The launch of Star Wars Battlefront 2 has been marred with controversy after Electronic Arts put top-tier hero characters behind a 40 hour playtime lock, a task deemed far too demanding by many gamers. Blizzard has evidently taken note of the negative consumer reaction, as the company is now poking fun at Electronic Arts in its latest StarCraft 2 advertisement. In a short video and several tweets, Blizzard made coy references to both pay-to-win structures and time-intensive unlocks.

Blizzard had announced that StarCraft 2 was going free to play during BlizzCon 2017, with the full extent of Wings of Liberty being made available to all consumers. Those who already owned the first part of the trilogy have been given Heart of the Swarm at no cost, while the trilogy's conclusion Legacy of the Void remains premium content. In tandem with the well-timed advertisement, the official StarCraft Twitter account also tweeted out things like "Number of hours before you can play ANY Co-op Commander in StarCraft 2: 0".

Gamers can take a look at Blizzard's StarCraft 2 video below:

It's not every day that such a large company takes such unabashedly direct shots at a significant competitor, like when Microsoft took shots at Sony over the latter's Destiny exclusivity. Blizzard wasn't done taking aim at Electronic Arts with the above video by themselves, however, and piled on several more tweets that all reference the 40-hour fiasco of Battlefront 2:

For EA's credit, the studio has since backed down on the 40-hour requirement by reducing hero costs by 75%. Conversely, Electronic Arts also silently reduced challenge credit awards at the same time, and the refund button incredulously disappeared from the official EA customer portal. It's safe to say that it's been a horrendous week for EA in terms of consumer relations, and that's even before death threats, unfortunately, became involved.

We found StarCraft 2 to be a fantastic revival of a legendary and meticulously balanced series when it came out 7 years ago, so the fact that it's now free-to-play makes the game an easy recommendation for fans of real-time strategy games. The series has helped eSports as a whole grow by leaps and bounds, and throughout its tenure has never had controversy regarding pay-to-win, timed unlocked content, or pushy microtransactions - something that perhaps deserves commendations in the current climate.

StarCraft 2 is available as a free-to-play game now on PC and Macintosh devices.