On behalf of Blizzard Entertainment, the StarCraft II development team is very pleased to announce the release of the StarCraft II API! We recognize the efforts made by researchers over the years to advance AI using the original StarCraft. With the StarCraft II API, we’re providing powerful tools for researchers, gamers, and hobbyists to utilize the game as a platform to further advance the state of AI research. This API also exposes a sandbox for the community to experiment with, using both learning based AI and scripted AI to build new tools that can benefit the StarCraft II and AI communities.

We’ve also done a lot of work to allow this API to run at scale in cloud infrastructure. Today, we are releasing the result of this work in the form of a fully functioning Linux package designed to run in the cloud for research purposes. This is a standalone Linux build optimized to only work with the API.

We’ve learned a lot during our collaboration with DeepMind on this project, and we’re very excited to get these tools into your hands to see what amazing things we can create together.

To summarize the feature set available in this release:

• Scripted AI API
• Image-based AI API (feature layers)
• Documentation, sample code, and sample bots
• Support for offline AI vs. AI play
• A replay pack of anonymized 1v1 ladder games*
• Windows and Mac support
• Fully-featured Linux package of the API

* In addition to the initial release, replay packs will continue being released on an ongoing basis. Please note that there may be some lag time before new replay packs are available after a new StarCraft II release, as patches may change the format of replays.

While we have included some sample code and simple bots, it’s important to note that the release of these tools lays the foundation for AI research in StarCraft II to begin. Ultimately, it will be your creativity, ingenuity, and hard work that will dictate where this all leads, and we’re excited to see the direction the AI community will take this in.

For more information, as well as DeepMind’s white paper, head to their blog.

To get started, you can participate in our open source project on GitHub:

• StarCraft II API Library
• StarCraft II API Protocol
• Python Protocol Binding Library
• PySC2 (DeepMind’s toolset)

We’d love to hear your feedback on this project, and invite you to join the discussion in our StarCraft II API forum.