Blizzard, the developer behind eagerly anticipated realtime strategy title Starcraft II has denied accusations from fans that they are trying to extract more money from their pockets by releasing the game as three separate episodes.

Some fans had reacted angrily to news that the game was to be split into three – with each episode allowing you to play through as one of the three species in the game. And had assumed that parent publisher Activision was asking Blizzard to “milk” fans.

Speaking to Edge Magazine, Blizzard developer Bob Colayco denied this: “We had always planned to do two expansion packs for StarCraft II. This structure just reshuffles how we were going to do things.” Colayco promised 26-30 missions per pack for a ” full, ginormous single-player campaign experience in each product.”

What this does, of course, is exactly “milk” fans. It turns expansion packs from being an optional extra to a necessary buy if fans want to play as more than one species (originally, the main game would have included missions from all three sides).

Like Spore’s new expansion pack and Grand Theft Auto IV’s soon-to-arrive downloadable content, the Starcraft II trilogy shows that games companies are now resorting to keeping back material that arguably should be in the main game for extra cash add-ons later.

The only question is that with franchises this big, how likely is it that fans will boycott the extra content? So, is Starcraft II’s trilogy a rip-off? Will you be giving any TLC to GTA IV’s DLC? Let us know…

Out 2009 | £30 | Blizzard

Be Sociable, Share!
  • http://starcraft-source.com Brian Cook

    What needs to be made clear is that the multiplayer game will have all three races in it. You will be able to play Protoss, Zerg, and Terran, in multiplayer battle.net. The single player will be Terran only at initial release.

  • FierceDeity

    Why are you all making these acusations that they are “milking” us? Think a little harder on this now will you… If there are 30 levels for the old StarCraft and the new ones will have a total of 90. Then that means that we’ll have triple the number of levels per campaign. Don’t any of you see that it makes the story more detailed and in depth rather then a quick spurt of 10 levels per campaign? I find this to bve great news, now I KNOW that the story will have more too it. And frankly I don’t care that they will be separate. Besides, the money goes to the company. And the more money that the company gets means more money to spend in the future on making games. Damn, so much hype over nothing.

  • John

    I don’t understand why fans are angry, I am excited that SC2 will have two expansion packs instead of the expected one. I can understand why the fans are angry at the spliting of the single player campaign – but I don’t mind at all if they can do a decent job. Just as Lord of the Rings is too much of an epic to be released as a single movie, SC2 may be just as great.

  • Simon Munk

    Each of the three games is set to be a large chunk of play – so you’re getting value for money, no doubt, per game bought.

    BUT in separating along the lines it has, Blizzard is forcing you to buy all three if you want to play the single-player of all three.

    The question to ask yourself is would as many fans buy all three games if each of the three mixed missions from the three campaigns? And moved each story on only a bit? I doubt it – but that would be a much closer equivalent to John (above) talking about the Lord Of The Rings films. Blizzard, in only letting you play single-player as one race per title is forcing fans’ hands.

    I’m very excited about playing all three. But is it milking? Yes, in my opinion, it is.

  • Leo

    Are they milking? Yes they are. Does it make me mad? Yes, and I feel betrayed. I will never purchase the game now. In my view, splitting it into three titles just shows that they are not confident in being able to push out a quality product matching up to that of starcraft 1 (and they are affirming this fact by saying they want to focus on single player). Come out with one super quality product and you’re set for life. Come out with the same product split into 3, it reduces the quality significantly.

    Starcraft’s strength was and always will be in the multiplayer. There really is no need to delve this deep into the single player aspect, and unless they completely overhaul the entire design/interface to make the single player campaign fun to play (making it a completely different game and feel altogether), it is destined for disappointment.

    The irony is, had they made this decision from the get-go before announcing Starcraft 2, I would have found it incredibly exciting news. But now all I read coming from them is bs bs bs. It is clear that they are not really focusing on the player experience.

    And what I see with what they are planning to do with the single player campaign so far, is not enough justification for their decision – it is all rather unfortunate that development has gone in this direction.

  • jeoeyl

    Oh please, I just wish every hater out there would never buy this game like they say.
    Funny thing is, I don’t give a damn.

  • Nevadi

    Dear FierceDiety,

    What has Blizzard been doing with the heaps of WoW money?

  • Mr Ptri

    some dlc is milking, a good example is with the godfather game on the 360. there are npc’s in the shipped game content that will actually tell you they can only be hired with a 10 dollar DLC. thats Bs, because it shows that they had it programed in and just decided to extort the customers. Episodic content is completely different. However, I’m really not happy with Blizzard on this decision. They know what theyre doing here, and they know that a RTS with one Campaign is bogus. I think my biggest question is will these be expansions requiring the first or standalone packs? If they are expansions than its bs because you shouldnt have to get an expansion just to play as your favorite race, and if they’re standalone and you decide to only get you’re favorite race copy, you will miss out on 2/3 of the story… bad move blizzard.. i thought you were the few good guys left in gamming… for shame.

  1. The machine that turns brainwaves into music
  2. The vibrating suit: Using sensors to train Olympians
  3. Smart Skin: Squid and zebrafish inspire camouflage tech

Hot chat, right here!


Our most commented stories right now...