Last month, Destructoid's Jonathan Ross got to pay Blizzard a visit, and there he got to talk with the lead producer of StarCraft II, Chris Sigaty. Of course, hot on everyone's mind is their decision to remove LAN support from the game. "There's a lot of reasons," Sigaty said. The biggest reason? You'll have to get it after the jump.

Right before July, StarCraft fans launched an online petition asking Blizzard to bring LAN gameplay into StarCraft II after finding out that the publisher will not be incorporating the feature into the game in an attempt to prevent piracy. About a month later, the said online petition is now 100,000 signatures strong.

It's starting to looks like hardcore PC gamers who wanted to have a slice of the limited edition Modern Warfare 2 pie will have to make do with, well, nothing in terms of any limited edition goodies.

Ubisoft is hell-bent on putting its foot down against piracy as they are targeting this year to come out with a piracy solution for their games on the various platforms. The publisher has admitted that their products have been dealt a heavy blow because of the piracy, and they are now working on a tool that should cushion the impact of the said problem.

German gaming site GamersUnity is reporting that a hastily deleted post on the official Diablo III forums has confirmed that the game will not be carrying a LAN play feature just like StarCraft II. The post, reportedly made by a Battle.Net community manager, posits the same reasons that LAN play is being disabled in StarCraft II: to curb piracy.

Planning a LAN party to celebrate the launch of StarCraft II (whenever that is)? You can still do that, but you'll all have to be connected to Battle.Net first. Blizzard has confirmed that the upcoming RTS game will not support LAN play to further build up Battle.Net as the multiplayer solution for their games. That, and to combat piracy.

The pirates have struck the X-mark again, claiming illegal booty with digitally ripped software. After hearing Rock Band: Unplugged's leaking into the Internet a month ahead of retail release, this bit of news brings another damper to the fight against piracy. It's been reported that The Sims 3 has now also found its way to torrent sites online, some two weeks ahead of its scheduled release (June 2).

The ESA board must have been reduced to tears of joy yesterday - to them, I'm sure, they now believe there is a god. This week, the Swedish court has found the four operators of torrent site The Pirate Bay guilty as charged for copyright infringement and illegal activities (digitally distributing illegal copies of games and media content). Of course, ESA is more than happy with this victory against the ongoing war on piracy - so happy, in fact, that they had to come up with an official press release about it!

British game developers have launched an all-out war against illegal file-sharers. They're not about to take piracy in the industry sitting down. But the music industry, another victim of the pirates, aren't backing them up on this cause. It's an apparent disagreement in approach and disposition.

Here's where Stardock's "Microsoft can't help PC gaming" theory takes a weird turn. Microsoft Game Studios considers both the Xbox 360 and the PC as the same gaming platform, though lately, some of the PC's big hitters didn't arrive due to their efforts. We all know Jack Keane, Sins of a Solar Empire, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. surely didn't come from them. What are coming from MGS are Xbox 360 games. Where is Microsoft's true gaming drive? We'll tell you, it's likely not on the PC. Full story. Now.