The original StarCraft and its beloved Brood War expansion are now free

PC World ^ | April 19, 2017 | Hayden Dingman

[Ciaphas Cain]

A few weeks ago Blizzard announced the upcoming summertime release of StarCraft: Remastered, giving a facelift to the classic RTS and its beloved Brood War expansion. Alongside that announcement came other interesting news though: The original (not remastered) versions of both StarCraft and Brood War would be made free sometime in April, alongside a new 1.18 patch.

That time has come. Blizzard dropped the 1.18 patch late on Tuesday, adding in a borderless windowed mode, tweaking some back-end code, correcting some long-standing bugs, improving compatibility with Windows 10, and more.

But more importantly, whether you never purchased the game or just lost the CDs a decade ago, you can now grab StarCraft and its expansion for free on both PC and Mac. Just head here, click on the corresponding link, and the game (or rather the installer) will automatically start downloading.

[Ciaphas Cain]

"You want a piece of me, boy?"

The installers for the 1.18 versions of StarCraft for Windows AND Mac.

This is the real release, not the beta that got our a few weeks ago.

Oh yeah, they even fixed the "Eighties Kerrigan" graphic problem that's plagued StarCraft on newer machines since forever.

[Mr. Douglas]

bkmk for download.

I assume this is the game that competed with Command and Conquer,but with a sci-fi theme.

[Ciaphas Cain]

It was more of a spiritual sequel to Warcraft. But in a futuristic sci-fi setting. And instead of two factions there are three: Terrans (humans descended from a group of exiles from Earth), Zerg, and Protoss. They're all rather well balanced against each other. But enough differences to entice you to try out various tactics and strategies.

It's particularly fun to play as the Zerg. Nothing so thrilling as spawning several dozen Zerglings then unleashing them en masse as a flood of death toward your opponent.

[miliantnutcase]

North Korea will be excited to finally have a legitimate copy of the game now 😁

[tumblindice]

Starcraft. The pop-up trailer? Hello?

[CGVet58]

BTTT, bay-beeee!

[Ciaphas Cain]

120,000 spectators at a StarCraft tournament in Seoul in 2005:

5 Insane True Facts About StarCraft: The Professional Sport (Cracked.com)

[AppyPappy]

I don’t feel so bad for playing so much Battlefield 4

[Ciaphas Cain]

[ClearCase_guy]

Zig for great justice!

Oops! Wrong game.

[FateAmenableToChange]

Zig for great justice! Oops! Wrong game.

But never the wrong quote. In any situation.

[miliantnutcase]

Exactly. I got tired of getting my butt whooped by SK players!

[BestPresidentEver]

Can a Korean explain to me why they love this game so much?