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StarCraft II Locking Out Some Gamers Due To Bug, Not Policy Change
A minor furor has erupted online in the last few days over some gamers being unable to play StarCraft II in offline mode even after authenticating their game with Blizzard's Battle.net service. Blizzard has always said that players should be able to get a 30-day "grace period" in which the game will run without connecting to Battle.net after a successful authentication, at which time it requires re-authentication. Some gamers have been locked out after every reboot, causing considerable consternation.
The problem has been exacerbated by Blizzard customer service reps giving out conflicting information on the issue, which has suggested to some that the company's policy on offline play has changed. One player posted this purported letter from Blizzard tech support to the official StarCraft II forums:
Hello,
Thank you for your inquiry regarding StarCraft II.
At this time, StarCraft II requires an active internet connection to play. This is stated in the System Requirements on the retail box, as well as our online System Requirements. Without an active internet connection, you will not be able to log in to Battle.net to authenticate your copy of StarCraft II.
The 'offline mode' currently only lasts until the computer is turned off, and then requires a fresh authentication. There are plans to review this, but there is no ETA on that.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to let us know.
Thank you for your time,
Patrick C.
Customer Services
Blizzard Entertainment
The possibility that the policy had changed has some gamers understandably pissed off at what they perceive as a bait-and-switch on Blizzard's part. Frequent business travelers and soldiers on deployment are just two of the groups hit by this problem. However, a Blizzard representative has confirmed to Game Informer that the lockouts are due to a bug and are not an intentional change to the terms of service or connection requirements for StarCraft II.
According to the company spokesperson we talked to, Blizzard is working on fixing the bug and hopes to have a solution deployed in the upcoming major 1.1 patch. The representative declined to offer any timeline for when the patch is expected to launch.
While it sucks that some players are getting the short end of the stick for the moment, it's good to hear that Blizzard isn't intentionally screwing anyone over by changing the rules for legit play after people had bought the game. Being unintentionally screwed isn't any more pleasant in the near term, though.
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