[starcraftgamer]

Long time HN lurker, decided to make an account because I have some knowledge about this.

I think there are two interesting things the article misses around PC bangs:

1. StarCraft could run on a potato. The PCs in these cafes were not always the most modern, and the lack of system requirements was a big boon to StarCraft taking off. This is also why League of Legends became very popular in South Korea.

2. Ironically, piracy. The article mentions that cafes bought copies of StarCraft to install on their PCs. This isn't quite correct, in practice a single CD key would be used to install StarCraft on all PCs in the cafe.

StarCraft Brood War in Korea is alive and well. It's had a recent resurgence and is currently the most watched game on their popular local streaming service Afreeca (essentially Korean Twitch.tv).