StarCraft II Is Now Free-To-Play, And Blizzard Is Tweaking EA About It

As revealed at BlizzCon, Blizzard's hit RTS StarCraft II is now free-to-play! Now, anyone can play the Wings of Liberty campaign, versus mode, and try all commanders up to level five, with one commander from each faction offering unlimited progression. It's a great deal for a great game, and it's made even better by Blizzard ever-so-subtly tweaking other games for their microtransactions.

In a series of Tweets earlier today, the official StarCraft account made a number of boasts about SC2's free-ness, notably that it takes zero hours (and presumably zero dollars) to earn the Wings of Liberty campaign and play any co-op commander. It also touts that there's zero pay-to-win in the game, both on Twitter and in the hilarious launch video, below.

Given the snarky tone, there's little doubt this is meant to tweak Electronic Arts in particular and the massive backlash it's received for its monetization of Star Wars Battlefront II over the past few days.

Officially, the StarCraft II free-to-play launch comes alongside Patch 4.0 for the game, which adds a new co-op commander, announcer, and mission, and makes more balance tweaks than a zerg queen lays eggs. You can find out more information about free-to-play StarCraft II on the game's website.