The Korean StarCraft community is up in arms this week over Blizzard’s rerelease of the game — more specifically, its plan to effectively double-dip into the pockets of the very internet cafe culture that’s kept StarCraft a household name into 2017.
The Korean Herald reports that South Korea’s PC bang association has petitioned Korea’s Fair Trade Commission to intervene, arguing that Blizzard is improperly double-charging an hourly fee for StarCraft: Remastered when they’ve already long since paid a flat fee for the StarCraft license.
The bangs point out that they’ve been forced to install the upgraded version because of stability issues; but for that, they say, the upgraded version contains no new content and isn’t worthy of new fees, alleging that Blizzard is “misappropriating its superior market status to push unfair measures to PC bang owners, most of which are small-sized business owners.”
Blizzard Korea, however, contends that Remastered is indeed a new game with new perks and “exclusive offerings” that “attract more players to PC bangs, therefore benefiting PC bang owners as well as legitimizing the fees that Blizzard can collect from them.”
Remastered went live worldwide earlier today, having been accessible in Korea’s PC bangs for the last couple of weeks already.
