Former Blizzard employee claimed StarCraft 2 earned less than a WoW mount. Now that claim is backfiring on him

Pirate Software's reputation has suffered so much that gamers are digging up older footage of the streamer and pointing out the half-truths and falsehoods of its claims regarding StarCraft 2 revenue.

Jacob Blazewicz

Source: Blizzard Entertainment

The ex-StarCraft 2 developer needs to justify not only insubordination in WoW but also a questionable statement (via Mein MMO).

Jason "Pirate Software" Hall gained fame as a streamer, but recently fortune has turned against him - and it's mainly his own fault. A former Blizzard employee was kicked out of his guild in World of Warcraft Classic after an unfortunate raid in Dire Maul North, resulting in two characters' deaths (in Hardcore mode, meaning their deaths were permanent). This incident led to a discussion on the topic and accusations of "hate raids" against other streamers (via Dexerto/Sportskeeda).

Following this, as frequently happens on the internet, people opposed to Hall began searching for information that could harm the streamer. For instance, past statements about a mount in WoW supposedly being more profitable than StarCraft 2.

Mount for verification

Just a reminder: in mid-November 2023, the developer stated that the "15-dollar mount" earned more in 2 years than Wings of Liberty. He most likely meant the Celestial Steed.

Now, in light of recent controversies, Reddit user Sem1SkillD claims that Pirate Software had no evidence to support this information. As the internet user pointed out, questions about the source of his "calculations" appeared after the publication of the streamer's material. Hall's response was bluntly described by the player as "ridiculous".

Sem1SkillD asserts that the streamer relied on publicly available and, crucially, fan publications for his statement, rather than his own information (in default gained from his previous work at Blizzard Entertainment), and Hall supplemented these with his own "assumptions." For example: the budget for StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty was to be based on an article from the Wall Street Journal. However, the text was later corrected: it turned out that "100 million dollars" is not the budget of SC 2, but of WoW (via GameSpot).

Jason's problems

Furthermore, the online user notes that even if some of the data cited by Hall is accepted, the revenue from the steed sale still falls short of the outcome of StarCraft 2. This would result in about 84 million dollars and 150 million dollars in revenue.

Of course, as Sem1SkillD admits, the fact that a relatively simple mount earned roughly half of what a high-budget game did, is very telling. However, this doesn't change the fact that the claim made by Pirate Software in November has no basis (even though this news spread widely on the Internet).

For other Reddit users, this served as an excuse to further damage Hall's reputation. So far, he has gained quite a reputation, but - as we already mentioned - after the turmoil with the OnlyFangs guild, most internet users lost respect for him, which makes it easier (even encourages) to question the words of the streamer. Especially since this is not the only controversy associated with Pirate Software.

World of Warcraft

November 23, 2004

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Jacob Blazewicz

Author: Jacob Blazewicz

Graduated with a master's degree in Polish Studies from the University of Warsaw with a thesis dedicated to this very subject. Started his adventure with gamepressure.com in 2015, writing in the Newsroom and later also in the film and technology sections (also contributed to the Encyclopedia). Interested in video games (and not only video games) for years. He began with platform games and, to this day, remains a big fan of them (including Metroidvania). Also shows interest in card games (including paper), fighting games, soulslikes, and basically everything about games as such. Marvels at pixelated characters from games dating back to the time of the Game Boy (if not older).