In context: StarCraft 2 is one of the oldest RTS games on the market, but its lively competitive eSports community, and Blizzard's continued support of the game, have helped it maintain relevance over the years. Indeed, in a sense, StarCraft 2 is the competitive RTS community – no other games have really achieved a strong foothold in the PvP side of the genre.

Sadly, as Blizzard has proven today with its latest StarCraft II community update, no king lives forever. In the update, the company reminisces about its long history with this beloved franchise and lays out its bittersweet plans for StarCraft II's future.

In 2020, Blizzard says it celebrated 10 years of StarCraft II with one of the game's largest-ever patches, bringing prestige talents for co-op commanders, gameplay improvements, and "massive updates" to StarCraft II's editor.

However, StarCraft II has long since entered its final stages of development, and that patch will be one of the game's last. From here on out, Blizzard says it will switch to supporting StarCraft II in the same way it's supported some of its other longstanding games, such as "Brood War."

For players, this essentially means no more proper content updates, paid or otherwise. Instead, Blizzard will focus exclusively on "season rolls" and balance fixes as needed.

This news is certainly unfortunate, but there's a silver lining. Blizzard hints that ceasing full-speed development on StarCraft II will let it focus on what comes next for the "StarCraft universe as a whole."

That could be Blizzard's way of saying StarCraft III is around the corner, or perhaps it has different plans for the StarCraft franchise. Only time will tell.