Does this game have an active developer team?

General Discussion
1

I know that coop won’t get anymore updates, but it kinda seems like this game is on life support, the last community update was over a year ago…

2

Meanwhile zergs in Masters 2 on EU have a win-rate less than silver league (hint: shield battery / void ray buffs).

3 Likes
3

Do just ignore the spam.

But to address your question with some points:

  • They should have an active developer team (since they fixed the server issue last week.
  • We don’t know how large the developer team is.
  • We don’t know if the team is an in-house or out sourced one (though I’m leaning more towards it being the latter)
  • There is still 1 staff (from the support team) active on the forums.
  • Other than that, they did do patches here and there throughout the past year, just that there isn’t any more discussion threads opened up.
  • They will issue map and balance changes to shake up the meta (as per their news).

And yep, that should be pretty much it.

They didn’t go into detail about what they will or will not do, other than saying:

“We’re going to continue supporting StarCraft II in the same manner as we have with our previous longstanding games, such as Brood War, focusing primarily on what our core and competitive communities care about most.”

If SC1 is any good indication, then it basically means SC2 is not only not on life support, but it is officially declared dead.

4

But why?

Was coop not making enough money for them? I thought there was a lot of demand for coop commanders, why else invest so much into it?

5

I shared over here in this other thread:

The key points to consider are:

  • What are Activision’s goals regarding SC2?

    • Game development isn’t an ‘on a whim’ kind of thing. They at least have the plans for SC2 a few years down the road already (if any).

  • Do they plan to phase out SC2 as much as possible?

    • It is no secret that Activision has been attempting to remove ‘the old Blizzard’ as much as possible from many aspects. From the closure of Blizzard offices, to majority of the original Blizzard staff leaving. SC2 is what I call “the last bastion of Blizzard” compared to the other games which have been heavily touched (monetised) by Activision.

  • Is SC2 earning as much money as the investment compared to other games?

    • You are right that just earning money is not enough. How much is earned is also important. But what is even more so is ROI. If I invested $X and it only earns me 2x, as compared to investing $X (elsewhere) and the return is 3x, then it is only logical that the latter seems a smarter place to park my money at (especially since money is a limited resource).
    • Co-op commanders are great, but the problem is that there are no loot box mechanics involved. This means there is no repeat purchase leading to no regular flow of cash into the pockets. SC2 did have an ad series mocking loot box mechanics but many people forget that Hearthstone popularised RNG / loot boxes in the current gaming era. Quite ironic, I know.

  • There may be other possibilities for why they implemented Commanders:

    • It was already in the works when Activision took over Blizzard, so it’s more of a “since we have invested resources into it, let’s see what we can get out of it”.
    • It was an attempt to see how Activision can do a fresh monetisation of SC2. This would be in line with the many changes that happened around this time with all the other Blizzard franchises. Ghost Campaign missions and paid custom games (Direct Strike) were some of the IAPs introduced too.

We may not have the exact figures and details in the end, and Activision may be placing their focus on making ‘great’ games. But it is undeniable that above that focus stands money.

We can easily see the success / failure of any initiatives purely based on where they choose to divert their attention to (and away from).

3 Likes
6

Hint: guess you can’t just F2-A-move in Masters 2 like you did in silver. It’s about time to learn to play.

7

no blazzard buff protons 2 much and stop making bananalance patch so terran never win any game

1 Like
8

You absolutely can if you pick protoss and that is the problem.

9

Not aware of them doing office closures but I was blindly gonna guess they wanted to raise their games even if it means to kill Blizz games to not be obstacle for popularity of Activision games

Activision, COD = cansur company ruined good Blizz

10

If you are losing to F2 A-moved Void Rays I’ll recommend to build units that can shoot air, that should solve it.

1 Like