Blizzard Ends Development on StarCraft II

Blizzard is winding down development on StarCraft II roughly a decade after its initial release.

In a post on the studio’s website, Blizzard Vice President Rob Bridenbecker announced that no more paid content, such as co-op commanders and war chests, will be released for the beloved RTS. Maintenance on the game will continue but will be limited to “season rolls and necessary balance fixes moving forward.” Despite this development change, eSports initiatives for the game will continue through ESL Gaming and GSL. The move is similar to the one Blizzard made with Heroes of the Storm, albeit with some key differences: Heroes still receives new content occasionally, but its official eSports support ended in 2018.

This announcement does have a silver lining, however: Bridenbecker says that “this change will free us up to think about what’s next, not just with regard to StarCraft II, but for the StarCraft universe as a whole.” StarCraft is a very important property for Blizzard and it’s all but guaranteed to receive a new game at some point, but what form that takes remains to be seen. It was rumored that a first-person shooter was in development for the franchise, but it was apparently cancelled so Blizzard could focus on Diablo IV and Overwatch 2.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, which included a Terran-focused campaign and multiplayer suite, released in July 2010. It received two expansions, Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void, in 2013 and 2015 respectively. It was a driving force for competitive gaming in the early days of Twitch, though it would later be overshadowed by titles such as League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The grand finals for the StarCraft II World Championship Series were some of the most-watched events during each BlizzCon convention held from 2012 through 2019, but earlier this year, Blizzard announced that it would shutter the WCS in favor of a new professional circuit that will be operated by ESL and DreamHack.