Although Blizzard is far from perfect -- it enjoys the benefits of loot crate mechanics in games like Overwatch -- it's taken the opportunity to poke fun at the whole situation engulfing EA games right now by highlighting the newly free to play status of Starcraft II and that its games don't encourage pay to win strategies.
It started, with some well-timed adverts for Stacraft II itself:
In the above video and a couple of companion commercials in the same vein, a teenager laments to his father that he's not winning at Starcraft II and couldn't they just buy some new units for him. Of course the father is aghast and explains to his son that in that house, they use leet gaming skills only.
Number of hours it takes to earn the full StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty Campaign: 0
— StarCraft (@StarCraft) November 14, 2017
But Blizzard didn't stop there. Its official Starcraft Twitter account has also been throwing some jabs EA's way, highlighting that it takes zero hours and zero dollars to unlock the majority of content in Stacraft II. It even goes so far as to say that there are no pay to win mechanics in Starcraft II, a label that no game wants, but that EA's Star Wars: Battlefront II has certainly courted.
It seems to have gotten the attention of EA developers too, with DICE associate design director, Dennis Brännvall
claiming that he hopes it's ok for him to like that Tweet.
I hope I'm OK to like this.
— Dennis Brännvall (@DICE_FireWall) November 14, 2017
