"It’s all in here, the neolithic bones of our current game system. Borrowing heavily from Tolkein, you get all the standard Fantasy races, standard beasties (heck even the Balrog is in there by name), and so many others...There is no Old World, no Warhammer world, no history, just some little crazed and revolutionary rules for using units of fantasy lead miniatures to fight out epic battles."[1]
[1] https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2012/01/lore-unboxing-warham...
Draw evenly from M*A*S*H + Dresden Files + Mass Effect + Dexter and your going to end up in some strange and interesting places. Play through Starcraft 1+2 on the other hand and the story is fine if a bit bland.
The thing I disagree with is that Blizzard's problem is that they 'copied.' Everyone copies! The bits that Blizzard copied are the most compelling part of Starcraft. The reason it is weak is that they were not better at drawing on the ideas of others. They did not understand what was compelling about 40k, so they create this unsatisfying narrative mishmash.
Warhammer FB -> Warhammer 40k is a great example of this being done better. You could type out the same kind of demeaning summary of Warhammer 40k as you did for Starcraft: "Tyranids are gross, chitinous just like Geiger's xenomorph; the Eldar are just space-high-elves; The squats are just space dwarves." It's all true, as far as it goes. But - because GW is better than Blizzard - they went further and added other ideas (many of which also came from other works). The problem is never that they drew on other sources. In fact, looking at other worlds and using the core of what 'works' about that world before transforming it is at the center of basically all good works.
Tyranids barely existed when Starcraft got released, most of the things you talked about was created by games workshop afterwards, so likely they copied Starcraft instead.
1993, featured the Tyranids in the supplemental books Wargear and Codex Imperialis, and then later in their own devoted army Codex.
By comparison Starcraft 1 is from 1998 at which point Tyranids had gone through multiple revisions and had fairly close to their modern lore.
Sounds like GW copied that from Heinlein's Starship Troopers, or maybe Enders Game.
Ditto the Space Marines.
Culture is just copying/remixing, all the way down.
Remixing at least involves using multiple sources, my only real issue is SC both only copied from 40k and changed so little. It’s like the figured after just crossing just past the line of copyright infringement was enough and they would go no further. But hey they did the same with the original Warhammer game to make Warcraft and that worked out just fine for them.
Tyranids giant biological hive mind that rapidly adapts to new environments consuming or infecting existing species to plunder their genetic advantages. Also have plenty of units that looks rather similar to their Zerg equivalents.
The basic look of space marines and Starcraft marines are completely different why they toned down the skulls and well that’s about it.
That’s fine at least they didn’t copy the ancient psionic technology using Eldar who, wait never mind.