N-Philes

No LAN in Starcraft 2

Posted June 30th 2009 by Adam Glasgow.

I was never the biggest Starcraft kid, but I always enjoyed it, and I've certainly been looking forward to the sequel, which is due out... whenever. In a surprising statement, Blizzard has stated that LAN play will not be an option in Starcraft 2, forcing users, even if they're in the same room, to be connected to Battle.net to play together. Blizzard's statement after the break.

We don't currently plan to support LAN play with StarCraft II, as we are building Battle.net to be the ideal destination for multiplayer gaming with StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games. While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy.

Several Battle.net features like advanced communication options, achievements, stat-tracking, and more, require players to be connected to the service, so we're encouraging everyone to use Battle.net as much as possible to get the most out of StarCraft II. We're looking forward to sharing more details about Battle.net and online functionality for StarCraft II in the near future.

Now I'm sure the new Battle.net will have some neat stuff, but make no mistake. Blizzard is moving away from LAN for one big reason, which they did mentioned in passing.

...and safeguard against piracy.

Keeping bootleggers from playing online is pretty easy, but keeping them from cracking and being able to play LAN games is basically impossible. I'd bet a lot of money that this was the primary reason for forcing players to go online to play together, no matter how close they physically are together.

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Tags: starcraft-2

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