“We’re just taking existing content that used to cost money and making it available for free,” Morten said. Morten stressed that Blizzard isn’t adding any secondary currencies or additional microtransactions to StarCraft 2 in order to support the game’s new free-to-play model. “It was very important to us that this be accomplished in a way that feels good to our current player base and also attractive to new players or lapsed players who haven’t played since Wings of Liberty.” “We spent a lot of time thinking about the right way to do this,” Morten said. Morten said the StarCraft 2 team has been working on ways to make the game approachable to new and lapsed players. The transition from a paid, boxed retail product to a free-to-play game isn’t just flipping a switch. StarCraft 2 Nova Covert Ops Blizzard Entertainment Of course, new players who get the game for free can also purchase the other two campaigns: Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void. if they came in from free-to-play,” Morten said, and that Blizzard wanted to stay away from secondary currencies, grinding and other annoying monetization methods. “We now have a catalog of content for people. Since then, Blizzard has added what Morten called “a lot of microcontent”: unit skins, co-op commanders and the Nova Covert Ops missions. That feedback also came from Blizzard’s esports partners, who would understandably want to see some fresh blood playing StarCraft 2.īlizzard has been receiving that kind of input from players and partners “almost incidentally since the launch of StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void,” the game’s second expansion, Morten said. Morten said that StarCraft 2’s legacy of being an esport was another factor, and making the game free-to-play would make the game accessible to new competitors.

“We wanted to cut through that confusion and announce that StarCraft 2 is free-to-play.”

“Some of the early triggers of considering free-to-play were feedback that even though a lot of the game already was free through the starter edition, that that wasn’t well-known,” Morten told Polygon in an interview at BlizzCon, “ that it was confusing to understand what you need to buy to actually start playing Starcraft 2. The developer announced its plans to release the game and its first campaign for free at BlizzCon 2017 this week, a move that will open StarCraft 2 up to a broader audience.īlizzard’s Tim Morten, production director on StarCraft 2, said conversations about moving to a free-to-play model have been happening for a while, but that it was important to make the change palatable to new and existing players. More than seven years after the launch of StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, Blizzard Entertainment is making the real-time strategy game free-to-play.

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