The big news in the online gaming space this week is that Blizzard has prevailed over those who
would circumvent their official Battle.net service. That may not be a good ruling for gamers, but it's an important win
for Blizzard in their fight against piracy.
Blizzard feels that they've got the right to force people who would play the popular StarCraft, Warcraft, and Diablo games to use their official Battle.net servers. In doing so, Blizzard can make sure that every player is using a valid, non-pirated copy of the game and they can also make sure that the online experience lives up to certain quality standards.
Gamers (and programmers) Ross Combs and Rob Crittenden didn't agree. They found Blizzard's Battle.net experience lacking. Battle.net is sometimes so slow to respond that games are unplayable, so Combs and Crittenden did a little (or a lot of) reverse engineering and created the BnetD Project to allow players to connect to each other outside of the official Blizzard channel, not unlike other software programs that do the same for the Xbox, PSP and GameCube.
Both parties' arguments make sense. Game developers need to control piracy. Gamers want a fast, fun experience. It's unfortunate that Blizzard can't satisfy both their own needs and gamer needs at the same time. The court's ruling means that they don't have to. With this ruling, third-party Blizzard game servers have been essentially outlawed.
Other coverage: CNET, Gamasutra, IndyStar, Kansas City InfoZine, Red Herring, Slashdot, The Inquirer, WarCry Network
