timesink: hm, not sure if i buy that exlanation ;)
for multiplayer as it is, each player needs a bought version of the game to be able to connect.
With a lan mode, theoretically, theres only need for 1 copy of the game, since no external auth server involved.
That also means, that its possible to have multipalyer over wan via tunnels.
So, its at least a possible interest/motivation on developers side, not to offer this kind of lan mode at the release of the game, since it could hurt sales.
What happened here? Am I not aware of some conspiracy going on between developers and publishers worldwide? Why so suspicious? I'm new here, so I may be out of the loop on a few things :(
Steam LAN support involves steam libraries anyway. Doing a real LAN would mean cut yourself from any 3rd party dependencies. Which means another set of multiplayer netcode. We've just finished switching it over from Steam to GOG, and look how long it took. This stuff seriously takes time.