Blizzard looking to "monetize" Battle.net in the future

Posted Oct 12th 2008 1:00PM by John Callaham
Filed under: Action, MMO, Multiplayer, RPG, RTS, Starcraft II, World of Warcraft, Diablo III

Blizzard has been running its online multiplayer services for nearly all of their games for free via Battle.net (save of course for the subscription based MMO World of Warcraft). All those Warcraft RTS games along with the Diablo titles and the original Starcraft have had its multiplayer servers running at Blizzard's expense for many years.

However, with two upcoming non-MMO games on the horizon (Starcraft II and Diablo III) there may be some changes coming for Battle.net and it's likely that its many, many customers won't like it. According to our sister site Joystiq (covering a Diablo III gameplay panel at BlizzCon this weekend) the game's producer Jay Wilson was quoted as saying, "We are looking to monetize Battle.Net so that we get to keep making these games and updating features. We kind of have to." So what does this mean exactly? Will people have to pay to play Diablo III and Starcraft II online? Will more ads appear on the Battle.net web site? At the moment there's no clear word on the future of the service.

Tags: battle.net, battlenet, blizzard, blizzard-entertainment, blizzcon, blizzcon-2008, diablo-3, diablo-iii, starcraft-2, starcraft-ii, world-of-warcraft

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

I'm not going to buy D3 if I'm gonna have to pay to play online. Seems this Activision merger is affecting blizzard pretty clearly.Posted at 3:06PM on Oct 12th 2008 by xaijin

Oh f**k this...
Blizzard has been on the worst streak ever...
screw what game is going to be the WoWKiller,
I know who its going to be
The WoWKiller is Blizzard itself, along with StarcraftStabber and DiabloDesecrater...

They've already openly said that there are unfinished things in Lich King, which goes against their usual mantra, the game is already gold so they wont fix anythin til afterwards most likely.

Protoss, Terran, and Zerg are being sold separately for singleplayer expansions which I will bet my life will cost $30, while the first game will let us play online with all 3. There damn well better be some epic crap that goes down for each game to make up for the $100 cost.

And now they want to start charging us for their little service? If this is how the state of computer games are going to be, I'll toss out my laptop and just pay the cost for the gold membership on 360, that way I actually save money...

Hell, this just shows Guild Wars is doing better off, yeah its supported by NCSoft, but hey, still free to play online.Posted at 3:43PM on Oct 12th 2008 by seishinokami

Fuck blizzard, but atleast ill still have my DoW2 which is speculated to be alot more. and with free online.. (which should be the standard)Posted at 12:47AM on Oct 13th 2008 by Mat

If this is true then fuck blizzard there making mass money on world of warcrap witch i dont play due to having to pay to play the shit online if the millions of people wouldnt of started paying for that shit world of warcrap would be free online too but yeah a move like this make's me realize that Activision was the worst thing to happen to blizzard and in turn i hope they go bankrupt over this bullshit. Posted at 8:55AM on Nov 10th 2008 by a pissed off starcraft fan