Fans Outraged at Starcraft II's Missing Feature

Twitter remains abuzz at the news, with fans variously describing Blizzard's surprise move as "totally insane," "just...wrong," and, worst of all, "EPIC FAIL." An online petition has amassed over 25,000 signatures so far.

Although Blizzard's keen to emphasize the features of their online service -- which will track player stats and provide rich community functions -- it's seen as a preemptive strike against potential Starcraft II pirates, as those with illegal copies of the game would be banned from connecting to Blizzard's servers. A somewhat similar move by EA last year resulted in its massive hit Spore racking up thousands of one-star reviews on Amazon, and being slapped with a class-action lawsuit.

[RememberThe357]

Everyone is always outraged about one thing or an other. Just STFU and play the damn game. It's going to be great with or with out it...

[Pebz]

Yeah, "STFU and accept it" has done wonders for humanity...

[noprin]

I would say the same thing to you STFU
maybe it doesn't make any difference for someone like you who have a good Internet connection but for us with slow and laggy Internet connection thats just unacceptable!!!!!

[xztence]

they sure are naive if they think this is going to stop pirates.
if they dont include LAN their game will be hacked to ther very source
and hackers will just build a feature like lan or private servers.
it has always happened.

[kwyjibo]

Their justifications for dropping LAN support do not hold water.

It will do nothing to stop piracy on top of their authenticated server system. It will just pointlessly up network latencies for people playing across a LAN, as data will have to needlessly traverse the net.

[whatis]

24/7 computer lanning (and even console lanning) is quite common in West Australian share houses etc.

Over here we also have limited download/internet usage quotas per month which means that we get our connection capped to less than 56k speeds if we use too much.

I was disappointed that Killzone 2 and Resistance 2 didn't have lan modes, but Starcraft 2 is a different story. IT IS A PC GAME! No lan mode in Starcraft 2 is inexcusable in my opinion.

It is extra annoying because Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 are pretty much the only upcoming PC games that I really have any interest in and they're both starting to sound like MMOs.

The PCs and cables are already there in our house, why should we be forced to connect to the internet and back again?

I find the idea of experiencing lag in a server where the only players connected are me and my friends who are all playing from the same house, laughable.

Big thumbs up to Ubisoft's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 which has lan support even on the console versions. Still consistantley our most played game. I love the custom heads in the game too. All games should have the option to put your own face on the characters.

[Thugbot187]

I'm not liking this drop of LAN support myself. Sometimes you are just having a personal LAN party. Bad enough they placed us on hold for 10 years. This point this game might be dropping off my list in favor of Warhamer 40K RTS.

[Halo3 MLG Pro]

I'm sure their will be a workaround but this is definitely a big blow. I played Starcraft about a million times and all of them were LAN.

[mrspeedo]

Blizzard has found a way to circumvent piracy: World of Warcraft is subscription-based and all the upcoming games (Starcraft 2, Diablo 3) will be tied to a non-transferrable Battle.net account.

Sure, the games will be pirated somehow but not as easily and probably without multiplayer support.

It's going to work and no petition will cause ActiBlizz to change their minds.

[JeepGamer]

I will wager that 2/3 of the "outraged" people are actually going.

'You mean we're actually going to have to BUY it if we want to do something besides play the single player campaign'?

[moe84]

It sucks, you'll get over it. Move on and buy the game like I plan too.

Better yet, don't buy the game. Less crying I'll have to deal with online anyway.

<3

[Ellessdee]

-------Twitter remains abuzz at the news, with fans variously describing Blizzard's surprise move as "totally insane," "just...wrong," and, worst of all, "EPIC FAIL."-------

epic failures in full capital letters, that's as bad as it gets alright. hahahahahahahahah

[WeeMadBadger]

It's yet another example where piracy concerns lead to crippling the game for those who pay for it.

I'd venture a bet -> there will be a way to play pirated version multiplayer. I don't know how, but piracy always prevails (I'm just saying; this is neither a statement for piracy nor against).

So, you pay, you loose, you don't pay, you win. Here's your definite proof that I'm right:

http://xkcd.com/488/

[Altered_Soul]

Controversy aside, how exactly is the removal of LAN "somewhat similar" to Spore's DRM debacle? This article is one of the most ill-researched gaming articles I have read.

[JoelR]

your right... it is in no way similar. One uses an authentication method that limited the number of systems and times it could be installed. the other just says hi to momma bliz with your correct account in passing. surprised more companies don't do it yet. I figure 60-70% will do it for games if bliz can get away with it. Microsoft already leans that way for their software.

[Isengard]

I don't know about Europe and the U.S. but here in South Africa LAN parties are still very popular because bandwidth is still fairly expensive, so a missing LAN feature is a pretty big fail in my opinion.