YouTuber and streamer Jason Thor Hall reflects on turbulent weeks. After delicate actions in WoW Classic and Ashes of Creation, a claim from November 2023 is now hitting him hard.
What did Jason Hall claim? You have surely heard that the former Blizzard developer has established himself quite quickly under the name “Pirate Software” in the YouTuber and Twitch scene .
He succeeded in this partly thanks to regular insider insights into his experiences at the company behind milestones like World of Warcraft. One of the first, particularly exciting anecdotes was about his time in the team that developed StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty.
Hall reported a two-year-long crunch phase, with countless overtime hours, worked weekends, colleagues quitting, and broken marriages. The development is said to have lasted a total of seven years.
In the end, while they were satisfied with the quality of the game and sales figures, he found it frustrating at that time that the recently introduced and first paid heavenly steed mount from World of Warcraft allegedly made more money than StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty – at least according to the developer’s claim.
WoW Classic Hardcore is no walk in the park – as this video shows:
Trend YouTuber in free fall
What is the current status? Due to some actions in WoW Classic and Ashes of Creation, “Pirate Software” has recently not exactly distinguished itself:
- Streamer flees in WoW Hardcore, abandons group, and lies coldly: “I could have done nothing”
- Successful streamer damages his reputation by misbehaving in MMORPGs
Therefore, many viewers are currently watching him very closely and even digging up old anecdotes like the mount story to shed light on them afterwards. User Sem1SkillD has published his insights on this in a lengthy post on Reddit.
The most important points:
- The claim of Jason Thor Hall cannot be backed up with the known figures from Blizzard. It is said to be based solely on assumptions, an internal joke from the StarCraft crew, and the sales figures of StarCraft 2.
- On the contrary, Hall apparently used false numbers as a basis in an explanatory post on Reddit. He stated that the development of StarCraft 2 was supposed to have cost around 100 million US dollars. This sum was mentioned due to a report from the Wall Street Journal but was later marked as erroneous and significantly corrected downwards (via gamespot.com).
- The sales figures cited by Hall for the WoW mount were based on unofficial character statistics. There is no documented evidence for the revenues of 71 to 84 million US dollars.
- Even if one would use Hall’s numbers for the calculation – that is, 100 million dollars development costs for StarCraft 2 plus 84 million dollars revenue from the mount – StarCraft 2 would still show higher profits (150 million versus 84 million dollars).
- According to a report from Blizzard in 2010, the full-price game was said to have sold 4.5 million times by this year (via activision.com).
Considering the comparatively low effort behind the design of an in-game mount, it is still absurd how much money the heavenly steed made compared to a complex prestige project like StarCraft 2. However, the former developer’s core thesis, that the mount would have generated higher profits, cannot be substantiated.
How does the community react to this? Jason “Pirate Software” Hall somewhat resembles Icarus, who aimed too high and made a historical crash landing. This is also reflected in many comments on Reddit:
- Few-Comparison2996 writes on Reddit: “As someone who works in the industry, I find the amount of untruths and dangerous generalizations that the guy in question (piratesoftware) spreads astronomical, and I hate that he does it in a way that seems to impress the masses for so long in combination with his highly compressed microphone.”
- Rhodehouse93 adds on Reddit: “Pirate gained so much credibility through the explosion of his YouTube Shorts that he has basically become the uncritical expert. The claim is ridiculous in itself, but because a popular person who previously worked at Blizzard said it, everyone took it as true. Now that his reputation is going downhill, it’s nice to see memories like this come back up.”
- born_to_be_intj concludes on Reddit: “The more I engage with Pirate, the more he seems to be a braggart. He claims to have worked at Blizzard and developed a game, but looking at the code in his game, it’s horrifically bad, as bad as a beginner. It seems like he has exaggerated everything he says to make himself look better.”
By the way, Jason “Pirate Software” is currently not only playing WoW Classic and Ashes of Creation but also Path of Exile 2. And of course, the streamer has a clear opinion on this game, which he shares live: “Makes new players hellishly afraid” – Former Blizzard developer explains the biggest problem of Path of Exile 2
