Blizzard takes a shot at EA's Battlefront 2 troubles with savage StarCraft subtweets

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The tweets are kind of funny, if not exactly classy.

As promised earlier this month at BlizzCon, the classic RTS StarCraft 2 is now free to play. To celebrate the big change, Blizzard dropped a trio of tweets today aimed at Electronic Arts and its much-publicized troubles with Star Wars Battlefront 2. 

While the marketing campaign was probably planned some time ago, they pretty clearly allude to a report from earlier this week that it will take up to 40 hours of gameplay to unlock top-tier hero characters like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars Battlefront 2. That sparked a backlash against EA that was literally unprecedented: One reply to a complaint about the game quickly became the most-downvoted comment on Reddit. (That sucker is now up to 682,000 downvotes, by the way.) The reaction was furious enough to cause a dramatic reduction in hero cost, even before the game is in full release, but the entire Battlefront 2 'economy' remains controversial.

The video is funny in spots, and on its own may have stood well as a just-savage-enough bit of marketing, a little like Sony's game-sharing dig at Microsoft from a few years back. But three tweets in succession hammering the same point is a little surprising when there's an element of pot-and-kettle to the whole thing.

The free-to-play implementation of StarCraft 2 is generous, but cost is becoming a serious issue in Hearthstone—we recently estimated that maintaining a full collection of cards has grown to nearly $1000 per year. Meanwhile, Overwatch, as this Rolling Stone report states, is often cited as the "catalyst" for the suddenly-common practice of including loot boxes in non-free-to-play games. Blizzard doesn't think it should be part of that conversation, but it is.

None of which is to say that EA hasn't well and truly botched the launch of Star Wars Battlefront 2, but stones and glass houses, right?

StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty is available for free now at starcraft2.com. Those who already own it can grab the Zerg campaign, Heart of the Swarm, in its place, until December 8.

Andy Chalk
Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.