Blizzard: No LAN multiplayer in StarCraft II to prevent piracy

Planning a LAN party to celebrate the launch of StarCraft II (whenever that is)? You can still do that, but you’ll all have to be connected to Battle.Net first. Blizzard has confirmed that the upcoming RTS game will not support LAN play to further build up Battle.Net as the multiplayer solution for their games. That, and to combat piracy.

Planning a LAN party to celebrate the launch of StarCraft II (whenever that is)? You can still do that, but you’ll all have to be connected to Battle.Net first.

Blizzard has confirmed that the upcoming RTS game will not support LAN play to further build up Battle.Net as the multiplayer solution for their games. That, and to combat piracy. Here’s their official statement:

We donÂ’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 weÂ’re encouraging everyone to use Battle.net as much as possible to get the most out of StarCraft II. WeÂ’re looking forward to sharing more details about Battle.net and online functionality for StarCraft II in the near future.

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Via Evil Avatar