Blizzard ponders merits of licensing Battle.net to third parties

Urg. Come on Joystiq, more ideas on how to better take over the Earth are the last thing Activision needs to have.

"Then maybe everyone would find out that we're the gaming world's biggest scam runners! We can't have that!"

What in the flipping hell?

Like what? I havent had a problem with Steam in at least 5 months.

are you saying that it's better for every publisher to have it's own bloated program for only AAA games? instead of all games on one program?

or are you just a dumbass.

I agree. Battle.net better stay Blizzard only.

I'm not sure Otis. I certainly haven't had any problems with Steam and i love the fact it can provide me with not only all the games i need, but keep them updated, and point me towards a bunch of independent games i otherwise would know nothing about. Except for the fact i'd love to buy Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and Quake 4 via Steam, there isnt much else i could ask for.

@Windowsphone

Steam is NOT a P2P service. It is a digital distribution service akin to D2D, but better by an order of magnitude. Do your research before you spout shit on a website full of irritable gamers.

Besides, are you calling Vale a lame company? For coming out with HALF LIFE, and TEAM FORTRESS??! I think you should get off the internet now before we all come and kill you.

The internet: Everyone wants to set up a toll booth

@Windowsphone

Steam is NOT a P2P service. It is a digital distribution service akin to D2D, but better by an order of magnitude. Do your research before you spout shit on a website full of irritable gamers.

Besides, are you calling Vale a lame company? For coming out with HALF LIFE, and TEAM FORTRESS??! I think you should get off the internet now before we all come and kill you.

I also apologise for my comment being somewhere erle now

Wait, lame company? Valve? That's some strong stuff you're smoking, and washing it down with hella koolaid.

Where's Captain Planet to deal with this trash.

@Windowsphone

Steam is NOT a P2P service. It is a digital distribution service akin to D2D, but better by an order of magnitude. Do your research before you spout shit on a website full of irritable gamers.

Besides, are you calling Vale a lame company? For coming out with HALF LIFE, and TEAM FORTRESS??! I think you should get off the internet now before we all come and kill you.

Please downvote my two other lame attempts at commenting. I clearly fail at trying to reply :o

The problem with more competition in PC social gaming platforms is that your friends might end up spread too thinly across all the battle.nets, steams and xfires of the world.

so I looked it up (again) and I still think you're full of shit.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1009170

No comment to the contrary from Valve staff?

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5483-YUFN-0521

And if you'd ever USED steam you'd have seen this on rare occasions, which BLATANTLY implies that they are not using p2p. If they were why would they need servers?

Go back to middle school, and play half life while you're there, you need educating.

And then they bring StarCraft 2 to Steam, and I have a Steam in my Steam and can use Steam features while I use Steam features. Bitchin'.

Well guys WindowsPhone is right we really don't have games on our poor PS3s we only play mediocre games such as Killzone 2, Uncharted, God of War, LBP, inFamous, Resistance, Socom :)

... And not only we play videogames in our PS3s, we also watch HD Por.. I mean movies and it self repair!

hes right in the sense steam is filled with useless and crappy games... it reminds me of the app store where its hyped to all hell and back but there maybe 5 things that are worth the money...

and im not ant-steam... i played half-life in 1998 when it first came out and have had the same steam account since it was in the first beta

I think at some stage someone told WindowsPhone that Steam is all P2P. Whats really funny, is when i registered my copy of Starcraft through BNET and downloaded it, it was downloaded by a custom Blizzard P2P program. Its Blizzard using P2P! I had to actually disable the P2P section to only download from the Blizzard server cause i was getting a poor speed too. Steam has NEVER been P2P and never will be. I remember a rumor going around years and years ago about it, but it was all crap. Perhaps WindowsPhone has been living under a rock?

Oh hey WindowsPhone, while you were under the rock, Duke Nukem Forever was pretty much cancelled (kinda). Can you go cut yourself now? The throat bleeds better. Then you can go to Troll Heaven with the old Tmac and that other dude that starts with S i dare not mention his name.

You, sir, are a moron. P2P not only isn't used on Steam, but also it isn't all like Limewire, it's just a way of spreading the load between other people. Limewire uses P2P, but doesn't mean it's ALL malware. Blizzard uses P2P, but only to speed it up and reduce the load.

Think about it, if you ran a server, and put something big up, you would have millions of people downloading the same thing, slowing it down, and making it prone to crash. Also, people can't edit the files with a virus, because it uses something like a MD5 sum to check.

Man I hate The Escapist--thanks for reporting this, Joystiq, so I don't have to go to their site.

Wow, deleteing that trolls comments turned this article into an epic fail. Perhaps in the future Joystiq, you could just change all his comments to "Im a dirty troll who like cock in his mouth" or something really witty :D That way the comment system doesnt have a heart attack.