StarCraft is now free, nearly 20 years after its release

Previous discussion [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14144193

This game is and always will be an integral part of me.

The number of hours I've spent fighting the Zerg, the screams and shouts of my friends from the other room and the subsequent conversations after the game ended...

"If I'd brought some lurkers over there... " or "There was no way your hydras could break through my siege tanks".

I still play it today from time to time - against the brilliant AI - which is still very very good and can kick your ass. Unless you have Battlecruisers. Nothing gives you as much confidence as 24 Level 3 Battlecruisers going out for a walk on the map :).

Somehow this game reminds me of those years - when I was younger and free.. Friends, girlfriends, LAN parties... Starcraft was part of our subculture back then.

Starcraft is a masterpiece and will remain so for many years to come.

It would have been nice if they had done a 'id software' and released the source, and thereby possibly encourage more people to take an interest in game development.

I remember originally attempting to pirate Starcraft from an FTP I had access to from some IRC channel I used to frequent. Even with all the music stripped from the game, my 28.8kbps modem was unable to download it overnight and for whatever reason that FTP did not allow resumption of transfers. I had to get my friend with a 56kbps modem to download it and then transfer it zipped to a zip disk. My friends who were in college at the time had access to the computer lab so we would pass the zip disk around to install it one at a time and at the end of the night we would uninstall it to cover our tracks. Good times.

The download is only 3Mb. Is there an offline installer?

Will online play be possible between people using this and their remastered version i wonder?

It's also on macOS now.