat mod for Counter-Strike. He hoped to see creators able to create more of their own assets than they did with examples like Warcraft III's famous Defence of the Ancients, and to see StarCraft II attract the best amateur game designers away from other platforms like Steam.

The Marketplace would add greater longevity to StarCraft II and help bridge the gaps between official Blizzard content, he said. There would still be plenty of free content, similar to the iPhone app store, and very popular Marketplace maps might have matchmaking or achievements added to them by Blizzard.

The Marketplace would not be added at StarCraft II's launch because he did not want it to delay the game any further. Pardo explained the launch features of StarCraft II Battle.net in detail, which we'll go into in a separate post.

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About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • hiddenranbir #1 3 years ago

    Uh, do RTS games even get significant overhauls worth charging for?

    I mean, I can't imagine significant stuff in the style of Fall from Heaven or History of the Three Kingdoms for Civ 4.

  • Shinji #2 3 years ago

    RTS games do get some fairly significant overhauls - both in terms of maps that become very popular on the multiplayer scene, and full mods. The DOTA mod for Warcraft III is even more popular than the original game itself in some parts of the world, for example.

    (I'll also be interested to see how flexible Starcraft II is in terms of mods - when you zoom down to unit level, it's easily good looking enough for third-person gameplay to work. If the game allows mods to seriously mix things up, you could find some really interesting mods coming through...)

  • Trikk #3 3 years ago

    Pardo envisaged that this would eventually lead to much more highly-evolved mod content from creators with a budget, drawing a comaprison with the Day of the Defeat mod for Counter-Strike.

    This is the most retarded sentence I've ever heard, not only is it factually incorrect but the analogy is false. Day of Defeat was originally a mod for Half-Life and was completely free. DoD: Source costs money but is simply a graphical update. It's the same story with Counter-Strike; free mod that got a price tag once they released it on a new engine.

    And if I'm paying a Battle.net subscription I'm sure as hell not going to fork over MORE money for custom maps (UMS).

  • Metalfish #4 3 years ago

    What worries me is that the map editor was obscenely easy to use for the original, you can't justify selling a mission made in that can you?

    I hope not. Total conversions I might be interested in though.

  • Eury #5 3 years ago

    #3 For the billionth time; you are not paying subscription fees for Battle.net.

    Btw they are not talking about regular maps, or even DotA. In fact Rob Pardo actually mentioned that DotA most likely wouldn't cost anything, as it doesn't have enough original content.

  • Sharzam #6 3 years ago

    If there is one thing i hate about the gaming and tech world in general is that jumping on band wagon when comes to money.

    As more companys use 'marketplaces' the more people charging for stuff which used to be free, back in the day it used to be people made maps and mods because they loved a game and wanted to share that passion now people will do it simpley to make money. This is not the first and sure wont be the last when passion is made way for money.

  • SeesThroughAll #7 3 years ago

    This is excellent! A lot of modders worldwide are finally going to profit from their hard work!

  • Trikk #8 3 years ago

    #3 For the billionth time; you are not paying subscription fees for Battle.net.

    They have never said that, they have gone out of their way to avoid the question by saying that "it won't cost to play with your friends over battle.net" which can mean that you pay for league play, pay for ladder play or even pay to play public games. Yet at the same time they are trying in every possible way to force their customers to use Battle.net. Why would you do that if it's supposedly free? Why would you remove LAN and direct IP play?

    Battle.net can fuck right off. I want to play LAN so my only option will be to pirate the game? Blizzard have completely forgot about who made them big and I hope all true fans will show their disproval of their new business strategy by boycotting any future products. They are simply looking to make you pay more for the same product. Breaking the game into episodes, Marketplace with micro transactions for things that used to be regular patches and updates, possibly subscription fees and other fees for playing tournaments and such.

  • Eury #9 3 years ago

    #8 [link url=http://forums.battle.net /thread.html?topicId=17616371851&postId=175647497258&sid=300 0#25
    ]http://fo rums.battle.net/thread.html?top...[/link]
    "When a player buys the StarCraft II box at retail, they will have the ability to play on the new Battle.net for free."
    Edited by 1 at 22/08/09 @ 13:17

  • George-Roper #10 3 years ago

    @Eury

    That's all well and good but they're still purposefully removing LAN play for one, single reason. To control piracy.

    Of course, they're entitled to try whatever they feel will work but ultimately it's alienating potential customers by treating every person as a potential pirate. For that, they will definitely lose a percentage of sales from people who won't accept their control over usage and you can bet that some talented individual will get LAN play working, shortly after release.

  • Trikk #11 3 years ago

    @Eury

    Again, they are going out of their way not to mention a subscription fee. As I said, they have told us you can play with your friends on Battle.net for free but they haven't said anything about other fees and subscriptions we might have to pay for additional functionality that used to come for free with the old Battle.net service.

    That's all well and good but they're still purposefully removing LAN play for one, single reason. To control piracy.

    Bullshit, it has nothing at all to do with piracy. The game can still be pirated easily. The removal of LAN only serves one purpose: to force their customers to Battle.net

    It has no other purpose than that and for that reason, Starcraft II will be the first Blizzard game since Warcraft II that I'm not going to buy.

  • Apaar #12 3 years ago

    This game is going to be truly groundbreaking. The game that every other game would wish to be like. At this rate, StarCraft 2 is going to surpass even all of Valve's games in its moddability and mod community. Blizzard will reign supreme! :)

  • George-Roper #13 3 years ago

    @Trikk

    Of course it's to (try) to combat piracy. Do you think Blizz want 500,000 Korean internet cafes running illegal copies of SC2?

    Battle.net will be the platform and portal for all network games. Battle.net will require authentication of your client, therefore validation of a purchased game before it will allow access.

    How is that not Blizz purposefully trying to combat piracy?
    Edited by 1 at 23/08/09 @ 16:34

  • Nephirion #14 2 years ago

    Milkage!!!!