We invited Ryan Schutter, the creator of the popular GameHeart overlay, to come and collaborate with the StarCraft development team here at Blizzard’s headquarters. For years, Ryan has been on the forefront of making the StarCraft spectating experience as good as possible for viewers, and we wanted to both recognize his hard work and join forces as we improve the World Championship Series.

Previously, GameHeart has been used at non-WCS events, and viewers let us know that they really want to see some of the GameHeart features when they tune into the WCS. In response to that feedback, we are pleased to announce an official WCS GameHeart overlay, the product of our collaboration is a new version of GameHeart that will be used for WCS events. The overlay will also be available to anyone who wants to use it for any other StarCraft broadcast. This original GameHeart overlay is still available and Ryan is welcome to keep developing new features for the non-WCS version.

Ryan has been diligently working on updating the existing mod while our Blizzard engineers have been providing support through minor coding changes to help improve how GameHeart functions. Stay tuned for a rundown of features as we get nearer to the completion of our partnership.

As we continue to explore ways to bring more eSports support and functionality into the StarCraft II game client, we believe that it’s vital to focus on what players and viewers want and expect from the game. Our thanks go out to the passionate StarCraft community for their feedback and support of the scene.