Games dead for good R.I.P Starcraft 2

General Discussion
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“What this means is that we’re not going to be producing additional for-purchase content, such as Commanders and War Chests, but we will continue doing season rolls and necessary balance fixes moving forward”

translation(from blizzard to english):" we will not even touch sc2 unless a particularly broken strategy comes up that cant be ignored. maybe you guys should play one of these new boy games such as fort nite or overwatch?"

im honestly disappointed in blizzard for letting this gem of a game die, although blizzard has long since gone down hill so its not a surprise at all.

well if blizzard doesnt care about this game why should i? im quiting for good ~peekachi

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Yes, they just kicked everyone in the gut. Bye Bye hopes for full set of Purifier skins ( i.e. We can’t apply Structure skins, even tho half of them are inside the Client base via Fenix Commander ).

Same will go for Leviathan+Primal Zergs and Umojan Terrans. Decent thing would be atleast create them and put in store( not via Warchest ). Players atleast could have a chance to make(buy) full sets.

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Blizzard has been dead for a long time. They’ve become so profit driven that they’ve lost focus of what made them great.
ActivisionBlizzard (as they now are) only care about mass appeal, and making sure their games are accessible for China and esports.

Coop is a fantastic mode that they’ve got going on, and they can’t even keep that going on the side. I’m actually baffled at this decision. I know how big corporate works… You can spare 5 people for some time to put together a new coop commander or new maps from time to time. I highly doubt it operates at a loss, since commanders are just pure revenue going forward.

Blizzard used to make fantastic games with a lot of depth. Now, it’s a company that is desperately clinging to Overwatch, which is a less fun Team Fortress 2. And now, they’re going to be killed by Valorant. 5 years from now, Blizzard will release some kind of Battle Royale, investing millions of dollars into it, yet do so at the end of the craze… a company just following market trends these days, and not taking risks and setting new trends like they used to.

Keep your ADUN SHURI DAS ANAN ALORE to yourself blizzard employee, you don’t give a damn about any of that, stop pandering.
I’m glad you sold your company out and are able to pay out such massive bonuses to bobby kotick

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Good, bye. Don’t need more negative Nancy’s here.

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Ah, the fabled Blizzard Sycophant, coming to white knight for a mega corporation that only has the interest of their shareholders in mind (you are not a shareholder I’m willing to wager). You’re the type of die hard supporter that probably claps at every fish they throw you during Blizzcon. People need to voice their discontent, and while Blizzard is past the point of giving a sht about what their audience thinks, they need to know. And it sucks, because I’m sure a ton of people at Blizzard actually do care for the franchises, but have no power to influence or change the directive that is given to them from their superiors.

Maybe you are a Nu-Blizzard fan, but I can tell you that for a long time I was a die hard blizzard fan. I started with Tides of Darkness after I received it as a Christmas present. The gameplay, the graphics, the music, the storytelling, everything was amazing. Then Starcraft hit, Diablo, Diablo 2, Warcraft 3… Blizzard was unstoppable. And the level of custom games built by the community in these games made them just that much more replayable (Brood War especially, but I enjoyed a lot of Warcraft3 ones too).

Starcraft 2 released, and while it was still certainly great, the cracks started to show. Just a single campaign? OK. But then the story was just… so bland. So many undeveloped characters, plot holes, cliche tropes… But the gameplay was still fun, with varied missions. The game had a great community, and I fought my way up to Platinum in multiplayer.

At this point, League of Legends had also hit, and would destroy Blizzard’s competitive scene forever (the one BroodWar built) – and no, Overwatch League is nowhere close to what BroodWar was, nor what League of Legends has, and it’s constantly on the decline. But fine, the writing was pretty underwhelming in sc2, but the game was still fun.

Then, Diablo 3 was going to get released. I even stood in line at midnight for Diablo 3… I was a bit older then and me and my friends wanted to go to the release, because it was going to be a monumental gaming event … right?
That’s when I truly knew Blizzard was a dif company. D3 was soulless, had no teeth (pun intended – D2 reference if you don’t get it). The gameplay felt like a chore almost from the beginning. And the story was just so bad, like awful. They had gone full mainstream appeal mode.

Then Blizzard decided to amalgamate with Activision, and that was it. Both companies which started as gamer-driven studios, who wanted to make amazing games, were now too big and strictly profit driven. Is making money a bad thing? I’m saying they are now only focused on chasing market trends so they can maximize profit, rather than making excellent games that could still make them a ton of money. They got to where they were because their games were fun and people wanted them, not because they made their games with China’s censorship in mind so they could sell to X amount of people based on Y market research saying they could have Z market share in Q3 of 2025 if they include a,b,c into their planning which was stolen from “alpha” and “beta” titles from other companies. The level of bonuses Blizzard’s top brass is getting is ridiculous. Couple that with how poorly they are paying their employees actually making their games, and ask yourself if the company is in a good place.

Really sad to see you’re OK with this announcement, and are actually trying to put others down for being pissed off at it. Even if they had 5 SC2 devs come back from working on Overwatch2 (? or wherever they were shifted to) to work on a new commander or new map every 6 months, that would be enough to show they still care for their franchise. It’s not a charity either. These commanders cost them nothing to keep in the store and can bring in revenue for as long as people play the game.

Can they work on SC2 forever? Obviously not. But they haven’t worked on ANYTHING starcraft for a long long time. We’re getting OVERWATCH TWO of all things… and even that looks like they just recycled their first game. Not sure why they wouldn’t just expand on OW1 as a “game as a service” type thing, but that’s Bliz for you these days. If Starcraft 3 was a thing, sure, let the old game exist as a “legacy” title. Support your new Starcraft 3 coop mode and multiplayer mode. But we don’t have that, and likely won’t.

Why won’t we? Because market research shows people are too dumb these days and want to play mobile trash. So games need to be easy and accessible for all (just like Wyatt Cheng said, Diablo is all about slaying demons from the comfy living room couch with your grandma and little baby brother). So why would they invest so much money making a new game? They’d have to pay their whole bloated company, including all of their irrelevant executive positions that were created to support said bloated structure. It’s totally unsustainable for them, and it’s their own fault.

But here’s the thing, you don’t need negative nancy’s here, as you said. But there won’t be anyone here in a year’s time. Blizzard is ok with letting this game go quietly into hibernation after all.

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I don’t think anyone is white knighting for blizzard. I often say that starcraft is never going to die and I agree with him that we don’t need negative people (though I don’t mind peek, sad to see him leave if its true). But I don’t give 2 you know whats about blizzard its self. I just like RTS games. Currently there isn’t any better rts game to play.

A game isn’t dead when a company stops producing content for it. A game dies when the players stop playing it. There is another game that I play relatively often called Pirates of the Burning Sea. Its 12 years old and has been on life support for the last 6-7 years. But it still has a small dedicated community so I still play it. Why? Because there is no other game like it to take its place.

As long as no other RTS game exists that can rival SC2 I wont ever stop playing it. Not because I love blizzard, I actually agree with everything you said and think they have done some real crap things. But other game genres just don’t interest me that much. I’ll play them for a bit sure but a week or 2 is about all I do with them. AoE is fine but its to slow and its ladder system is pretty crap by comparison.

There simply is no other game to play for me and I assume many other people feel similarly. So we will continue to play until something else comes along to take the mantle. So I completely disagree with your statement that no one will be around in a year. Will the population dip? Sure maybe, but I suspect the game will still be the largest RTS because there is no where else for RTS players to go at the moment.

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THANK YOU. Holy crap does this seem to be an alien concept for some people.

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One needs to move on to newer games but war3’s revival is epic failure in doing so… I do not see people coming in so ending up two fave RTS just fading. SC2 is slowly dying idk why they think its not

Korean starting to be beatable is part of the downfall
We see few new rising stars but it is as though as more leave than come

And thats normal after so many years just theres nothing new of that type rts…

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It wont die. I have good feel about this sc2 lately. Many games make me bored as an intellectual but sc2 seems to have potential for strats that hasnt been figured out yet.

Its propably just taking a breath after having good and long 10 year run.

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o m g finally. bye peek. the forum will be a better place without your presence.

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If there’s still a market for it (and I think there is) another company will fill that gap, and probably do better honestly.

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Yes… unfortunately I think so at this point. Blizzard has run all of its franchises into the ground. Or at least the original three. It is painfully obvious that management has a one track mind based on getting maximum revenue and going the way of the modern video gaming company. Loot box and micro transaction ridden awful play to win games.

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They are still not making what they did to heroes of the storm. Give it a year or two, a virus here and there and they will drop some support due to released workers.

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For many years I used to scoff at the naysayers, but after seeing Blizzard mess up so many times – from “Don’t you guys have phones?”, to the departure of Mike Morhaime, to the Blitzchung debacle, to the cancelling of HotS esports right after the new season had been announced, to the disastrous launch of WC3 Reforged (which still hasn’t been resolved nearly a year later), to the news about how little they pay their employees… And now this…

There’s no denying what they’ve created, but I’ve pretty much lost all respect for them as a company by this point. Now there’s nothing left to do but pray that they won’t run all their beloved franchises into the ground before the next decade is out.

"First they came for the Diablo players, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Diablo player.
Then they came for the Heroes of the Storm players, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Heroes of the Storm player.
Then they came for the Warcraft III players, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Warcraft III player.
Then they came for me—and by that point, it was too late for speaking out to solve anything."

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You seem to define “dead” then differently from me.
Diablo 2 is still online, I recently ran a character, and had fun, but it was not the same, not at all. Diablo 2 was thriving back when they were releasing patches for it, expanding on the skill tree with synergies etc.
Obviously sc2 will still be played next year, even by myself. But for them to declare “we are done with this for good” is only going to accelerate the end of the game. The end as in “far less players”.
Also, it is “dead” in the sense that we have nothing new to look forward to. Coop could have had new commanders. Could have had new maps. Obviously the game isn’t what it used to be, but the coop scene seemed to be having a resurgence. I even bought a few of the new commanders I didn’t have since I quit, and will probably end up buying them all.

Also, if you think SC2 is the only RTS worth playing, I think you should have a look on steam, there have been some excellent rts games that have come out. While sc2 is dear to me, partially because of nostalgia of brood war, it is certainly not the best rts out there, not by mechanics, story, balance, or diversity.

Again, I need to stress, this game COULD HAVE BEEN SUPPORTED. It could still be profitable for them. But Blizzard is not interested in making money making great games, they are interested now in making a lot of money. There is an important distinction there.

Of course, that notion is extremely subjective, but by the very nature of us arguing about it here on their forum, I think you know exactly what I mean about “great game”.

Frozen Throne is a great game. Candy Crush is not a great game.

Believe me when I say that I was Blizzard’s biggest fanboy. I remember sneaking my Warcraft 2 game manual into bed when I was forced to go sleep and looking at the artwork, imagining how awesome the death knight was going to be… because as a kid it was a real challenge getting to those final levels. Replaying brood war, I still look forward to each and every dialogue exchange in between missions.

Blizzard as a company isn’t what they used to be. They think people care about overwatch, but it is nothing close to what their original games were. They can put all their eggs in the OW League basket, but this company will be finished in our lifetime, or just absorbed into Activision (You’ll see Activision-Blizzard just go back to Activision eventually).

I am appalled by this announcement, I really am. This isn’t a case of “hey guys, we’re moving onto starcraft 3”, it’s a case of "this franchise is on life support now, until we revive it when some chinese mobile company creates a mass market appeal “game” where you will be constantly prompted to buy Microtransactions.

If Blizzard announced that they were making Warcraft 4: 3 fully playable factions (Alliance, Horde, Legion), 3 full campaigns where your decisions would influence future events, full custom editor, etc etc. I would be totally pumped. I would not preorder (because of how botched blizzard games have been), but I would likely buy it at full price after seeing a smooth launch. I’m sure most of us here would also. But the problem with that is that market research has calculated that it wouldn’t generate as much profit as releasing some crap mobile game that can milk their Chinese market. I work in corporate, and I know this mentality all too well. It works just fine at a bank, but one would’ve hoped that Blizzard as a video game company was interested in producing fantastic games. One intangible that I’m sure they can’t include in their models is “creating a revolutionary game that captures mass attention just by virtue of being that good” – much like how their older games were, and what got them to this point. You can see it in Blizzard’s recent behaviour. They were late on the MOBA train (while HotS was a good game, they were too late to release it, and eventually just canned it because it wasn’t making all the money in the world), OW tried to capitalize on “esports” but totally at the cost of making a fun game first (which would generate an esports scene by virtue of a lot of people playing it, rather than making a game that would condone esports – that is, short matches so they could have 3-5 matches and fit them in a time slot so they could broadcast, ending up in matches all playing out extremely predictably), and now with Diablo Immortal. I have little confidence in what Diablo 4 is going to be, since I doubt this company is going to be willing to put out a game that has a lot of depth (grandma can’t figure out those confusing skill trees on her ipad after all), and a lot of dark scary themes (china can’t have spooky skellingtons or a little blood/guts because censorship). We shall see if they have the cojones to include areas like Harem, Durance of Hate, etc, or if everything is just more bright flashy coloured spells killing relatively safe-looking monsters.

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Good

Dam, rip all the incomplete sets… Didn’t even know there were incomplete ones left

It’s insane how willing the community is to produce new content while Blizzard is so unwilling. People are actively feeding ideas for new commanders, maps, etc., and it all falls on deaf ears. It’s the saddest thing ever.

It is a huge sign that the game is dying/dead. Funding is getting cut left and right. Practically everything is community run at this point.

A game dies when people stop talking about it. There are very few new players joining SC2, and there are a fair number that quit or have quit. I ask people from so many different backgrounds if they’ve heard of the game, and they’ve either only heard of it at its peak or not at all. Just look at Among Us, Animal Crossing, and long term games like League of Legends and Fortnite. They are the talk of the year. Meanwhile, no one talks about SC2. No one outside the bubble knows about this game, and it is constantly shrinking. Now that they are cutting off even more funding for the game, there will be less incentive for the pro scene to play as the prize pools will be cut significantly, so there’s no long term incentive to become an SC2 pro. There’s basically 0 Blizzard sponsored events at this point. Everything is purely community backed. It is like a tiny flame that receives no fuel from a human hand. When you compare it to the great flame that it was in ~2013, it is clear that this game has fallen so far.

Obviously the number of players playing in 2021 won’t reach 0 (unless everything gets shut off completely), but look at the original Starcraft. It’s basically an invisible game. A sorry sight. It’s a mythical sight to even SC2 players.

I think it comes down to what is considered “dead.” Is it when a company stops caring for its game entirely? Is it when the community population reaches 0? Is it when the game is shut down for good? It’s clear that the majority of people believe that a game is considered “dead” when interest in the game goes in the negatives, that is, not only do people outside have no idea what the game is, the people inside have lost interest for various reasons too. The result is you’re left with a shriveled core of committed players that won’t let go of the game. It’s like, only the core of the apple is left, and while many would consider it to be eaten, a few would say it’s not gone until the apple is fully decomposed. Personally, the game’s dead in my opinion. There’s no future. No long term pro scene. It’s all gonna get cut more and more as the years go by, and it’s basically 0 already on the company end.

Bro it took its last breath when it became free to play. When a game goes free to play, that’s a last ditch effort to breathe life into the game.

Ngl, I’m hoping Riot fills that gap, but I doubt it. RTS may very well be dead genre for good. People are so obsessed with FPS that RTS is being left in the dust.

This. Overwatch or WoW are next. My guess is Overwatch will go free to play next, and then die off within the next few years. It is such a clear trend that these great games are falling off one by one. And people want us to be grateful for what we have. Do they not realize, that we have nothing left, except a dedicated server purely to keep the game running? i.e. life support.

Exactly this. People are crazy to think we’re going to get a new mobile game, SC3, or an FPS game. It’s not happening, and my next bet is they’re going to cut Overwatch next. Some people are so out of the loop… It’s wild.

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Honestly? My bet is WoW - Shadowlands is their last chance after the disaster that BFA was, and Activision isn’t listening to their community (again) and keep implementing things that the players don’t want. It started out promising, but more and more people are getting disillusioned with them.

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I agree we simply have different views of a dead game. Like I said, in my view, a game isn’t dead until people stop playing it. They day I log into this game and 1v1 is similar to the way archon mode is now. Then I will call it dead.

Sure this may force people to leave earlier than they would have. But the core player base (people like me) aren’t going to go anywhere until another RTS takes its place. Thus its never going to truly die until this happens. Dip in player, even a large dip? Sure, but it wont be dead even if 30k people leave right this second.

co-op is in a bit of a different state. Since that mode pretty much relies on new content to keep it fresh. So I would assume that co-op will dry up faster than 1v1. But even with co-op I doubt it will ever truly die. But this is undoubtedly a larger blow to co-op than 1v1. I honestly don’t play co-op like at all so its not much of a factor for my gaming experience. But it does suck for those that it does effect.

Trust me I’ve tried. None of them compare. If you got one that you would like to suggest I’m open to it if I haven’t already given it a go. But I would wager that I’ve tried at least 90% of the other RTS games out there.

The only ones that I enjoy similarly to SC2 is Total War. But that is a much much different RTS than SC2. So it doesn’t fit the same role and thus cannot be a competitor. Plus its competitive scene is very lack luster.

I mean I never disagreed with you on this. I just don’t think they have to continue developing for the game. Its 10 years old. At some point they are going to have to stop. And I don’t think just because they stopped means this game is dead. Again only we can decide when the game is dead.

The last bits of your comment are just statements about blizzard. Which I really don’t have much to add to. Honestly I never had an allegiance with blizzard. As a company I don’t care about them either way (love or hate). They make some really dumb moves and some good ones. At the end of the day they made a damn good RTS so I play it, thats it. I couldn’t care less about them as a company though. My allegiance is to the game not the company. The only company I have every really loved was Westwood.

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Which isn’t a problem. As long as we dont stop playing the game doesn’t die. Its that simple. I simply have no reason to stop playing, so I wont. If you or others want to stop thats fine. But I’m not going to just because I wont be getting any new for purchase content.

I disagree, I don’t give 2 you know whats if jonny and jessie fortnite don’t know what sc2 is. I really don’t. If they want to play other games thats fine, im going to play the game I like to play.

As far as the tournament scene goes. Yes eventually the money will likely dry up and it will stop all together. I imagine a lot of people will leave at this point. But will I? Again im going to ask you. Where am I going to go if I do? I have no game that I like to play on a daily basis, I don’t want to buy a new game every month, and no other RTS game out there compares to SC2. So am I going to stop play video games? No Im just going to continue to play SC2 with whom ever is left until a new game comes along. I love the pro scene, but its not why I play. I have zero asperations of going pro. So im not going to stop playing just because I cant potentially make money doing it. I would assume there will be a decent chunk of people that feel this same way. Will it be a drastically reduced population? Yes, but as long as I can play the game I don’t care. The game dies when WE stop playing it. If we don’t stop it doesn’t die.

broodwar still has a damn good player base. I don’t think ive ever watched someone stream it and sit in a que for 20-30 mins. Its most certainly still alive and kicking. If SC2 dipped down to BW numbers I wouldn’t be worried about it at all. The second I have to consistently wait 20-30 mins for games that is when I will call this game dead.

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