Activision Blizzard Merger Complete – Now Charge for Everything

By Joe Haygood | October 12, 2008

You know that service that Blizzard has been using, well forever to host online games.  You know, the one called Battle.net.  It has been a boon to gamers for years, providing matchmaking services for all of Blizzard’s RTS games for years, with nary a hitch or outage during that time.  Best thing about the service is that it is free.  Well at least in the near future it is free.

Seems that the guys and gals over at Blizzard want to make money off of everything in keeping with the Activision philosophy as of late, and Battle.net is on the radar in this vision.

via Joystiq

At Blizzcon today, Jay Wilson was asked the question of whether Battle.net would remain free for players.  His response will not go over well with the fanbase, “We are looking to monetize Battle.Net so that we get to keep making these games and updating features”.  I guess the $64 question is why they have to charge for a service that is basically a matchmaking service.  The players do all the hosting work, so what does Blizzard actually do on their end.  No real servers to run, and not much update work is needed for the service.

One has to wonder if this is motivated by the newly instilled Activision mantra of “monetize and sequelize everything possible.  Next up for Blizzard: Warcraft Downhill Jam and World of Tony Hawkcraft.  You might even get a Guitar Hero: Starcraft out of this as well at this rate.