Blizzard could license out Battle.net

Third-parties may be able to use the service.

Rob Pardo, executive vice president of game design at Blizzard Entertainment, has revealed the World of Warcraft developer has considered allowing third-parties to license its Battle.net platform, but admits it must look after itself first.

"It's something that we've definitely always talked about," said Pardo during a GDC panel last week. "The problem for us is that it takes a lot of work from our other teams. Every time we have the discussion, we try to figure out what's going to happen if let's say a Blizzard game was coming out and a third party game was coming out at the same time. Could we be agnostic in that way? Could we offer the same level of support that we offer our games to third parties? We just never know. It just seems like a big job for us."

Pardo added that with the StarCraft 2 Map Marketplace it is in essence trialling such a third-party support system.

"I think that will be a really good test-bed for us to see how much support we have to give to mapmakers and how well we can do something like that," he said.

Via The Escapist