StarCraft II Beta Invite Confirmed To Be Hoax

A few members of the StarCraft II community have successfully managed to perform an April Fool’s joke on thousands of StarCraft fans, one and a half weeks early.

A small group of StarCraft II fans that were tired of the lack of news updates from Blizzard on the upcoming beta took the news of Battle.net 2.0′s release and the beta opt-in one step further, and staged a hoax about beta invites starting. They used Photoshop to manipulate the regular Battle.net account page, adding text and an “accept” button, making it look like a signup for the StarCraft II beta. With the quality and speed of the hoax, thousands of Starcraft fans were fooled.

The actual screenshot, together with the claim, has been confirmed to be a hoax by Blizzard’s StarCraft II community manager Kevin Yu, who said: “This is FAKE, and is Photoshopped. We will let you know when beta starts and when invites go out – still some waiting to do unfortunately.”Bob Colayco, public relations manager at Blizzard, also said: “I can confirm that no invites have been sent yet for StarCraft II beta, and we’ve not yet begun signups for StarCraft II beta.” The cuplrits themselves have also confessed the hoax, saying they just wanted “some excitement” while waiting for news from Blizzard.

Even if the invites themselves were a hoax, the Battle.net opt-in for “upcoming Blizzard Entertainment games” is still available to fans with a Battle.net account.