'Starcraft 2': Here's How To Play 'Starcraft 2' Online For Free Legally

Blizzard announced that anyone can play "Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty" and "Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm" on Battle.net for free starting today.

There is one condition though: Users must download "Starcraft 2: Starter Edition." Log into Battle.net. All you need to do to access the full content offered in "Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty" and "Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm" is to join a party that includes one player with any of those games. If your party includes one player with "Wings of Liberty," anyone in the party who doesn't own "Wings of Liberty" will automatically be upgraded to be able to use the full set of content offered in that game. It works the same way with "Heart of the Swarm" as well.

This is nothing new. Back in the days of "Warcraft 2" and "Starcraft," owners of either game could play them with their friends online without them having to buy any of the games. Your friend would simply pop in the disc, and the autorun installer for each game included an option to install a "spawned" version of the game. "Spawned" versions allowed gamers to play the game online while restricting access to the singleplayer campaigns. Blizzard is merely resurrecting an old feature as opposed to rolling out a brand new innovation.

Blizzard says that the rollout of spawning is occuring globally at the same time and will be made available as the day progresses.

Check out a video that Blizzard put out about spawning below, courtesy of Youtube.