In 2016, a StarCraft patch surfaced on Blizzard's FTP site with the version number 1.17. It would've been the first patch for StarCraft since 2009, but it mysteriously never went live. We've had to wait a bit since then, but today's the big day: patch 1.18 has arrived, the first update in eight years, and a whole .01 better than what we thought we were getting. Oh, and at the same time Blizzard also just made StarCraft free to download, which is pretty cool.

Blizzard promised StarCraft would go free when it announced StarCraft Remastered, an upcoming 4K-enhanced edition, last month. Even without the fancy new graphics, the original game will also be getting some pretty nice enhancements in patch 1.18 that should mean good news for its still-healthy online scene.

The high points include windowed fullscreen mode, UPnP support, better compatibility with Windows 7, 8.1, and 10, plus improved anticheat. Blizzard notes that there is one known issue at the moment: "the profile section is currently unavailable". Perhaps patch 1.19 is in our near future.

You can download StarCraft and Brood War for PC right here or for Mac right here. Full patch notes are included below!