Video Games

StarCraft: Remastered and StarCraft 2 are coming to Game Pass in November 2024

SC2 multiplayer to remain free for everyone

Marco Wutz

Blizzard Entertainment / Microsoft

Microsoft continues its mission to incorporate Activision Blizzard’s older works into the Game Pass library and two of the company’s legendary RTS games are next on the agenda. StarCraft: Remastered and StarCraft 2 will come to PC Game Pass – no, this is not the announcement of a console version – on November 5, 2024.

Both the original StarCraft from 1998 and StarCraft 2’s multiplayer mode, which are free-to-play for everyone at the moment, will remain freely accessible. Subscribers to PC Game Pass will be able to play StarCraft: Remastered and all of StarCraft 2’s single-player campaigns without any extra cost.

StarCraft 2, originally released in 2010, is hailed by many players as the best RTS game of all time, representing the pinnacle of what’s possible with the genre in terms of mechanics as well as technical execution. Any RTS trying to emulate its style has failed to live up the original and most modern titles try to steer away from similarities rather than invite comparisons they’d lose. 

While the game’s overall story fell short of being great, StarCraft 2’s single-player campaigns are essentially the blueprint for modern RTS campaigns in terms of mission variety, mission design, and presentation. Later in the game’s life, the co-op mode delivered another innovation that has been widely influencing developers in the genre until today.

The StarCraft series has immensely impacted the RTS genre, competitive gaming, and even live streaming over the course of its history, making it a prestigious addition to Game Pass.

With StarCraft: Remastered and StarCraft 2 coming to PC Game Pass, the service’s library of strategy games is growing even more impressive – aside from Blizzard’s legendary titles, it has Microsoft’s own Age of Empires and Age of Mythology games in store and recently got expanded by Oxide Games’ fantastic Ara: History Untold, which combines Civilization with Anno. Combine that with indie hits like Manor Lords and suddenly Microsoft is making a great argument for itself.

Alongside this announcement came the reveal of Immortal Pillars, the first DLC for Age of Mythology: Retold.

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Marco Wutz

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg

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