Blizzard design head Rob Pardo revealed that the company will allow mod makers to sell their StarCraf 2 mods and custom maps through an official marketplace.
At launch, the marketplace will feature free content only. Commerce functionality will be then added later.
"Imagine what could happen if you could hire a small dev team and use StarCraft II almost as an engine," he said. "This is an opportunity for [modders] to share in the rewards of our success."
Pardo is a strong believer in the importance of mods for a game's success. "The tower defense [genre] came out of the WarCraft III mod community, and now you see tower defense [games] on the PlayStation Store, and in [PopCap's] Plants vs. Zombies," he noted.
In line with this philosophy, Blizzard built StarCraft 2's mod functionality to go beyond what the game designers themselves used while creating the game. For example, Pardo said, "We don't need an item system in StarCraft II, but we wanted to make sure that's in there for people to use."
