Blizzard gives StarCraft a new patch and a new price: free

Nearly twenty years after Blizzard released its space-y real-time strategy game StarCraft, the studio has issued a patch for it (and its expansion pack Brood War) and made it freely available as one of its "Classic Games."

While this isn't hugely surprising -- Blizzard announced plans to do this earlier this year as it drums up hype for the 4K remastered version of StarCraft it intends to release this summer -- it's a good opportunity for devs who didn't have a chance to play the original game in the '90s to go back and see what all the fuss was about.

Intriguingly, StarCraft (branded StarCraft Anthology) is the first real-time strategy game to take up residence in Blizzard's free classic games vault, joining a trio of games that saw console releases: Rock n' Roll Racing, The Lost Vikings and Blackthorne.