Beware the blizzard of torrents of Starcraft 2

Starcraft 2 was released this week and at the hefty RRP of £45. Many games sites are hopping mad at this, although typically retailers are selling Blizzard's strategy game at £10 less than RRP. The price is of little consequence to gamers who download pirate versions of SC2 from the torrents. But beware, says Andrew Brandt of …

[waldoPepp]

Caveat Raptor

Most pirated software is a risk, but overpricing like this just encourages piracy.

There's a reason PC games normally retail for less than console games, and that's because they have a much lower trade-in value, especially games like this that require activation. From what I've read, Blizzard are intent on screwing even more out of their Starcraft fanbois through online extras, not too mention generating advertising revenue at the same time.

Clever old Blizzard, but not for me. Much as I enjoy RTS games, I'd just feel ripped-off forking out over thirty sobs for a PC title.

[Anonymous Coward]

Arrr.

Well, think yourself lucky it's not out on the Xbox, etc. That would be £45 probably since you pay £10 pretty much directly to MS for royalties.

I think you can thank Activision for the whole expensive retail (look at Modern Warfare 2).

At least Blizzard had to good grace to include a Single Player that takes more than six hours to complete for that money though.

[Dave 142]

not overpriced

It isn't overpriced. PC games have been around £30 for a long long time, so I don't think a bit of a rise is that big a deal. Considering how many people have spent a long time working on this game I don't feel bad about paying for it either. Do you really expect these people to work full time for free for your entertainment?

[Annihilator]

"a bit of a rise"

£30 -> £45 isn't "a bit of a rise", it's 50%. But that's fine if you're happy to subscribe to the Steve Jobs "not that big of a deal" approach.. ;-)

Nobody expects them to work for free, but do you think that the cost of developing this game is 50% higher than any other game?

Not that the price seems to be bothering most people - it was sold out in HMV and Game today. Though I noticed CoD: MW2 is £25 now, so just bide your time and I'm sure Starcraft 2 will be in 6 months or so :-)

[Dave 142]

50%

50% yes, but over how long? Games have been at around £30 for years now, it seems a lot because there are years of price bumps in one go. Regardless of perceptions of price rise, a game like SC2 is worth £45, think how many hours of entertainment you're getting for that.

[awjr]

I was going to buy from Blizzard but wondered at the £45 price tag.

Checked Amazon £33

and through quidco.com to Tesco I eventually got it delivered for £29 with discounts and cashback.

Sorry Blizzard. I don't particularly care what the RRP is, but if I can buy a retail boxed version delivered for 1/3 less, you need to have a policy of price matching.

[Anonymous Coward]

might get it !!

But the fear of having to pay extra down the line just makes me wonder if i should bother

Might just download it and see if it is really worth it at all.

Hadnt realized it had been released the other day so most of the peeps on teamspeak havnt bothered with it so i cant imagine it being overly amazing !

[Jason Togneri]

Oh dear

What an utter non-story. Was it written simply to make the Blizzard/blizzard pun?

[Carl W]

@AC

Blizzard and Activision are now the same company.

[Jonathan White]

Pointless?

There seems to me to be little point to torrenting SC2 anyway. One of the other things the other things the forum spods are complaining about is the link to Battle.Net. Basically, having the code doesn't let you do much more than launch it. To actually get into the game, you have to log into it with a Battle.net account that has a Starcraft 2 licence code registered against it. So if you don't have a licence you can't play the game. if you DO have a licence, Blizzard will let you download a copy of it from their website free of charge and their downloader works using a peer to peer protocol anyway. Just that several of the peers are whopping great net servers on fat pipes, rather than being other spods with a 512K upload connection.

So just 'stealing' the code is essentially useless. If you can somehow get a licence you can just download it anyway and if you can't get a licence you can't play. So what's the point?

[Debe]

Still need a BNet Account

As others have said you still need a BNet account to play... you "might" be able to use the map editor, but i think you have to authenticate it first anyhoo. I guess you could authenticate it with an actual account and then use the offline mode...is there an offline mode?... *ponders*

As for RRP, i got it for 35 which is only a little above the average i usually pay. And at the risk of sounding fanboish... Blizzard games are so well polished and designed. Blizzard and Valve are the only games companies i would pay above for because their games are always so damned good.

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I can see..

Malware is far and away the most successful piracy deterrent. That said, I still hear of people downloading allsorts of huge packages and then installing them without any concern. I know of people that have been burned.. and rebuilding your PC really isn't too much fun.

[Anonymous Coward]

Expansions

Blizzard already has two expansions to SC2 announced and in the pipeline, each of which is the story/campaign for the other races. That's where the real money comes in - most players will want the expansions too, which don't add much to the game itself, just new maps and graphics so a fraction of the cost to keep churning out.

[Will 28]

Not so much "Expansions" as "The rest of the story"

To call the other 2 expansions is letting Blizzard off lightly. They've clearly had the suits in to see how much money they could rip out of their fan base, and gone at it shamelessly. I bet they'll be about £30 each, and bring very little more to the game. It's a shame, I loved SC and have been waiting for SC2 for years. Unfortunately judging by the small amount of time it took me to finish part 1, I'm pretty sure the end will be a tedious lead in to World of Starcraft (regardless of what they say, this is blatantly coming).

It's a bit like selling someone a book 1 third at a time, I don't agree with this whole it's in 3 parts thing. It's one story, and should be sold as such.

[Stu Wilson]

preordered for £25

I'd had my SC2 on pre-order with Spamazon since 2008, at £25, and they have this lovely pre-order price guarantee

o how I laughed when it retailed at £45

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the big deal?

So, it's £45 - lovers of the genre are likely to get many months of enjoyment out of the title, assuming it's any good.

Lets say a gamer gets a minimum of 6 months enjoyment out of this, heck, that's less than a tenner a month.

Personally, I can't think of anything more boring than this genre of gaming, probably because my job involves similar types of tasks - micro management & strategy ;)

Whatever floats your boat - if Half-Life 3, my game genre of choice, retails at £45, I'd still buy it.

I may have a little moan about it, but ultimately, I know it'll keep me happy for many many hours.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say ..

... both the freetards and paying fanbois get the crap they're due.

Freetards get what they paid for - and less.

Fanbois who were stupid enough to give the shareholder happiness machine that occasionally produces graphically pleasing crap interactive movies their hard-blagged money got what thy paid for - and less.

PT Barnum's words would work well as Blizzard's motto - "A fool and his money are soon parted"

[kororas]

I for one

quite like this game and believe its well worth the 34.99 i paid for it. Blizzard have polished this game to a very high standard which is something far from common in the pc game market these days with all the cross console ports and crap going on.

[Mike 135]

I'd say....

if the sc/2 expansions are designed to split the community i will not be buying them.

that said I am extremely happy with this 'crap i'm' -supposedly(??)- due'. this is the first RTS since genz that's really bought a smile to my face.

[Anonymous Coward]

Full Price?

Bought for £31.42 from Tesco Entertainment (using the FTSL15-1 code), plus the Quidco cashback of £2.52 makes it significantly cheaper than buying a digital copy.

Why would you buy a digital version of a game when the boxed version of cheaper? And out of interest, how big is the digital download?

(Its a good game btw, I'm enjoying it immensely and never played the original)

[ArmanX]

But does it run in Wine?

Virus? What virus?

(That being said - no, I'm not going to pirate this game. I'll wait a year or two, then get the Battlechest with all three games for a third the price)