Short answers, pulled from the story.
Blizzard Entertainment announced StarCraft II at the Worldwide Invitational in Seoul, South Korea on the 19th of May 2007. Development for the project began in 2003 shortly after Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne was released.
Derek Duke, Glenn Stafford, Neal Acree, and Russell Brower composed the music together while the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra performed with 78 members. A 32-voice choir recorded additional layers in Seattle, Washington to complete the soundtrack which spans approximately four hours of original material.
The combined StarCraft franchise surpassed 17.6 million copies sold by the end of 2015. Blizzard listed the franchise among brands generating lifetime revenue exceeding one billion dollars by 2017.
Players compete in versus modes ranging from 1v1 to 4v4 team sizes depending on map availability within leagues that progress through bronze silver gold platinum diamond master and grandmaster. Experience points collected during matches do not directly affect future gameplay mechanics.
AlphaStar defeated professional player MaNA five games to zero in December 2018 under conditions some deemed unfair. A fairer version of the bot achieved Grandmaster status by August 2019 marking a landmark achievement for multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithms.