Spawning is back in Starcraft 2!

It took a while, but Blizzard is offering Spawning back in the game, basically if you own the game, and are playing, your friends can play with you for free.

Spawning - Buy Starcraft II - StarCraft II

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That's actually really cool. Well played, Blizzard.

 

It was part of Blizzard games in the past, prior to WoW. Starcraft 1 and Warcraft 2 had it. Although people play it up as an added bonus, but it's really just for the cash cow to get more milk. Draw people in so that they buy the game too.

 

Yes and no. Consider this. I use to run IT for a church, and they had a little drop in centre for youth. We bought two copies of Starcraft, and set it up on 2 out of 8 computers, then set up Spawnings on each other computer. 2x 2v2 or 1x 4v4 with no problems.

Now, I bet some of the kids who played it went out and bought their own copies, and you'd be absolutely right. But many didn't.

 

No, but 1 more is more than none. It's marketing, but good marketing at that.

 

Well of course their end goal is to sell more product. That doesn't make it any less awesome for consumers. Companies can chase profits in a way that help customers or in nasty tricks that harm customers (day-one DLC, games without demos that don't live up to publisher's promises, AAA games that also include microtransactions (like ME3), etc). I know all Blizzard is doing is promoting their product and increasing their revenues, but I think it's cool that with SC2, Blizzard has taken such a consumer-friendly path to promoting their product and increasing their revenues.

 

This is all true for the most part, but what this comes down to is really nothing more than an attempt to give Starcraft a shot in the arm. Consumer-friendly is offering this kind of service early in the game's lifespan. Waiting three years after release is more like offering free weekends to get new players into an old game.