No in-game ads for StarCraft II

Blizzard has denied that StarCraft II will have in-game advertising, despite what Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference.

Kotick had been talking about things he'd learned from Blizzard ahead of Activision's merger with Vivendi, and said that, "because it is a short-session experience, [StarCraft II] can actually be the model for in-game advertising and sponsorship and tournament play and ladder play for the future."

But it sounds like he misspoke, with the game's community manager writing on the US WOW forums, "We have no plans to have in-game advertising in StarCraft II. We believe Bobby was actually referring to Battle.net, which has always included ads."

So that's alright then. StarCraft II, of course, is Blizzard's upcoming real-time strategy game sequel, which was unveiled during May last year in South Korea, where the original is so monstrously popular that they show professional tournaments on TV. Naturally this competitive element is a key consideration for the sequel, which includes the original three races (Terran, Protoss and Zerg), and currently does not have a release date.

Blizzard is expected to reveal more about StarCraft II very soon, so watch out for that.