A good friend “Lolo the Bunny” pointed me to a few interesting reads: (Disclaimer: if you’re not into video games or intellectual property rights skip this read.)
The reason for no LAN in StarCraft II
Summary: With no LAN option, those that want to play the game over multiplayer will be forced to purchase a legitimate copy because battle.net requires unique CD Keys for each connection.
Software piracy rate by country
With a software piracy rate in China of 82%, is it any surprise that Blizzard will axe LAN in SC2?
This leads to a bigger discussion on software piracy. Check out this awesome read (again pointed out by Lolo) from tweakguides.com about piracy (page 4 is the best).
Koroush from tweakguides.com is a friggin godsend. He’s right.. about everything he writes about: how to tweak systems/games, why Vista doesn’t SUCK like everyone thinks it does but is actually far superior to XP from a performance standpoint, and this new article on piracy. The new article is awesome. I don’t think very many people realize the huge rates of piracy. It’s no surprise to see it more prevalent in 3rd world countries. The biggest thing I got out of the article is the industry suicide gamers are performing on themselves. The quote from Mike Russell, QA Manager of Ritual Entertainment, makes it seem like that company is bankrupt. Will they develop any more games? Are they toast? Already I think there are very few good developers: Blizzard, Valve, Infinity Ward. That’s it. Who else is there? Id, Epic? Maybe 10 years ago. I really doubt we’ll see these monopolies (Steam anyone?) disappear with the pressures that are on the lower developers, especially with the added weight of piracy killing profits.
