The game's multiplayer is particularly popular in South Korea, where players and teams participate in professional competitions, earn sponsorships, and compete in televised tournaments.

Set in a fictitious future timeline during the 25th century AD in a distant part of the Milky Way galaxy known as the Koprulu Sector, the game revolves around three intelligent species fighting for dominance: the Terrans are humans exiled from Earth who are now skilled at adapting to any situation; the Zerg are a race of insectoid aliens in pursuit of genetic perfection and obsessed with assimilating other races; the Protoss are a humanoid species with advanced technology and psionic abilities who are attempting to preserve their civilization and strict philosophy about their way of life from the Zerg.

[4] The insectoid Zerg possess entirely organic units and structures, which can be produced quickly and at a far cheaper cost to resources, but are accordingly weaker, relying on sheer numbers and speed to overwhelm enemies.

Also, once a Terran building has taken a certain amount of damage, it will catch fire and can eventually burn to the ground without further enemy action if repairs are not performed by a worker unit.

Limitations of a spawned installation include the inability to play single-player missions, create multiplayer games, or use the campaign editor.

[13] StarCraft takes place in a science fiction universe created by Chris Metzen and James Phinney for Blizzard Entertainment.

One government, the Confederacy of Man, eventually emerges as the strongest faction, but its oppressive nature and brutal methods of suppressing dissidents stir up major rebel opposition in the form of a terrorist group called the Sons of Korhal.

In the first segment of the game, the player and Jim Raynor are attempting to control the colony of Mar Sara in the wake of the Zerg attacks on other Terran worlds.

After the Confederacy arrests Raynor for destroying Confederate property, despite the fact that it had been infested by the Zerg, the player joins Arcturus Mengsk and the Sons of Korhal.

[19] Raynor is outraged by Mengsk's true aims of obtaining power at any cost and deserts, followed by the player, taking with them a small army of the former colonial militia of Mar Sara.

[21] Meanwhile, the Protoss commander Tassadar discovers that the Zerg's cerebrates cannot be killed by conventional means, but that they can be harmed by the powers wielded by the heretical dark templar.

Tassadar allies himself with the dark templar prelate Zeratul, who assassinates Zasz, one of the Zerg's cerebrates in their hive clusters on Char.

The main Zerg swarm promptly invades Aiur, while Kerrigan is dispatched to deal with Tassadar, and despite facing heavy Protoss resistance, the Overmind is able to embed itself into the crust of the planet.

[23] The final episode of the game sees Aldaris and the Protoss government branding Tassadar a traitor and a heretic for conspiring with the dark templar.

Tassadar channels his own psionic energies in combination with those of the dark templar through the hull of his command ship and crashes it into the Overmind, sacrificing himself in order to destroy it.

[26] Blizzard Entertainment began development on StarCraft in 1995, shortly after the release of highly successful Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness.

[28] The version of the game displayed, assembled by the team's lead programmer Bob Fitch, received a rather weak response from the convention and was criticized by many for being "Warcraft in space.

However, the game was still marred by technical difficulties, so Bob Fitch completely redesigned the Warcraft II engine within two months to ensure that many of the features desired by the designers, such as the abilities for units to burrow and cloak, could be implemented.

[56] Its story focused on a separate Confederate colony alluded to in the manual to StarCraft, following a group of Terran colonists and a Protoss fleet in their fight against the Zerg and a rising local insurgency.

Developed by Stardock, published by WizardWorks and authorized by Blizzard Entertainment,[56] Retribution follows all three races attempting to seize control of a powerful crystal on a Terran Dominion colony.

Brood War continues the story of StarCraft from days after its conclusion, and was released for both Windows and Mac to critical praise[59][60] on December 18, 1998, in the US and in March 1999 in Europe.

[66] In addition, StarCraft 64 features a split screen cooperative mode, also requiring the expansion pak, allowing two players to control one force in-game.

[71] It was released on July 10, 2019, as StarCraft: Cartooned alongside an announcer pack featuring South Korean YouTuber and children's television host Hyejin "Hey Jini" Kang.

[3][94][95][96] According to Blizzard Entertainment, StarCraft has won 37 awards and has received a star on the floor of the Metreon as part of the Walk of Game in San Francisco in early 2006.

"[82] The reviewer from the online second volume of Pyramid stated that "One of the most hotly anticipated computer games of the last two years, Blizzard Entertainment's Starcraft has had a tremendous amount of hype to live up to.

[80] The capacity for the game's artificial intelligence to navigate units to waypoints also faced some heavy criticism, with PC Zone stating that the inability for developers to make an effective pathfinding system was "the single most infuriating element of the real-time strategy genre".

[83] In addition, several reviewers expressed concern over some familiarities between the unit structures of each race, as well as over the potential imbalance of players using rushing tactics early in multiplayer games.

[105] In addition, StarCraft has been the subject of an academic course; the University of California, Berkeley offered a student-run introductory course on theory and strategy in spring 2009.

The first novel, Uprising, which was written by Blizzard employee Micky Neilson and published in December 2000, acts as a prequel to the events of StarCraft.

Later novels, such as Gabriel Mesta's Shadow of the Xel'Naga[123] and Christie Golden's The Dark Templar Saga,[124] further expand the storyline, creating the setting for StarCraft II.