StarCraft and its Brood War expansion are receiving a graphical overhaul this summer with StarCraft: Remastered, and Blizzard celebrated by releasing a new patch for the original game ... before releasing the original games to players for free.

“StarCraft and StarCraft: Brood War are now free,” the official page states. “Follow the links here to begin installing: [PC] [Mac].”

The 1.18 patch also includes some pretty welcome updates for the game, including the following improvement, and a lot more:

Added windowed fullscreen or windowed mode; use Alt+Enter to switch between.

Added UTF-8 support.

Added cursor clamping in-game while windowed; unclamped in menus.

Added Popular Maps to streamline finding games or game types.

Added options to display actions per minute.

Added Observer mode.

Added opponent information when joining a game lobby.

You can visit Blizzard’s page for the giveaway to see the complete patch notes, but this is a very nice surprise for players who have never played the originals, have lost their copy or want to show their kids what all the fuss was about back in 1998, when the original StarCraft was released. Enjoy!