Piracy Not A Big Deal For Blizzard

Talking to Rob Pardo at Blizzard HQ in Irvine, he told IncGamers piracy is not a major concern for the developer.

Pardo, VP of game design at Blizzard, told IncGamers “piracy, historically, has not been that big of deal for us.” StarCraft II’s lead designer Dustin Browder added he thinks “the most powerful solution for piracy is to try to create a compelling experience so people don’t want to go elsewhere,” something Blizzard obviously have been pretty good at before.

The difference a player will get from a pirate server of Battle.net and the real deal will be significant according to Pardo, saying he doesn’t “think there is any way they are gonna compare with the sort of features that we are going to build in our version of Battle.net.” There will probably come some sort of pirate Battle.net server software, “but it’s just not going to be as good.”

Many have speculated the reasoning behind removing LAN, a quite controversial topic, and whether or not it’s excluded to combat piracy. Pardo told us “getting rid of LAN is not getting rid of piracy.” Browder explained that decision comes from Blizzard’s goal to bring everyone together on Battle.net, and to avoid double work, creating some features for both Battle.net and LAN separately.

You can read the whole interview here, and also check out our big upcoming StarCraft II Single Player Hands-On Preview, new single player screenshots as well as new single player gameplay video footage.