Blizzard fan gets big reward for returning StarCraft’s source code

A month ago, Reddit user Khemist49 bought some goods off of eBay, later realising that amongst those goods was Starcraft’s “Gold Master Source Code”.  The source code isn’t something that was ever intended to slip into the hands of the public, in fact, it is the code that was used to create the game.

Unsure of what to do, Khemist49 took his concerns to Reddit, the NintendoAge forum, and Twitch to gain advice on what to make of it, and what it’s worth. Many warned him that toying around with such an item would indeed cement him in some pretty serious legal action.

It wasn’t long before a representative lawyer of Blizzard contacted him and advised the source code had been lost and was thought to have been stolen.

Khemist49 did what any righteous citizen would do and returned the source code back to Blizzard.

As a reward for showing a righteous and respectful act he received a copy of Overwatch and $250 worth of Blizzard store credit, and was even invited to BlizzCon 2017  with all expenses paid.

“A week later I got another call from a Blizzard employee. He wanted to thank me for returning their disc (which was in fact stolen). He then asked me if I had ever heard of BlizzCon. I said, ‘Well, yeah of course but it’s impossible for me to go, I live in the east coast and the badges are always sold out before you can refresh the page.’ He said, ‘Well, the reason we are calling you is to invite you to BlizzCon, all expenses paid, and we would love to take you out for drinks.’ I didn’t know what to say, I was shocked. I expected nothing more than the free game and the store credit. After, I thanked him 1,000 times.” – [source].

To confirm if this story was the real deal and not just some fan-fiction, Polygon got in touch with Blizzard and they confirmed Khemist49’s story was truly fact.

“We know there’s a lot of curiosity around this story. What we can say is that a Blizzard fan managed to get their hands on a real copy of the StarCraft source code and, fortunately, this person was gracious enough to return the disc to us. We wanted to show an appropriate level of appreciation to the player for doing the right thing, not just from Blizzard, but on behalf of the large and active community of players who still enjoy StarCraft today.”

So the moral of this story is that if you do good, good things will be rewarded to you. It may not happen straight away, but if you keep practising this kind act, it will definitely reward you somewhere down the track.