StarCraft II to allow paid-for mods
Creators to profit from marketplace.
As part of Blizzard's ambitious plans for the new version of the Battle.net online platform to launch alongside StarCraft II, the company's design chief Rob Pardo revealed plans to allow the mod community to sell content on a StarCraft II Marketplace after launch.
The Marketplace would be a forum for publishing and downloading both free and Premium maps. "A portion of the revenue" from Premium maps would go to the creator.
Pardo envisaged that this would eventually lead to much more highly-evolved mod content from creators with a budget, drawing a comaprison with the Day of the Defeat mod for Counter-Strike. He hoped to see creators able to create more of their own assets than they did with examples like Warcraft III's famous Defence of the Ancients, and to see StarCraft II attract the best amateur game designers away from other platforms like Steam.
The Marketplace would add greater longevity to StarCraft II and help bridge the gaps between official Blizzard content, he said. There would still be plenty of free content, similar to the iPhone app store, and very popular Marketplace maps might have matchmaking or achievements added to them by Blizzard.
The Marketplace would not be added at StarCraft II's launch because he did not want it to delay the game any further. Pardo explained the launch features of StarCraft II Battle.net in detail, which we'll go into in a separate post.