Blizzard Struggling With Battle.Net Marketplace

[Sugarman101]

It took them 6 months to add chat channels which is like 10 minutes of work, so by comparison a marketplace should take them over 9000 years. Not that a marketplace in a AAA game that costs 60$ is anything but a greed move (almost exclusively present in Activision games). Starcraft is a major, expensive title, and content made using the editor should be free and encouraged as something that increases the game's longevity, it's not a "free" browser game trying to find ways to squeeze in some profit.

You personally went through all the coding and QA to implement chat channels in a completely new platform and it only took you 10 minutes? Congratulations.

The fact of the matter is that we have absolutely no idea how long it would take to implement and test chat channels in a program that we didn't write. Sure, one could argue that they should have been in there from the start, but in the end it was a design decision by Blizzard. Based on community feedback they reversed that decision and worked on implementing chat channels as quickly as was possible within their production schedule. They had no reason to delay on purpose, but they do have other things they're working on.

As for the marketplace a greed move, I keep seeing this brought up. At the end of the day the aim of any company is to make money. With the marketplace they are looking to reimburse dedicated modders for their hard work, which I think is well deserved. Blizzard will collect a commission as is only fair with them hosting the content. You are under no obligation to pay for these maps/mods. If you feel the content is worth the price, you pay it. That's how these things work.

Hopefully, if the marketplace is successful, a popular mod/map will help the creators to gain recognition in the gaming community and become the next generation of game designers.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

its a shame Bnet 2.0 sucks and they get a hard on to edit/censor mods people make.....

 

[Gindil]

Blizzard, use Steam.

That is all you need to do.

 

[Ashsaver]

So Blizzard is trying to compete with Steam eh? I'm fine with that,but I'm not happy that they're thinking about selling maps

 

[drakythe]

I'm pleased they are considering scrapping the marketplace. That is actually one reason why I haven't bought SCII yet. The other being how expensive the whole game will be (you know, the one with ALL the campaigns?) I understand that SCII is an excellent game, but now that the engine has been developed and released into the wild why the frell do they need over a year to release a campaign for it and then charge full price all over again?

 

[Exort]

Some people will get really mad... I know people that already have a team of developer working on project for this.

 

[Shockolate]

I just wish the matchmaking system would stop putting my Bronze league (Rank 1 in group) 3v3 team against diamond level players.

We even faced a team with 3 1v1 Master league players. That's top 2% in the world! Curbstomp much?

While we do win our fair share of games against said diamond level teams, since the gap between Good diamond and bad diamond is quite small, it's infuriating to constantly be over matched.

We don't ladder up because we mostly lose, and we don't lose rank because said losses only subtract 3-5 points, while every win gives us 35-40 points.

Which means we go absolutely fuck all nowhere and don't get any better.

/rant that has nothing to do with above article.

 

[Litchhunter]

I honestly hope that the thing is canceled. No one asked for it and hardly anyone likes it. Stop wasting good man-power and funds on something that is not needed.

 

[thethain]

I think that people underestimate the abilities of the map editor. And are thinking bnet is going to charge for a generic Big game hunters remake map.

The idea behind premium maps is that items such as DOTA and the new Universe of Starcraft projects can get some funding for their efforts (that blizzard will skim off of, I mean use to provide hosting...)

The best way to allow this is to enable back-end persistent data management on Blizzards part, so for example you could create an entire campaign or persistent meta stats that is shared among X mod for SC2. This means that for example, DOTA-SC2 could have an official stats page with wins/losses etc. And sure it might be possible for someone to rip it off and have a free clone, it would not have the right meta data, and it could be reported for copying the original, if it did that (imitation isn't necessarily stealing, copying a map and barely altering it is.)

Another important part is just realizing that it isn't going to be foolproof. You just need a mechanism to remove any blatant copies before they get too widespread.

 

[kouriichi]

Blizzard failing to milk money out of its fans? THATS UNHEARD OF!

But really, i could care less weather it goes up or not. I probably wont spend money on it if it does.

 

[hansari]

Browder said that player's right issues - like how to prevent players from ripping off other people's content - were proving a stumbling block...

Wouldn't it simply be a matter of seeing who uploaded what first?

I'm pretty sure this is where you want trusted community moderators too...

 

[Sicram]

Well if they could just drop the idea of charging for maps (a very silly idea from a player's and modder's point of view) and only use it to sell their games... but oh wait, they already have that.

Paying for maps... such silliness. Sure it'd be fun to create something and then get money for it but still... mnaaaaah.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

To be fair, what on Earth would you buy from it anyway?