Blizzard has announced that with the release of the StarCraft II patch 4.3.0, it will bring paid premium maps to StarCraft 2 Arcade. As the team noted, these two high-quality premium Arcade maps promise to offer different kinds of experiences and when you purchase them, a share of the sales will go directly to the developers who made them.
The first map is called ARK Star and follows the Sol Seekers, an elite team of templar on a mission to find and destroy a mysterious weapon known as the ARK Star. Players will discover and craft new equipment to strengthen their squads, level up and unlock new talents and abilities to customize their play style, and “bring the wrath of the templar onto their foes.”
The second map is called Direct Strike which is the next evolution of Desert Strike HotS, one of StarCraft II’s most popular Arcade maps ever. Contrary to ARK Maps, there will be a free version for Direct Strike and players will be able to upgrade to a premium version that will enhance the experience with cosmetics and new modes.
It will be interesting to see how the StarCraft 2 community will react to these paid mods. Let’s not forget that Bethesda also tried to do something similar with Skyrim and it backfired. Will Blizzard succeed where Bethesda failed?
![John Papadopoulos](https://www.dsogaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/dasdasdsadsa.jpg)
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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