Battle.net Marketplace Cancellation is Possible

The Battle.net Marketplace has been a long time coming. It was revealed at BlizzCon 2009 that Blizzard planned to allow modders to create and distribute maps for StarCraft II both for free and at a premium. This July will be a full year since the game was released and there's still no sign of that functionality or the Marketplace in any form. It remains in development and Blizzard is "committed" to making it happen. It is, however, "struggling" with the many challenges that developing such a service presents.

In an interview with Eurogamer, StarCraft II design director Dustin Browder was asked about where Blizzard is with development of the Marketplace. He said, "Struggling. We are moving forward. We are working on it actively now. As you can imagine there is an immense number of challenges for us to overcome. We're trying to deal with those issues. I don't know how we're going to solve some of the player rights issues."

Although it might not seem complicated, there are a number of problems that present themselves when you start dealing with the public charging for content. Browder noted two in particular, saying, "How do players protect their own maps so they don't get ripped off by other players? What are the rules of how much you're allowed to charge? There's just a ton of work for us to figure out."

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