Blizzard is spending a lot of time revisiting the original StarCraft of late. The bulk of the work focused on patching the game so as to make it easily playable again on today's PCs, as well as making it free. Remember, this was a game first released back in 1998. We also have a 4K remastered (not free) version of the game arriving this summer.
What you may not of heard about is the stolen StarCraft gold master disc Blizzard desperately wanted to find and get back. Reddit user Khemist49 managed to make that happen thanks to an eBay auction win.
Gold master discs can be a number of things, most commonly the version of a game that is ready to be sent to manufacturing for mass production. However, the stolen disc in Khemist49's possession is a "Gold Master Source Code" CD-R, meaning it includes all source code for the game and likely a number of project files, possibly even internal tools that Blizzard would rather not have shared openly.
When Khemist49 first won "a ton of Blizzard stuff that appeared to be from a storage unit," he posted an image of the gold disc on Reddit and didn't know what to do. Blizzard's legal team soon got in touch via private message and asked for the disc back. Now he's reaping the rewards for his decision to do so.
Two weeks after returning the disc, Khemist49 received a delivery from Blizzard. It included a copy of Overwatch along with $250 of Blizzard store credit, Overwatch-branded peripherals including a Razer gaming keyboard, mouse, headphones, and giant mouse mat, Diablo III, some plushies, and a branded notebook.
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But that wasn't the end of it. A phone call from a Blizzard employee followed offering him an all-expenses paid trip to Blizzcon as well as an offer to take him out for drinks while there, too.
This is a great response from Blizzard to an individual doing the right thing and returning stolen property. And in the grand scheme of things, the cost of doing this is tiny for the company and very much worthwhile, especially when you consider all the great press it generated.