Weekend Reading: Losing Mods for Diablo III Makes the PC Poorer

Fans of Diablo III and of PC gaming, which developer Blizzard has long been a champion of, might have been prepared for an announcement that the game requires a continuous connection to the Internet, considering that it was already a requirement for Starcraft II, and for the fact that real money could be used to buy in-game items from other players, given that microtransactions are the way of the future.

But no one could have been ready for the fact that the company adopted the official line that all mods will be specifically banned for Diablo III, something that has never before happened for any other product they have made.

The choice quote from Blizzard is: “For a variety of gameplay and security reasons, we will not be supporting bots or mods in Diablo III, and they’ll be expressly prohibited by our terms of use for the game.”

It makes sense for Blizzard to want to protect its brand new real-world money auction system and to make sure that mods are not used as a backdoor to get some players advantages, but the company should think about the wealth of new ideas that mods can deliver.

The worst case scenario should have been a vetting process where mods would only be offered, maybe directly via Battle.net, after developers at Blizzard were sure that it did not adversely affect the game.

But instead Blizzard took the big step of outright banning mods which could mean that a Defense of the Ancients like phenomenon will never happen for Diablo III because the people who create the game are banning fans from tinkering with it in any way.

The ban announcement comes after Blizzard has also failed to deliver the much talked about Mod Marketplace for Starcraft II and might be a sign that modding might no longer be something that the company is interested in supporting in the long term.

And that's a real shame because it means that one of the PC champions of the last few decades is moving away from the concepts and the fans that powered its rise.