
StarCraft 2: help us mourn the death of content freedom - timwiseman
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/08/starcraft-2-the-latest-game-to-control-user-created-content.ars
======
mquander
Three separate points:

\- The 25MB file size limit is absurd and could cause real harm. I can't
imagine any rationale at all for this. Storage is so cheap. There's also an
arbitrary limit of 5 maps at a time per author, which is hilariously strange;
needless to say, the most fun custom maps in WC3 and SC:BW came from prolific
authors.

\- Ars doesn't mention the fact that their current system for browsing and
playing custom maps is broken beyond belief. It's more or less impossible to
play maps that aren't among the most popular on Battle.net. (details:
[http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=139...](http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=139745))

\- The change everyone is complaining about stems from an actual good idea. In
WC3 and SC:BW, people would constantly make tiny, ineffectual changes to
custom maps, resulting in a profligation of one million versions of those
maps, each of which you would have to download when you encountered them. You
also had little assurance that someone had not modified a map to let them
cheat it. The centralized distribution system is a real convenience, as it has
the potential to avoid these problems (although they are still present right
now, thanks to Blizzard's horrific design.) Unfortunately, it makes Blizzard
somewhat responsible in the eyes of consumers for the content on the system.

~~~
jlgosse
The game was just released. Blizzard does a great job of releasing incremental
updates for their games and servers. I remember BATTLE.net changing
significantly over time when I was playing the original SC, from pretty
horrible to pretty fantastic. I'm pretty sure the same thing happened with
WCIII as well.

They will listen to their community and continuously make this thing better, I
guarantee it!

~~~
mquander
I would sympathize if this was Blizzard's first networked RTS with a modding
community, but it's hard to understand why they would decide to throw away ten
years of aforementioned incremental improvements to SC:BW and WC3's community
features and implement a far worse system from scratch.

~~~
jlgosse
I'm sure lots of people would probably disagree with you about that. Just
because a small handful of people think the system is HORRIBLE doesn't mean
the average gamer will say the same thing.

Maybe they just wanted to change things up a bit, or maybe they want to
restrict things at first to see what people's reaction(s) are.

------
patio11
I know that somewhere in this wide world there must be a heartbreaking work of
staggering genius remixing corporate logos, edgy speech, and full-motion video
into a mindblowing coming of age story about tolerance and true love that
could only possibly be shown in the Starcraft engine, but you know how I read
this headline? Starcraft 2: More Zergs, Less Penis.

That is a tradeoff I can live with.

~~~
iron_ball
The file size limitation is the killer, if you ask me. Starcraft and Warcraft
III both had _huge_ mod communities which produced astounding content. In at
least two cases, entirely new genres of gameplay: the tower-defense genre
began with Starcraft mods, and the WC3 mod "Defense of the Ancients" has
inspired several similar standalone games. Anything that limits the
capabilities of mod designers is bad in my book.

~~~
Retric
Sorry no: _Tower Defense games began in 1990 when Atari Games released
Rampart.[6] Early tower defense games later began to appear post-1997 in
minigames for other platforms, such as Final Fantasy VII. By 2000, maps for
StarCraft, Age of Empires II, and WarCraft III were following suit.[7]_
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_defense>)

~~~
wwortiz
Well tower defense was indeed further defined and expanded in warcraft 3 where
it saw its biggest market, and this just further supports modding of games.
DOTA however is from wc3 and it is especially amazing that there have been two
independent games made from it, as well as many other interesting game types.

------
protomyth
Greed is probably the motive, but....

I get the feeling no CEO wants to be testifying at a congressional hearing and
try to explain that the content some kid saw wasn't created by their company.
"This appears in your video game and as we all know (like animation) all video
games are for kids" "No sir, that was not created by us....." "You should stop
this..."

~~~
techdmn
Especially after the GTA "Hot Coffee" debacle. That was a different issue of
course, but the general public doesn't seem to understand what a mod is, and
assume the game publisher is responsible for any and all content, regardless
of source.

~~~
njharman
Seems like HN commenters are confused as to what mod and content are as
well...

Bethesda _was_ the source of the content for Hot Coffee. It was included in
several versions of the game.

A mod was made to enable access to this content.

As the authors and distributors Bethesda is/was/and should be responsible for
releasing that content.

~~~
papercrane
Rockstar developed GTA. Bethesda made Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3.

------
maqr
I bought SC2 and it's a good game. The licensing system is absurd though. The
more interesting part is that the license is non-transferable, which is true
for almost all MMOs, but this is the first 'normal' game that I think I've
purchased which can't be resold. You have to register the game to your real
identity, and blizz is 100% in control of what you can do with it. It's by far
the least-free software I've ever purchased.

As a user, I'm going to let blizz get away with this one, because the game is
good and we've been waiting something like 12 years for it to be finished. So
I did buy it. But if other companies think that I'm buying their game if they
pull this kind of crap, well, it's not happening.

~~~
wwortiz
Actually there is no real used game market for pc games and it has been that
way for a very long time, starcraft one was only allowed 1 copy to be on
battlenet at a time the only difference now is that games are online so much
of the time that they are much more limited.

The thing that I don't like is that you have to login to battlenet for
anything single player (other than playing as a guest) and this is an issue I
wouldn't accept for any other game than sc2.

~~~
someone_here
You can play offline single player, but it won't log your achievements.

~~~
phob
That sounds completely fair. But you should still by able to resell the game.

------
jasonkester
Anybody who's ever run a site with user-generated content quickly changes
their opinion about free speech.

The internet has all the freedom you'll ever need, but you shouldn't expect to
have that freedom everywhere you go on it. You can post anything you like to
your blog, but I can't post anything I like to it. I have to do that at my
own.

Deleting obnoxious custom maps from a video game is no different from trimming
Ugg Boot spam from the front page of HackerNews. It's not impinging on
anybody's freedom in any meaningful way. It's just making the game universe a
better place to be.

------
baddox
I've never been so happy to not buy a game. I've also never been so sad to not
buy a game.

------
iamdave
A nasty side effect of consumer-inherent complacency. As long as you keep
consumers' appetites satiated _just enough_ for them to want more, this sort
of thing by and large will go condoned. People who don't develop Apps on the
iPhone didn't care about the crappy developer agreement. People who just log
onto Facebook to gossip about Johnny and Chachi didn't care about openGraph.
People who only bought Starcraft to build pylons wont care about this.

The casual gamers and casual consumers outnumber power users at least 5:1, and
that's what allows these sort of things to perpetuate and continue on the rate
that they are.

~~~
_pi
It's not casual gamers, it's gamers in general. All of my friends who have
bought this game ignore issues with it because "IT'S STARCRAFT II!!!!!!!!".
Gamers are the weak, and easy to manipulate, they give in, boycotts aren't
effective, and for video games you can forget about having any sort of unified
front. Back when I still read reddit's /r/pics there'd be a weekly posting of
BOYCOTT MWII steam group of some sort and everyon was playing MWII.

~~~
javanix
I think that's kind of a woeful generalization. The most vocal members of the
population certainly have something like that, but plenty of people who play
games (myself included) bought SC2 because they were happy enough with the
content and not dissuaded enough by the downsides - I'm sure plenty of other
people quietly went about their business, passing it up because of the various
issues discussed in this thread.

~~~
_pi
For most gamers the upside of playing the game overrules the downside all the
time. Me? I haven't bought SC2, L4D2 or MW2, because all of them disrespect
the platform, and it's users. I want more features than I had in 1995, not
less, I want companies to stand by their promises, and I don't want some
neutered 1:1 console port, respectively. I also don't want Blizzard
controlling the upstream of game content. Bobby Kiotik will want to monetize
that, I'm not stupid. There's going to be Starcraft 10$ map packs soon. I
refuse to relinquish my rights to companies who have proven that they are
untrustworthy, even with entertainment.

------
sprout
>Those of us who remember looking through Duke Nukem 3D fan pages for a new,
great map to play and share with friends know what we've lost here, and, to
put it bluntly, it sucks. Every now and again you'd trip over a swastika, but
the Star Wars total conversions, the Predator sound packs, and the maps based
on Star Trek ship layouts were always a good time. Those days are behind us.

Only if you buy this shit. I've got a large library of games with minimal DRM
and large modding communities. Graphics stopped adding to the experience five
years ago. I am quite content to battle away on Age of Mythology, Morrowind,
Neverwinter Nights, Age of Empires III, the original Jedi Knight, and a dozen
others.

When I game at all. It's just appalling that people so casually accept
censorship in this day and age. As Ars says, this isn't a simple matter of
keeping the trolls at bay:

>There is also the matter of the rating: StarCraft 2 is rated Teen, and if
Blizzard doesn't keep Mature-rated content out, there could be a serious
backlash.

Good content will be banned to keep the environment at a teen level. This is
disgusting, and make no mistake it is censorship.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"Good content will be banned to keep the environment at a teen level. This
> is disgusting, and make no mistake it is censorship."_

Actually, it's irrelevant anyways. Note that games have explicit disclaimers
that online play is unrated by the ESRB and may be effectively higher than the
game's box rating.

The ESRB acknowledges and accepts this - games are rated based on predictable
content (e.g., dialogue in singleplayer) and do not include unpredictable
player-generated content within reason (e.g., people swearing in multiplayer).

So, the whole ratings argument is bogus - SC2 will not suffer a ratings change
even if its users distribute obscene user content.

------
Marticus
I just like how everyone is nerdraging about how bad Blizzard is, etc, and
have completely overlooked possibly that you live in an era where offensive
crap is automatically blamed on the company.

Think, if you will, what the hell Fox or CNN or someone would do with a SCII
map that utilized suicide bombers or something. Good christ.

Talk about giving the idiots that think that all of us gamers are off to kill
hundreds of innocent people because we do it in a video game a carton-load of
ammo.

Then we'll have any good or "innovative" games completely yanked, and you'll
bitch more about "losing" freedoms because some company didn't cover their
ass.

Swear it's like a bunch of bickering high school kids in here sometimes.

~~~
crystalis
I'm pretty sure your post was downvoted because of your immature tone and your
downright ridiculous arguments - Starcraft II "innovative"? Ha! You're right
though, that it is sometimes like high school, with the unsubstantiated
arguments that are mostly just appeals or assertions, and the general lack of
professionalism.

Gillian Anderson couldn't do anything about Adobe Photoshop, and if the anti-
videogame crusaders couldn't manage to do anything significant with Manhunt
and Hot Coffee, custom content for SCII isn't going to be any worse. (For that
matter, "GTA Raoul Moat" fetched Rockstar an apology from the Daily Mail.
<http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=256635>)

~~~
Marticus
Wasn't saying SCII was innnovative in specificity, merely that games that
allow sandbox innovation would be more likely to face intense scrutiny as to
what they release as any sort of content from any user or otherwise.

------
johngunderman
I think that the statement made about Benjamin Franklin is rather inaccurate.
Ben Franklin was a printer, publisher, and writer for most of his life, which
puts his occupation at a parallel with what Blizzard is currently doing.
However, Ben never displayed censorship at this level. In fact, he published
plenty of pieces which were considered quite racy and controversial by the
day's standards. It is true that he would not publish articles that were
malignant in nature, but I have a hard time believing he would condone the
censorship that Blizzard is currently demonstrating.

------
d0m
With war3, we always had to download 10 different maps manually and put it in
the "right" place to watch a replay. For instance, the replay wanted the map
in:

maps/download/(2)blabla and not maps/frozen throne/(2)blabla.

I honestly hope that blizzard will fix that by hosting everything.

And I'm sure that if 25mb is not enough, blizzard will increase it.. It's one
of the few game company that encourage users to create maps and fan art.

Lastly, in my 10 years playing starcraft1 and warcraft3, I've never seen a map
with mature content or things like that.. so in my opinion, it doesn't make a
difference whether blizzard control maps or no.

------
jquery
Is all this nerdraging warranted? The game is worth $60 without any custom
maps at all. It's probably worth $60 without multiplayer. It's the most
satisfying game I've played in years.

I think some people, judging by the comments here, have a giant void of actual
problems in their lives and have nothing better to do than to complain about
everything.

~~~
nkassis
But everyone is judging it by what SC1 did. SC2 won't, in my opinion, have the
half life (pun intended) of the original because of this. E-Sport companies
are restricted by the new EULA. Modders can't do what they use too. In the
end, Blizzard isn't protecting anyone, they are trying to gain control on the
whole user experience and they will want to monetize it. Map Packs, paid
tournaments, ....

I bought the game and like someone else said, if this wasn't blizzard I
wouldn't have bought it. Same with the iPhone, how many would have bought it
knowing the restriction if it wasn't made by apple. Same hardware, same
software, same management.

------
m_eiman
Does anyone really think that "prevent obscenity" is the real reason, and that
it has got nothing to do with the fact that pirated copies will have a hard
time connecting to Blizzard's servers?

Seems pretty obvious to me.

------
ultrasaurus
How much of this is an anti-piracy measure?

If you have to connect to a central sever it gives them a chance to check your
account (whether they take it or not). I assume pirates would rather download
an anonymous map over HTTP than from Blizzard.

~~~
chc
A lot of it is an anti-piracy measure. Activision wants games to be bound to
their servers as tightly as possible, because that's the best possible defense
against piracy. It also creates a kind of lock-in that they hope to exploit to
get WoW-style recurring income.

------
thecircusb0y
This is fine, while companies like Infinity Ward / Activision / Blizzard
censor artists and developers and remove creativity from PC Gamers, companies
like Id, Epic, and Valve are filling in the gaps. Valve just released Alien
Swarm for free with all the dev tools needed to modify the game. Blizzard, you
need to return to your roots, and remember your fans, not your wallets.

------
Aaronontheweb
Listen dudes - if these limitations ACTUALLY impede the community's ability to
enjoy the game, rather than just IN THEORY which is what this post and most of
these comments are arguing about, then Blizzard isn't going to sit there and
watch its potential sales of the next two StarCraft 2 games and other parts of
the franchise slowly die because people are getting bored with multiplayer due
to lack of innovative community-content as a result of these restrictions.

Let the market decide - if most devs have trouble making a fun map / scenario
/ mod that's under 25 megs in size, then obviously blizzard will change it.
That being said, 25 megs is probably sufficient anyways. Relax.

------
mcgraw
I don't mind this. I like controlled systems because they tend to keep the
garbage out of my sight (steam, itunes). If they allow the masses to create
really obscene things, it only hurts the developers that spend countless hours
creating quality mods and maps because the consumer has to wade through trash
98% of the time.

Another point is that the game is still new. That 25 MB limit is probably not
a hard limit. It 'could' go up if they start seeing a show of hands with
people needing more space.

~~~
protomyth
I don't think the big issues is what they allow on their servers. I think the
bigger issues is that a lot of new games don't allow you to host your own
content outside their system. I can see reasons for this (and I am
sympathetic), but I do miss the old days of getting a WarCraft map from a
friend.

~~~
Qz
You can still do that for single-player maps AFAIK -- the Map Editor lets you
run any map that you can download.

~~~
mcgraw
Yeah, you can create a map and distribute it for single player vs. the AI.

\- <http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/>

\- <http://sc2.curse.com/downloads/sc2-maps/default.aspx>

------
elblanco
I guarantee that at some point in the future, if Blizzard doesn't get their
heads out of the asses, somebody will crack some future rev of the software to
allow LAN play and custom multiplayer maps and such, and that that will become
the de facto version that everybody plays and shows up on Korean Starcraft
channels. All this is is really a fantastically complex DRM scheme designed to
keep the "we're in control" ball on Blizzard's side of the table.

------
elblanco
Bizarre. It's like they took everything that made Starcraft a decade's long
phenomenon, and decided to try and put a fence around it so they could control
it. Mind bogglingly stupid and guaranteed to turn SC2 into just another RTS
that disappears in a year or two unless they fire whoever is responsible for
such a brain dead idea and revert back to a more sane model.

------
devonrt
The article conveniently ignores every other game that does not have the same
restrictions on user generated content, and then claims the "death of content
freedom." Starcraft 2 is one datapoint.

Where was the article trumpeting the "renewal of content freedom" when Alien
Swarm came out?

------
gte910h
I honestly, after seeing what Uno is like on XBoxLive, completely back
blizzard in this.

~~~
hugh3
After not seeing what Uno is like on xboxlive, I have no idea what you're
saying. Is there a lot of Uno nudity?

~~~
gte910h
It's a near 100% chance to see peoples' genitalia or other parts if you play
for a half hour.

Think chatroulette, but more surprising.

------
loup-vaillant
Blizzard it taking more control than ever. The users can't tinker with it. The
same happen to many games. Of course, this is only possible because those game
are are proprietary.

Did anyone thought about free game engines?

------
senjin
A friend just sent me an SC2 map. We're going to try to make a small custom
game together. I'm at work so I can't open it, but I was surprised to see it
in my mail box after reading the article and comments.

------
0ffworlder
so what, just torrent it and sooner or later there will be private
servers/maps/lan. blizzard is too greedy from the WOW gravy train.

------
theoden
Damn, there goes my ZergNigger mod.

------
nddrylliog
Amen.

