Starcraft 2 is now Free To Play 7 years after launch

PlayStation 2 · November 8, 2017

Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 called, it wants its business model back.

porina · November 8, 2017

If you look very long term, the pricing of a game does drop over time. Get it on launch day, you're paying top price. Give it 6 months to a year, depending on how well it sold, it'll often be in the discount section. Longer, they don't always go free, but many get close to practically free.

I think at this stage giving away the base game is like a kinda extended trial. Get more interest for people who were not motivated enough to buy before, and some might like it enough to buy subsequent expansions.

I own original Starcraft from when it first came out, and I'm not upset when they made that free. I got my value out of it. Ok, that was a far longer gap than for SC2... but they are still giving a bit extra to those who have already got the base game.

As for launchers, I never found the Blizzard one that annoying. It just works. I hated Steam far more in the early days. It isn't actually any better now but I basically got used to its quirks. I'm not a fan of Uplay or GOG ones either... but I'll manage them as needed. I only got those due to free game codes in past and they had to be redeemed on those platforms. Similarly for Origin, but I use that so rarely I can't even remember what the launcher looks like!

I will add, I tend to NOT let any launcher start itself. It only starts when I want to use it, so it doesn't get in the way when I don't. The drawback with this method is of course background updates don't happen. Sometimes when signing into Steam it wants to download the whole internet...

Master Disaster · November 8, 2017

18 hours ago, MilitantCro said:

Woooow you are so nitpicking, if you play OW for instance you just run the Bnet app and it will automaticly be set to OW with a giant play button no adds. How can you be bothered by this its only non laggy easy to use launcher for all games with max download speeds and automatic or organized updates next to steam.

You are just hating on it for hating sake.

I'm sorry, I genuinely didn't realise asking a question was considered hating these days? I'll try to not do that in the future.

TetraSky · November 9, 2017

I've received my free gift of Heart of the Swarm, for owning Wings of Liberty. I thought this was starting the 14 of november, I guess they started earlier?

(Received an email about it, game was in my "Gifts" box in the Blizzard Battle.net launcher(right beside your username in the top right). You have to claim it before December 8 otherwise it expire)