Blizzard “working on” Battle.net marketplace, “struggling”

Even the best in the business don’t always seem to have it down at times. StarCraft II developer Blizzard is apparently “struggling” with enhancing Battle.net with a marketplace in which user-created content (maps) will be able to be sold and purchased by other players, something Blizzard, despite their experience, is unfamiliar with.

“Struggling. We are moving forward. We are working on it actively now,” said design director Dustin Browder during an interview. “As you can imagine there is an immense number of challenges for us to overcome. We’re trying to deal with those issues. I don’t know how we’re going to solve some of the player rights issues. How do players protect their own maps so they don’t get ripped off by other players? What are the rules of how much you’re allowed to charge? There’s just a ton of work for us to figure out.”
Browder added this is a new step for Blizzard, uncharted lands for the successful developer.

“We’ve never, ultimately, built anything like this before. Some of our competitors have and more power to them. But we haven’t done it yet. So there’s going to be a bunch of work for us to figure out how to get this done. But it’s something we’re working on. It’s definitely a distance down the road. It’s not in the next month. It’s going to be some distance before we get this in the hands of the fans.