Well that's it. Microsoft has completed their acquisition of Activision Blizzard King thanks to the UK's Competition & Markets Authority clearing the way.
As announced by the UK CMA, they said the new deal where Microsoft does not purchase Activision's cloud gaming rights, which instead goes to Ubisoft would "preserve competitive prices and better services":
In its original investigation, the CMA found Microsoft already held a strong position in relation to cloud gaming and blocked the deal.
The sale of Activision’s cloud streaming rights to Ubisoft will prevent the distribution of important, popular content – including games such as Call of Duty, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft – from coming under the control of Microsoft in relation to cloud gaming. The restructured deal substantially addressed the concerns that the CMA had following its original investigation, which concluded earlier this year.
The CMA did identify limited residual concerns with the new deal, but Microsoft gave undertakings that will ensure that the terms of the sale of Activision’s rights to Ubisoft are enforceable by the CMA.
The CMA consulted on these undertakings and is satisfied that this will provide the safety net needed to make sure this deal is properly implemented.
UK CMA
Microsoft also have their own announcement to note it's finished that's just celebrating the deal. In the post they confirmed the plan to add Activision, Blizzard, and King franchises to Game Pass and other platforms.
Direct Link
What are you thoughts on this finally being completed?
Any feelings on Microsoft and Xbox aside, game industry consolidation is worrying. With many publishers and developers getting swallowed up, it hands a lot of power to a few companies. We've seen so many times now what happens like with the troubles at Embracer as just one recent example.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
You would think that with how religious South Korea is over BroodWar that they would have reverse-engineered the game by now into new source code.https://github.com/Wargus/stratagus
+
https://github.com/Wargus/stargus
+
https://www.techradar.com/news/starcraft-the-original-that-is-is-now-completely-free
I read that last article. Then I tried the links in the article that seemed to be for actually downloading Starcraft. I got a Blizzard page saying 404 not found. Hopefully they've just shifted around where it's offered.You would think that with how religious South Korea is over BroodWar that they would have reverse-engineered the game by now into new source code.https://github.com/Wargus/stratagus
+
https://github.com/Wargus/stargus
+
https://www.techradar.com/news/starcraft-the-original-that-is-is-now-completely-free
I read that last article. Then I tried the links in the article that seemed to be for actually downloading Starcraft. I got a Blizzard page saying 404 not found. Hopefully they've just shifted around where it's offered.ActiBliz obviously broke the links but the news probably means it's legal to grab a copy of that version elsewhere (eg: torrents and Archive.org)... though your local legislation may vary
the last classic intead of remastered, first with no cdcheck, and released legally for free is version 1.18
https://archive.org/details/StarCraftBattleChest
this probably needs to be patched to 1.18 (in which Blizzard even removed the original CD detection annoyance from previous versions) to be played directly but should work with stratagus directly
not sure remastered can be user for stratagus nowadays... I just know it used to be a problem years ago when I last looked at it
also iirc SC1 is/was available for purchase on GOG (but probably the remaster too)
Last edited by Marlock on 17 October 2023 at 9:24 pm UTC
I don't think it was offered in any other form, even back in 2017?
You can still download it directly from Blizzard. But you need Battle.net (an account and the software).i recall it initially was a direct link, no login at all, but may be misremembering
I don't think it was offered in any other form, even back in 2017?
the broken links in the news websites hint at the same
the patch from previous versions to this was certainly available as a direct .exe download without login to battlenet or using their launcher
an echo of more generous blizzard times, with less user data gathering shenanigans and no launchers
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me