Blizzard make the announcement last month that the original Starcraft and its DLC expansion Brood War were getting remastered for PC with a release scheduled for this summer. For those that can’t wait for that and want to play some classic Starcraft, you can now do so completely free.
As of the release of patch update 1.18 for Starcraft, both the base game and the expansion Starcraft: Brood of War are now free to download and play on PC.
This news comes courtesy of the patch notes for Starcraft, which also mention a number of additions and bug fixes to the game.
To make it easier to multitask with Starcraft, the game has added windowed fullscreen and windowed mode, which you can easier switch between by pressing Alt+Enter.
The game also added better compatibility with Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10, which is very important as a result of it now being free to play. A large number of computers now have at least Windows 7, and with so many bound to download this now free copy of the game, this should help with any issues.
Anticheating measures have been improved in the game as well, so there shouldn’t be as many issues with potential cheaters while playing online. The online play should be much smoother as well, as they have “improved gameplay responsiveness during multiplayer by increasing turn rate to match LAN speeds over Battle.net.”
For those trying to download the free versions of the main game and the expansion, there are reports of Battle.net going down as a result of the traffic from this today. However, it appears to be up as of the time of this writing, so make sure to keep trying if you have any issues.
Make sure to download this free version to get that Starcraft fix for now and then look for Starcraft Remastered to arrive sometime this summer.
