He hoped to see creators able to create more of their own assets than they did with examples like Warcraft 3's famous Defence of the Ancients (which sparked the MOBA craze), and to see StarCraft 2 attract the best amateur game designers away from other platforms like Steam. It's taken nearly nine years for these plans to become reality.īack then, the company's design chief Rob Pardo, who has since left Blizzard, envisaged this would eventually lead to much more highly-evolved mod content from creators with a budget, drawing a comparison with the Day of the Defeat mod for Counter-Strike. Blizzard announced plans to allow the mod community to sell content on a StarCraft 2 marketplace way back in 2009.
StarCraft 2's paid mods initiative is a long-time coming. Then, in 2017, Bethesda announced a new initiative called Creation Club for Fallout 4 and Skyrim Special Edition. Blizzard, which has worked with both Pirate and Tya over the last year, said ARK Star and Direct Strike are 'epic examples of what Arcade developers are capable of', but questions remain over the rights and wrongs of paid mods.īack in April 2015, Bethesda removed the option to sell Skyrim mods on Steam after a backlash that ended up with Valve offering full refunds.
