when did starcraft 2 become free to play
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty During BlizzCon 2017, it was announced that StarCraft II would be re-branded as a free-to-play game going forward. This unlocked the Wings of Liberty campaign, multiplayer and other modes of the game for everyone.[10] The change was in line with Blizzard's vision going forward, that is, supporting the game with micro-transactions such as Skins, Co-op Commanders, Voice Packs and War Chests which the sales already proved to be successful.
Battle royale game Epic Games had released Fortnite, a cooperative survival game, into early access near the release of Battlegrounds. Epic saw the potential to create their own battle royale mode, and by September 2017, released the free-to-play Fortnite Battle Royale which incorporated some of the survival elements from the main Fortnite game.[27][28] The game has seen similar player counts as Battlegrounds, with twenty million unique players reported by Epic Games by November 2017.[29] Bluehole expressed concern at this move, less due to being a clone of Battlegrounds, but more so that they had been working with Epic Games for technical support of the Unreal Engine in Battlegrounds, and thus they were worried that Fortnite may be able to include planned features to their battle royale mode before they could release those in Battlegrounds.[14][30][26] PUBG Corp has sued Epic in South Korea claiming Fortnite Battle Royale infringements on Battlegrounds' copyrights.[31]