Blizzard ponders merits of licensing Battle.net to third parties
We've spent quite a bit of time with the new and improved Battle.net, both in the StarCraft 2 beta and on its lonesome. It seems like it wouldn't be a bad platform for other, non-Blizzard games. The Escapist asked Blizzard VP Rob Pardo at GDC last week about just such a possibility.
"It's something that we've definitely always talked about," Pardo told The Escapist. "The problem for us is that it takes a lot of work from our other teams. Every time we have the discussion, we try to figure out what's going to happen if let's say a Blizzard game was coming out and a third party game was coming out at the same time. Could we be agnostic in that way? Could we offer the same level of support that we offer our games to third parties? We just never know. It just seems like a big job for us."
It's certainly an interesting question, one which we'd say begs comparison to other digital distribution platforms like Steam. The two aren't identical by any stretch, but in essence both deliver content. We'd say emulating Steam and its competitors certainly wouldn't be the worst first step in making Battle.net a viable service for third parties.
