FreeCraft Cease and Desisted by Blizzard

mandreiana writes "As of June 20th, FreeCraft is shut down. The development team received a cease and desist order due to the name 'FreeCraft' causing possible confusion with the names StarCraft and WarCraft, and also some of the ideas within the engine were too similar to WarCraft 2. There will be no more updates to this game, and it is no longer available for download." Way to go, Blizzard, now the only competitors to worry about are the ones who can afford lawyers and actually hold competing market share. Of course, not using a *Craft for a game project might have kept it under the radar a while longer.

Comments

Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[HanzoSan]

Blizzard is not responsible for this, I'm 100% sure this is Blizzards parent company, who owns Blizzard, Universal or one of those big Music/Media companies who is part of the RIAA.

This is an RIAA/MPAA thing. FreeCraft will live on, they cant stop it just like Unix owners cant stop Linux.

I see it like this, this gives FreeCraft more publicity, the codes already out, so go ahead and make martyrs of them. Go ahead Universal or whichever french company owns them
sue them, lock the developers up, please, do us all a favor and do it, all you will do is bring open source to the masses, cause hundreds of thousands of people to work on the code who didnt even know about it before, and start a whole Linux game development movement.

Didnt you learn from Gnutella?

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[beesmambo]

Either way it's the last Blizzard game I will buy!

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's Vivendi International

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Jason_says]

You know that remindes me of the same thing that the RIAA did once to napster. Well napster had like 200,000 people using its servers to download music. Then the RIAA filed a lawsuite against napster and everybody found out about it. The number of bootlegers jumped from 200,000 to 2 million.

Way to go RIAA!!!!!!

You have do the music business a great favor

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[jmv]

This is a bit different. It's one thing to pass a file using P2P, but it's another thing to patch it and make it evolve. How to you replace the old version with the new one and track changes?

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Angry White Guy]

Or Martha Stewart Omnimedia. Let's boycott them

(It's not, but I hate that bitch!)

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

100% Agreed. I was almost ready to give them a second chance after the bnetd thing, because they "kinda-sorta" had a point (although a game server that doesn't depend on the good will of Blizzard/her parent company would make me very happy).

Fortunately, in this case, they can probably get back to work after changing the name of the project.

Nevertheless, blizzard will never see another fucking cent from me. Way to go, guys! You've managed to make your core audience hate you. Word of mouth can be a bitch. Just wait.

Worlds of Warcraft is doomed.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[nuggetman]

Nevertheless, blizzard will never see another fucking cent from me. Way to go, guys! You've managed to make your core audience hate you. Word of mouth can be a bitch. Just wait.

Worlds of Warcraft is doomed.

While you're dreaming I'd like a pony.

Seriously... I have so many friends that play StarCraft/Diablo II. Know what their reaction to this will be? "Who gives a shit". There are too many people out there that could really care less what Blizzard's parent company did to some fledgling open source project.

You may not give them another cent, but theres millions of others (including myself) who will.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[alienw]

No, Blizzard was an extremely litigious and scammy company right from the start. I remember an interview in boot magazine (circa 1997, before they were bought by anyone) where people complained that their games uploaded tons of information about their computer to battle.net without their permission. Supposedly, it was a tactic to stop pirates. They later stopped doing it after being criticized by virtually everyone in the gaming community.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[brucifer]

Lets all go protest Blizzard and never buy one of their incredibly entertaining games again!

C'mon, how realistic is that? And why should we stop buying all their games, because they are protecting their work? Even if it was Blizzard behind the cease and desist and not their parent company, I really can't say I blame them. If I were Blizzard, I would have rolled out of my bed lined with $100 bills and told FreeCraft to knock it off too.

You can't tell me that *Craft doesn't immediately make you think of one of the fine Blizzard games that we have all enjoyed at one LAN party or another.

I agree that there should be opensource gaming projects out there, but seriously, think before you go a name them. Someone create an open source project call Age of Freepires and I bet you it will get shut down sooner than you can say Anti-trust Suit.

Blizzard is a company that survives by making money and protecting its investment. If I remember correctly, that is kinda one of the reasons we live in a capitalist society.

To quote "Bill Gates" in the Simpsons "I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks"

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares if you have a lot a friends who play the game. All that needs to be accomplished is to reduce Blizzard's income by 7% a year and Blizzard will either get the message or die.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[logout]

No, this will kill FreeCraft, as bnetd was choked to death under the same situation.

Bnetd was a promising Battle.net clone server with additional capabilities that Battle.net did not provide. In the last moment of bnetd development, bnetd developers were implementing their *own* protocol which will enable multiple bnetd servers to communicate to each other. As a former Bnetd Free server administrator, I was anticipating for this feature but it just had to die out.

What Blizzard did with Bnetd project was simple. They just *threatened* to sue the main developers. Actually, they did not sue anybody. But the threat was enough for the developers to give up their projects because they were not legal experts, nor did they have enough money to hire lawyers.

Did they do anything wrong? Absolutely not. Blizzard would have lost the case if both parties had gone to the court.

In fact, Blizzard could have participated in the Bnetd project and run their second-tier Battle.net servers with bnetd. That's the good thing with opern source. However, Blizzard just killed the project, thrasing all the efforts and achievements with it.

I am afraid the same thing will happen to the FreeCraft project. I haven't played it, but I am sure FreeCraft has something different or even enhanced from the original WarCraft. Does Blizzard have the right to kill these features too? I don't think so. If Blizzard wants its copyright respected, it must honor other's.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an RIAA/MPAA thing

I know 100% for a fact that Senator Orrin Hatch was personally responsible for blowing up the computers of the FreeCrack team.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Anonymous Coward]

When are you lot going to learn, that on the list of people who software companies care about pissing off, Slashdot readers rank just below Brazillian shanty town inhabitants.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Tseran]

Go ahead Universal or whichever french company owns them

Oh yes, it must all be the fault of the evil French. Maybe the evil French actually own Microsoft and that is why they are so bad. Get a grip. A country is only as evil as the people who live in it, NOT those running it. If that were the case, the rest of the world would be right in saying that the US is evil. But enough of that gripe, back to the topic.

They aren't marytrs, they were trying to clone a popular game and one that is inexpensive at that, and try to make it free. Okay, its a nice idea to have free software, but if you spent as much money as Blizzard did in development, testing, and advertising, and then got kicked with a free copy of all the worrk you did, you would have every right to go after them. If the open source and group development people want to really give Blizzard some competition, try creating an ORIGINAL game that is good and free. Most of us have Starcraft and Warcraft. Give me something new, not a clone of something old.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[MrLint]

With the exception of most recent history Blizzard really pisses off the macintosh community. Every week they would say "oh the mac version is coming out RSN, and of course it really took them month and months, everytime recommiting themselves to the cause.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[f0rt0r]

Ok, two points. First, I don't think of Blizzard when I see a name ending with "craft". Instead, I think of the war as the "art of" or "way of" doing/working with something. Like "Stonecraft" would mean the way to work with stone (stonemasonry is the proper term, I think ), but I hope you see what I mean. Another way to interpret it would be "a
craft for traveling through a medium", with the medium specified in the first part of the word, such as "watercraft", "spacecraft", etc.

Second point, it looks fairly obvious why the project was named "freecraft". It was to denote that this was an opensource (free) version of WarCraft, but you can't just copy someone's idea verbatim without at least asking for permission or giving them credit. Well, I am talking about my personal criteria, anyhow. On the other hand, I think it's wrong to prevent people who want to make an improved version of an old (read "dead" ) project of yours on their own. Especially if they were courteous enough to ask. Like, "it looks like you arent' working on this anymore, can I pick up where you left off?".

Now, if they had called their program "FreeCraft" and the name made some kind of sense, like being about freeing people from captivity, for example, then I could see where Blizzard's argument wouldn't hold any water.

My $.02

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[G-funk]

Oh quit whinging... with a name like FreeCrat, OF COURSE they're trying to hitch a free ride on blizzrd's trademarks. You know, freecraft... obviously, it's like warcraft, but like, free. They deserve to be shut down.

If you want to clone a popular product, do so. But don't brew up some FreeWeisers, or try and write Freedows, a band called freetallica or a game called freecraft. You're just asking for it.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Hobophile]

Oh sure, criticize them for supporting a platform that probably doesn't exceed 1% of their userbase.

Yes, in a perfect world, Blizzard would have been able to ship the Mac version simultaneously with the PC version.

Oh wait, they did, with Warcraft III.

But let's never let them forget that this one time, years ago, when they were first supporting the platform, it took them ages to port it. Because that's a really productive way to spend our time, and it certainly sends the right message to other companies who might be considering a port of their latest game.

The same sort of thing has happened with Bioware's Neverwinter Nights -- a promised Linux port, lengthy development process post-release, and now it's close to being available. Does this suck for Linux users? Sure. But at least you get the game eventually, and you can bet that Bioware will have portability at the top of the priority list next time around.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Hobophile]

Blizzard has been around a _lot_ longer than just since 1997.

In the case you mention, they were not trying to stop pirates, they were obtaining names and email addresses for the purpose of supporting their Starcraft customers who were having issues connecting to Battle.net.

Nor did they stop because they were "criticized", they stopped because they lost a lawsuit over it.

Relevant link.

In more recent years, to better judge the hardware capabilities of their customer base, they've started an opt-in program where general information about your computer system can be collected and submitted to Blizzard while applying patches to their software.

So in a sense they're still collecting similar information, with the main difference being that no individualized information is gathered and it is entirely opt-in -- you can apply the patch regardless of your choice.

And more than likely the "litigious and scammy" party here was the lawyer who brought the lawsuit. Undeniably Blizzard was in the wrong, but barring any evidence suggesting that their intentions were malicious, I think it's safe to say that ultimately they had their customers' best interests at heart.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever it is , I'm done!!!

I have most of the blizzard games. There will be no more from those guy's.
Now I have to figure out what to do with the ones I have. P2P???

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[EllisDees]

Just like you shouldn't make a linux system and call it Lindows?

Oops. You're wrong.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Renli]

I don't recall anyone electing you to the exaluted position of Head Speaker for millions of people who don't know you from a hole in the ground.

Being a member of their 'core audience' I don't hate them. And as someone said, I doubt all those people who play they their games who've either never heard of linux or don't care, will suddenly stop playing some of the best games on the market over this. Bitch all you want but the FreeCraft makers brought this on themselves. Sure I think its a nice idea....but do it legally.

Its just like the whole music/mp3 thing. We want what we want and we want it now and free. If we don't get it we start whining about the big bad corperations. Anyone else get the mental picture of a little kid standing in the candy aisle screaming at its mother?

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Baloo Ursidae]

OK, time to make FreeCraft spread like DeCSS did. Everybody download and install it. Grab the source and burn it on your next archive disk.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, I'm a Windows user.. and I don't HATE Microsoft.. but here it goes..

Microsoft bought the company that owns the company that owns Blizzard. It's true. I'm not saying Microsoft had anything to do with it.. but hey, they were remotley connected to the USB guys, and got blamed for the renaming of everything to USB 2..

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Omestes]

Um, Blizzard is like that with EVERYTHING. For the longest time Blizzard had a release issue, meaning take when they said they were going to release, and add two years.

Look at the DiabloII 1.10 patch.... 2 years in the making.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Whatever.

Go back to work on Worlds of Warcraft, Troll.

I will discourage others from buying their games. There's nothing illegal about that.

Only kid in a candy store I see screaming is you, child.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Oh, and I plan to keep playing Diabolo II as well. I've already paid for it, I might as well. I don't play on Battlenet though.

I have friends that play games too. Some of them won't give a shit, some of them will. I won't change ANY of their minds about Blizzard if I remain silent on this, so, I will NOT remain silent.

Besides, the MMORPG market is already oversaturated. It wouldn't take much of a push to make a game fail out of the gate. Especially one of questionable quality/playability like WoW is reputed to be.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Renli]

Did I say it was illegal to discourage people from buying their games? No, I said if they want to make a game based on someone elses copyright etc then do it legally. Get permission. Please, read what I actually type. Not what you think I did. As for working on Worlds of Warcraft....I'd love to. Sounds like fun.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[MrResistor]

Their treatment of bnetd was the first of my 2 reasons for never buying another Blizzard game (and it's the reason I will stick to that decision, regardless of how they solve the second).

The second reason is that they just keep making the same game without any real improvemnts. Darkstone[1] for example had changable POV, you could rotate around to view the action from any angle and you could zoom in or out, and it had an excellent programmable hot-key implementation. Diablo2 had neither of these, even though it was released way later, so you still had to thrash around blindly behind walls to find that stupid hidden barrel because their wall transparency was a cheap hack and didn't work right.

Don't even get me started on their *Craft games. Blizzard is the AC/DC of game companies.

Even if they did actually create a NEW game, though, I probably wouldn't buy it until they had proven that they are no longer a bunch of litigious assholes, and that would take years.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[cduffy]

If it actually got to court (so if the author had the cash to defend himself), he'd probably win: The issue at hand isn't whether they're trying to indicate that their product is in some way similar to Warcraft, but rather whether a reasonable person would be deceived by the name to think that their product is created by the owner of the trademark.

I think that's pretty clearly not the case.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Joe Tie.]

But at least you get the game eventually, and you can bet that Bioware will have portability at the top of the priority list next time around.

Not to sound overly critical here, but we're not ever going to be getting Neverwinter Nights. We're getting a portion of it, the engine without the ability to display the cutscenes. I'm happy to even be getting that much, but I'm not going to start aplauding them for a half assed job. You're free to place bets on Bioware's having learned a lesson in portability if you want, but none of their actions have shown me a company with any clue about crossplatform development. If they're foolish enough to try another crossplatform game, my bet is that it's going to be again written with DirectX, that again they'll go into it with next to no research on the other targets, and that they'll aproach the situation in terms of porting instead of developing something which can compile and run on any of their supported platforms at any time in the development cycle.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

" I think it's safe to say that ultimately they had their customers' best interests at heart."

I disagree. They didn't ask, and it's none of their business. They had the interests of their Marketing division at heart.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

"if you spent as much money as Blizzard did in development, testing, and advertising, and then got kicked with a free copy of all the worrk you did, you would have every right to go after them."

No. If it was independantly developed, you would have every right to beat sand and cry to your mommy. This was, and that's all Blizzard should be able to do. Being litigious bastards, they are instead relying on barrartry. Here's hoping their lawyers get disbarred on that basis.

If they had included the WC2 art in the distribution file, there would be infringement. They did not. There is none. Every single person at Blizzard, and every single frog at Vivendi can go straight to hell on this one.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[killj0y]

I hate to break it to you, but the slashdot community is hardly Blizzard's "core audience". Blizzard is going to be just fine. The same bullshit was said about them after the bnetd thing, and Warcraft III went on to sell millions.

World of Warcraft will end up in a similar situation.. just minus you and a handful of friends who are going to be pouting in a corner.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Tomble]

Warcraft was for Dos/Windows. Freecraft was (primarily) for Linux. Besides that, it was intended that it should be a more generic RTS engine, configurable by data files, not just a plain Warcraft clone. You really see it as a competing product?

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Sorry, but I'm not going to "shut up" on this on your say so. I will cost them whatever sales I can. Maybe they will still succeed, but they will have a smaller success than otherwise. It's certainly better than remaining silent.

And I won't be pouting in a corner, asshole. I'll be doing as much damage to Blizzard as I can.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Disevidence]

While i enjoyed your 2 cents, its not about whether you think of blizzard when you hear *craft, its whether the 2 games (and their ownership) could be confused by a significant amount of end users. While you might not see a confusion, a lot less adept computer users, who aren't aware of a large software community on the internet, could potentially get confused.

I agree with your second point, though i do not believe the point of freecraft was even making a better version, but rather a similar free version.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Eccles]

No, I said if they want to make a game based on someone elses copyright etc then do it legally.

Exactly how many RTS games are there? More than I've got fingers and toes, at the very least. What makes Freecraft more of a copy than Warcraft is a copy of Dune 2?

--Eccles, proudly (and apparently solely) boycotting Blizzard/Vivendi since the BnetD thugishness...

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you shouldn't make a system called lindows becase it's a stupid name.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds like a threat of terrorist action.
Your local law enforcement representatives will arrive shortly.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[banal avenger]

They weren't always like that, and I appreciate that they currently aren't like that. Blizzard started out as a Macintosh developer. They never abandoned the Mac platform, but they strayed from the path for a little while. I was happy enough with the complete shock when Diablo II came out a week after the Windows version.

Furthermore, in the interest of keeping games coming to the Mac, I'm content enough with any company that appears to be making an effort. Blizzard, when compared to, say, Sierra (who rarely makes a Mac game today, not that anyone cares anymore) has overall one of the better _long-term_ track records.

One also mustn't forget the benefits of waiting and being a Mac user: (1) The game is almost always improved and (2) We get to avoid 90% of the crap games on Windows.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[NeoOokami]

Yeah, heaven forbid they take their time to release an "update" that just adds a ton of extra features to an older game that's pretty much clean of bugs..

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Omestes]

Really don't get how you can be against that? It shows that they SUPPORT THE COMMUNITY. I'm all for any company that adds features to old games, for free.

Though it DOES add content that I paid for when I bought the expansion, like all the rune words and crafted items I though I'd get with LoD, but didn't, being that I stick to single player.

Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs.

[Anonymous Coward]

"evil French" - redundant.

Give it a rest, Taco

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to go, Blizzard, now the only competitors to worry about are the ones who can afford lawyers and actually hold competing market share.

Sure, or perhaps those who don't violate a company's copyright. Funny the big double standards Slashdot has about this sort of thing, huh? I await a new GPL violation lynch story shortly.

Re:Give it a rest, Taco

[Anonymous Coward]

Sooooo, copyright now means that anything that sounds remotely or is spelled even close to what you copyright is yours as well?

Re:Give it a rest, Taco

[Qzukk]

Feeding ignorant trolls is fun, its just like a petting zoo, only stupider!

violate a company's copyright.

So, you're saying that someone stole blizzard's code and put it into FreeCraft? Maybe you mean Trademark, but then again, FreeCraft isn't the name of any of Blizzard's games. Or maybe you mean patent? Are there even patents on games now? I don't see a "business process" going on when I blow up someone's base.

Re:Give it a rest, Taco

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you got modded to troll because you crossed the line over to the other side.

You know that Adam Smith aka Satan, who wrote this thing about some sort of invisible hands?

These "hands" supposedly provide some sort of driving force to the economy via an individual or organization's self interest or greed (I know, I know, its crazy, but what are you gonna do?).

But thats not all, get this, IP rights are supposedly somehow related to this wacked out invisible hand theory. (Thats rich, huh?)

So, anytime anyone smokes crack and believes that you have the right to keep your code from being stolen or your songs from being stolen or your trademark from being encroached upon you will rightfully be relegated back down into the darkness from which you originated. No consideration of each cases individual facts, because we know which side you are on.

It makes things so much easier, that way, you know, especially when implementing the work camps and the reeducation facilities.

And just remember, most of all, we love you.

Re:Give it a rest, Taco

[Anonymous Coward]

Artwork is copyrighted, as is music.

And no, buying a copy of a game does not grant you the right to do whatever you want with the artwork you may extract from it.

Hope everyone who bought WC3 is happy . . .

[vegetablespork]

. . . to have given a few dollars to help fund the war on freedom. Death to Blizzard! Death to Vivendi!

Re:Hope everyone who bought WC3 is happy . . .

[soliaus]

Buy? HAH. I would post the torrent to the iso, but it would kill the tracker. Besides, thats illegal...and I dont do that kind of thing.

Think: *monsoon

Re:Hope everyone who bought WC3 is happy . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad I just pirated my copy. Didn't even play it much, maybe I'll go back and play now just for spite.

What do they expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

You cannot just key off someone else's name like that. If your game is good, invent your own name and identity. Knock-off 'free' versions of commercial products are unimaginative, and a business *must* protect its trademarks, or it loses them.

Re:What do they expect?

[Omnifarious]

So, why hasn't FreeCiv been sued out of existence then? Seems to me that there was some precedent to a game calling itself 'FreeSomething' and it being OK.

There was no chance of trademark confusion here.

Re:What do they expect?

[Tyler Eaves]

Probably because FreeCiv is targetting a 10+ year old game.

Re:What do they expect?

[1qa2ws3ed]

freecraft let me, a warcraft2 cd owner, play warcraft2 on linux. yes, i expected blizzard not to stop someone giving me the type of service they never wanted to give me.

Re:What do they expect?

[CrazyDuke]

I expect trademark law to be used to protect the integrity of a specific brand, not to curb stomp anyone with a vaugely similiar idea off the market. "Freecraft" was just an engine so one could play Warcraft on Linux without emulation. It required the content off the original Warcraft CD's to be used in order to work. It is not like it was a competing game. Even with that considered, claiming the -craft suffix is as broad and overeaching as Microsoft's trademark on "Windows." This would be similar to Microsoft putting the axe in X-Windows for trademark violation.

Re:What do they expect?

[nuggetman]

Even with that considered, claiming the -craft suffix is as broad and overeaching as Microsoft's trademark on "Windows." This would be similar to Microsoft putting the axe in X-Windows for trademark violation.

"Windows" is not trademarked by Microsoft. "Microsoft Windows" is. Meaning they would have to take the axe if they called themselves X-MicrosoftWindows.

*cue replies about how Microsoft is devious enough to go to court over it anyway*

Re:What do they expect?

[mrscorpio]

What about Lindows?

Chris

Re:What do they expect?

[bsharitt]

Warcraft 2 is getting pretty old too.

Re:What do they expect?

[nagora]

"Windows" is not trademarked by Microsoft. "Microsoft Windows" is.

Yeah, right. Try this and call us back (if your prison allows outside calls): download Mandrake and write an auto-running script that boots off a cd-rom and installs the whole KDE system. Then box it and call it "Windows" and sell it for 20 dollars or so.

Obviously, you'll never hear any complaints from Microsoft about this. For good measure, release a boxed set of OpenOffice and call it "Office for Windows" (meaning your previous boxed set). Finally, get all your money and burn it before M$ takes it off you.

TWW

Re:What do they expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is rather irrelevent since it is the X-Window System NOT X-Windows.

Re:What do they expect?

[Snaller]

They didn't - you can copyright all possible permutations of lettre combinations.

Re:What do they expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, do you remember what happened to Lindows v/s Microsoft's Windows? Now if you're trying to tell me that Freecraft is more similar to warcraft/starcraft than lindows is to windows, well...

Re:What do they expect?

[gauche]

I expect a proliferation of "-Raft" games to take FreeCraft's place: Freak Raft, Stark Raft, Work Raft...

Re:What do they expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and whats with "linux"? It is obviously just a knock-off free version of unix with an unimaginative name.

Re:What do they expect?

[fenix down]

There was every chance of confusion. I'm sorry to see Freecraft go, but it really was a stupid name. FreeCiv is fine because the Civilization people don't have a consistent naming pattern along the lines of WarCiv, StarCiv, etc. If you walked up to some random gamer kid and said "Freecraft" he'd be thinking of a new Blizzard game, maybe sligtly put off by the prefix being "Free", but not much.

Re:What do they expect?

[Jugalator]

Could be because it's not called "Civilization Free" or something like that. "Civ" is just a shorthand that might not look as obviously connected to the *craft games as a game with the -craft suffix. Or they're just not as interested as hunting that game down.

Re:What do they expect?

[ArmorFiend]

Oh come off it, Blizz has know about freecraft for as long as its existed. You can't employ a company full of programmers that somehow is unaware of the #1 download at sourceforge.net for years running. I'm unclear on why they decided to take action now.

There was a free battle.net implementation (bnetd) that was only attacked when it was being used to play cracked versions of war3beta. That kinda made sense. This makes no sense to me. I think freecraft has a case.

Re:What do they expect?

[Zemran]

The word 'Craft' is an English word with a known meaning. It is absurd to think that it cannot appear anywhere else in the gaming world and for that reason this is a US only debate. In the rest of the world there would not be any debate as there would be nothing to discuss.

This is not about protecting a trademark, it is about bullying poor competitors using stupid laws. It is yet another example of why the US no longer has a free market.

Re:What do they expect?

[Omnifarious]

You're right, there was more chance of trademark confusion from FreeCraft to WarCraft than from freeciv to civiliation I, II, and III.

The C&D letter of course, complained about more than just the name. And there are ways of asking nicely instead of starting things off with a scary legalistic cease & desist letter.

Re:What do they expect?

[dnoyeb]

This would not hold water in a court of law. Any other major company could produce a game called FreeCraft and Blizzard could try, but they would be unsuccessful at stopping them.

Just look at the look-a-like perfume industry for a clue about that.

Of course you are correct in that as open source lawyer-less group, they should have known better. but it really wouldnt matter, blizzard or any RTS company could try to shut them down for any reason. Thats why we have the FSF, etc. to try and protect our freedoms.

Re:What do they expect?

[arose]

Just look at the next game in happypenguin.org, another C+D desist? Apple suing Mirosoft over Windows again? Microsoft patenting 1 and 0 (source - onion)...

Re:What do they expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

or it could be because the civilisation brand came from the board game (of the same name). Sid Meier did that with a lot of boardgames, and maybe doesn't want the adverse publicity.

Re:What do they expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but Warcraft 3 isn't, and while Starcraft is also getting on it is still quite popular. Blizzard still has plenty of interest in the name...

Re:What do they expect?

[Majin Bubu]

>This would be similar to Microsoft putting
>the axe in X-Windows for trademark violation

Hey, don't give 'em any ideas! :-)

Re:What do they expect?

[Babbster]

Warcraft 2 is still quite available and can be had for less than $10.

If Firaxis wants to let people have FreeCiv, that's certainly their prerogative. But it's certainly no reason that Blizzard should let someone copy their game.

Of course, this wouldn't be even be considered bad on Slashdot if Warcraft 2 was owned by a small group of Linux developers instead of a big company.

Re:What do they expect?

[Babbster]

"A scary legalistic cease & desist letter" is the way to a) get things done quickly and efficiently and b) establish evidence for a potential court case. Anything else (like an e-mail saying "hey, would you guys mind not doing this project?") would be far too open for interpretation and misunderstandings.

Re:What do they expect?

[Babbster]

"Oh come off it, Blizz has know about freecraft for as long as its existed. You can't employ a company full of programmers that somehow is unaware of the #1 download at sourceforge.net for years running. I'm unclear on why they decided to take action now."

The programmers and others at the company might have been aware of it and not had a problem with it. Once the bigwigs and lawyers (who probably don't hang out at Source Forge) find out, though, that's when something gets done.

Re:What do they expect?

[black mariah]

It's already been proven in court that MS holds absolutely no copyright OR trademark on the word WINDOWS. This was covered a few months ago when MS sued Lindows. This does not mean you can call a dostro "Windows" as that would be misleading and deceptive.

Re:What do they expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let 'em do it. There's no such thing as X-Windows anyway. There's X, X11, and the X Windowing System.

Re:What do they expect?

[kylef]

This would be similar to Microsoft putting the axe in X-Windows for trademark violation.

It would be similar if X-Windows were a rip-off or hack of MS's product, but it is not. Blizzard is simply trying to prevent a bunch of anonymous hackers from mucking with their program, trying to get it to run on a platform for which it was not intended.

Allowing these people to do whatever they want to the program (by replacing the engine) could easily cause headaches with Blizzard's Battle.Net servers. If you had to maintain the Battle.Net servers and this group were messing with your client, would YOU want them to be doing it? I don't think so.

Re:What do they expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

they are not messing with Battle.Net at all, read the FAQ.

Re:What do they expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh give it up, nobody gives a fuck and 99% of folks call it X or X-Windows. You're preaching to deaf ears.

Re:What do they expect?

[trixie_czech]

actually freecraft doesnt even want to work with battle.net, they have their own network protocol.
so that point is wrong.

freecraft was a good gaming catalyst for a platform that needs good games. thus helping _all_ game makers. (the more people playing and using their computers for games, the better for game makers)

by the way, i played war2 religously, and i have played freecraft enough. there are many good improvements the freecraft engine had over war2. the last release (1.18) was extremely stable and better than the original war2, so to call it a hack is really being ignorant.

Re:What do they expect?

[po8]

This would be similar to Microsoft putting the axe in X-Windows for trademark violation.

Ever wonder why (up until about a year ago when the validity of the "Windows" trademark was litigated elsewhere) official X stuff was always carefully labeled either just "X" or "X Window System"? Heck, at one point, the X Consortium gave away T-Shirts reading "It's A Window System Called X, Not A System Called X Windows" in an attempt to forestall probable Microsoft lawsuits.

Good example otherwise, though :-).

Re:What do they expect?

[nagora]

no copyright OR trademark on the word WINDOWS. This was covered a few months ago when MS sued Lindows. This does not mean you can call a dostro "Windows" as that would be misleading and deceptive.

You can't have it both ways: you can't say that only "Microsoft Windows" means the Windows but then say that any other use of "Windows" could be hauled up for passing of as Microsoft.

TWW

Re:What do they expect?

[sadomikeyism]

I've run into this trying to register a business name. My name is Mike Lorrey. When I tried to register "Lorrey Network Systems" with the state government, they said another person already had "Laurie Network Systems" registered and so I couldn't use the name I wanted. It's crap.

Re:What do they expect?

[runlvl0]

They didn't - you can copyright all possible permutations of lettre combinations.

"lettre" is now a reserved copyright of DidNotUseThePreviewButton, Inc. :^)

Re:What do they expect?

[Snaller]

Grrrrrr ;)

I'm wondering

[Anonymous MadCoe]

How original was warcraft then?
I have no idea myself, but I have the feeling this wasn't the first game in it's genre.

Re:I'm wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

C&C I belive is the first. Warcraft just expanded on it.

Re:I'm wondering

[Dysproxia]

I have this old review of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans that says:

"Others steal toilet paper from their work place, others steal ideas from popular games. Toilet paper thiefs go to Hell, idea thiefs to sales charts, especially if they are as good as Blizzard with Warcraft"

Obviously, the game before Warcraft was Dune II from Westwood.

Re:I'm wondering

[Fembot]

There is almost no such thing as an original game in the games industry today. Almost every game is just an improvment of a basic genre/idea. Im sure it would be possible to trace the origins of most games and genre's back to one common ancestor (Family tree style)

Re:I'm wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

And before that one was Herzog on the MSX and Herzog Zwei on the Genesis. And even before that one there was something on the c64 that i cant remember the name of.

Re:I'm wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

No, idiot, you are wrong. Why did you bother to post when you have no FUCKING CLUE? STFU.

The first RTS was Dune 2.

Re:I'm wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

Cock master. Herzog was turn based, not real time. STFU and die.

Re:I'm wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Herzog Zwei was real time, and your plane could pick up and drop the units you created. It was much more 'hands-on' than Dune II or Warcraft.

And why the heck am I responding to someone who called someone cock master? Anon it is.

Re:I'm wondering

[Krilomir]

The original Lords of the Realms had similar gameplay as well, I think. I don't remember that game too well though...

Re:I'm wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

haha! I DEAGLED UR FAGGET ASS! So STFU n00b!

xxxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxxx

name change?

[d_strand]

why not just change the name?

Blizzard doesn't hold the rights to the whole RTS genre, if that was the case then C&C and AoE and lots of others would be in trouble..

Re:name change?

[colinemckay]

IANAL, but looking at the web page, something more substantial than a name page would be required. o the name is similar (Warcraft/Freecraft) o the game plays in a similar fashion (I don't know the details on this, never having played Freecraft, but this is stated in the article) o the artwork is very much like Warcraft (look at the screenshot on the website - it just screams Warcraft in style) To me, it appears like a direct knockoff, with perhaps a few things rearranged, but no original work.

Re:name change?

[d_strand]

yeah.. I saw the screens just now.. (couldn't get in when i first posted)

They are a bit too similar, Blizzard/Vivendi might have a point :-)

Re:name change?

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't played FreeCraft myself, but I belive that it's actually an engine that enabled you to play Warcraft on other platforms than Windows.

Re:name change?

[ecc0]

The artwork on the screenshots comes from an original Warcraft II CD. You can play FreeCraft with the original graphics pack if you have it, i.e. if you've purchased an original copy of Warcraft II; if you don't you can play with free graphics which are not nearly as attractive. Actually, most of them are terribly ugly.

Re:name change?

[CrazyDuke]

The reason it looks so similar is that Freecraft requires the original Warcraft CD data to run. Think of it as a homebrewed linux engine for Warcraft.

Re:name change?

[Morgahastu]

FreeCraft did not only have a similar name, but similar gameplay, ui, units, etc.

It was trying to be an exact clone of warcraft. You could even play it with the WarCraft graphics.

It you replaced the graphics with the WarCraft ones it was the same game.

I can understand why Blizzard or Vivendi would be upset.

Anyhow it just shows how unimaginative FreeCraft was.

Re:name change?

[Fembot]

I thought that freecraft allowed me to, having bought the warcraft 2 cd, play warcraft 2 (well basicaly warcraft II anyway) under linux/unix, and thus could be considered an ineteroperbility product which I belive the DMCA actualy allows explicitly??

Re:name change?

[EvanED]

No it doesn't... It comes with a default graphics pack. Of course, it still plays exactly like War2 and looks almost as close. I'm surprised this didn't happen before.

Re:name change?

[colinemckay]

Just read that Freecraft is merely an adapter that allows you to play Warcraft on other systems, and requires the original Warcraft disk.

Now that is an entirely different kettle of fish from a straight knockoff, and my sympathy for Blizzard drops greatly at this point.

A work-alike converter for using Warcraft on unsupported platforms has my (qualified) support.

Re:name change?

[GigsVT]

But so what? If they change the name, there would be no trademark claim. Since they wrote it from scratch, and do not distribute any Blizzard files, there can be no copyright claims.

The only thing left are patent claims, but I've not heard of any patent claims in this case.

Re:name change?

[Ogerman]

FreeCraft did not only have a similar name, but similar gameplay, ui, units, etc. It was trying to be an exact clone of warcraft. You could even play it with the WarCraft graphics. It you replaced the graphics with the WarCraft ones it was the same game. I can understand why Blizzard or Vivendi would be upset. Anyhow it just shows how unimaginative FreeCraft was.

Yes, FreeCraft was unimaginative. But Blizzard/Vivendi has absolutely no right to be upset or make legal threats. There is no law that says you can't clone commercial products from the ground up as long as you don't actually copy anything (which they didn't) or use the same names (which they didn't.. vaguely similar doesn't count). And there are no patent or trade secrets involved here either, so that rules out any nonsense about using similar "gameplay, ui, units, etc."

All this shows is a big company bullying around competition that threatens their outdated business model of proprietary software.

Re:name change?

[t0ny]

VAGUELY similiar? It looked like they sawed it down and copied it exactly. Sorry, but even if they wrote their own code and did their own artwork, it still looked exactly like WC2.

I dont think any other industry allows people to create a fake lookalike product, so let them go make fake purses or something.

Re:name change?

[AvitarX]

There is an ambitious wing of the project to redo the artwork themselves, thus making Blizzard redundant.

Well actually I would say FreeCraft is redundant, but oh well.

Re:name change?

[stwrtpj]

It was trying to be an exact clone of warcraft. You could even play it with the WarCraft graphics.

This is most likely why Freeciv does not have similar problems. They designed their graphics and UI from the ground up. In fact they specifically say on their website that they do not want people contributing graphics lifted directly from the Civilization games. And even though they have rulesets that can simulate a Civ I or Civ II game, look-and-feel cannot be trademarked or copyrighted. The precedent for that was already set when Apple tried to sue Microsoft for copying the look-and-feel of their GUI (or was that the other way around?) and lost.

Re:name change?

[Anonymous Coward]

why unimaginative? It pretty well enabled me to play the game on a decent plantform. Even on a different arch.

Acts like this stiffle interopability.

Re:name change?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever seen those bricks that aren't quite lego bricks, but are cheaper and compatible?. That, and cars are two examples I can think of.

Re:name change?

[mmdurrant]

Yea, I imagine it would take someone with a pretty creative imagination to imagine their favorite game running on something other than their least favorite operating system.
I admit, the title Freecraft does make it a target for copyright disputes. However, Blizzard does not hold the copyright to the RTS gaming paradigm. Remember the huge influx of 3D first-person-shooters after Wolfenstein 3D? I'll be damned if those games weren't Wolfenstein 3D in space/medieval times/your grandmother's kitchen. Furthermore, I concur with the opinion that Blizzard/Blizzard's parent company (Vivendi Universal last time I checked) are a bunch of greedy bastards. Freecraft stood no chance of gaining ANY of Blizzards market-share, especially since the "Warcraft 2 emulation" required a Warcraft 2 CD. It really matters not to me, as I quit purchasing Blizzard's craptacular real-time-strats in favor of Westwood's.
IANAL so what prevents the Freecraft team from renaming the project to "Real-Time-Strategy-Game-That-Looks-Familiar-But-R uns-On-Your-Favorite-OS Craft" ?

Re:name change?

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont think any other industry allows people to create a fake lookalike product

Lotus took Borland all the way up to the US Supreme Court because Borland ripped 1-2-3's interface and commands. Lotus lost.

Re:name change?

[Coniptor]

Get a clue dipshit
They weren't out to create a wholy original work!
It's supposed to be as similar to warcraft and I believe that other viking game blizzard made.
If you had ever been to their original website and bothered to read it you would KNOW this.

Re:name change?

[grumbel]

Freecraft can run WC2 graphics, which would require to own a legal Warcraft2 CD, thats all.

The free graphic sets did by far not look like Warcraft2, sure they reasembled a few concepts and building types, but thats basically what every RTS does. Its not like Blizzard invented the RTS, that was what Westwoood has done with Dune.

Re:name change?

[TekPolitik]

VAGUELY similiar? It looked like they sawed it down and copied it exactly. Sorry, but even if they wrote their own code and did their own artwork, it still looked exactly like WC2. I dont think any other industry allows people to create a fake lookalike product, so let them go make fake purses or something.

The look-and-feel lawsuits were lost by the agressors over a decade ago. It is quite clear that you can duplicate functionality from the ground up, as long as you copy neither code nor images.

Does anybody know where there is a copy of the letter? This strikes me as something that could be fixed.

Re:name change?

[MyHair]

IIRC, you could use the WCII graphics tileset (and maybe the sounds) in FreeCraft, but all actual code was FreeCraft. (There were native FreeCraft tilesets, of course. But they weren't very good. I only used FreeCraft with native tilesets even though I own WCII and Starcraft.)

I'm not sure how that translates legally, but I always thought FreeCraft was a dangerous name for the project.

I haven't looked at the site in a while. They had been making lots of improvments and in some ways the multiplayer games were cooler. You could see a "replay" of the game a la the Civ games.

Re:name change?

[jrincayc]

I seem to recall that at one point freeciv could be played with the
civilization graphics.

Re:name change?

[Analog Penguin]

I thought Microsoft won that one because of a clause in an agreement with Apple allowing Microsoft to use Apple's look and feel in "Windows and future products" or something, and there was a dispute over how far-reaching that was? At any rate, I know the battle was over the technicalities of a pre-arranged agreement rather than simply MS copying Apple.

Re:name change?

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont think any other industry allows people to create a fake lookalike product, so let them go make fake purses or something.

Evidently someone has never been to Canal Street in NYC.

Re:name change?

[sindarin2001]

Anyhow it just shows how unimaginative FreeCraft was.

Creativity really wasn't the goal of the project...rather making a Warcraft-like game for many different operating systems (including BeOS). For any BeOS users out there (yeah, I know...BeOS is dead...but I like it) its about the only way to play something remotely similar to Warcraft. And you don't have to have the original Warcraft graphics. There is a project run out of my home college here that is centered around generating original graphics for it. I guess it really doesn't matter now...Freecraft, as much as I liked it, is dead in the water.

CVS

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank god I checked out a CVS update just 15 minutes ago from sourceforge!

Re:CVS

[Anonymous Coward]

I just downloaded the Windows Binaries (with the media project) yesterday.

I own the original, expansion, and Battle.net editions of the game, so I don't feel bad at all about this. Freecraft had all of the play controls of Warcraft III but was still based off of Warcraft II. I hope that development continues underground and that they don't pick an OBVIOUS name and make references to the games they are cloning. I mean...come on.

Someone should setup a mirror and find some way to post the binaries/source code without telling the entire world (telling the whole world would be posting it here).

Perhaps this could be done with a BitTorrent link???

Re:CVS

[Boltronics]

Thank God Gentoo has plenty of mirrors too!

This is bad, but..

[tpengster]

I can't feel too sorry for the FreeCraft people. Open source projects need to think of more creative and original names instead of just ripping off someone else's name and making a "clever" modification

Re:This is bad, but..

[kenthorvath]

What about if they called it "PhreeKrapht", or even "WahrCrapht"? Can you trademark a phonetic identity?

Re:This is bad, but..

[LoadStar]

I can't feel too sorry for the FreeCraft people. Open source projects need to think of more creative and original names instead of just ripping off someone else's name and making a "clever" modification

Another project that frankly I'm surprised has made it this far is FreeVo - obviously a name in the same thought process as FreeCraft. I fully expected TiVo to crack down on them too.

I'm still unclear however. Was the main problem the name? It sounds like it, and if so, it was just a move to protect their trademark. If you don't defend your trademark (and those that may dilute your trademark) you lose it, so this Blizzard and their parent companies had to do this.

What isn't clear is why they didn't just change the name like Blizzard et al wanted and go on with life. Everyone is making it sound like Blizzard shut this project down, when it just looks like they wanted the name changed and the FreeCraft shut the project down all by themselves.

Re:This is bad, but..

[damiam]

Yes, if there's sufficient possibility of it being confused with the real name. Also, this isn't about trademarks, it's about the fact that the entire game was a ripoff of Warcraft II.

Re:This is bad, but..

[Timesprout]

Unfortunately the Mozilla project has already proved this is just not possible with Open Source Projects

Re:This is bad, but..

[surprise_audit]

If you don't defend your trademark (and those that may dilute your trademark) you lose it

Sure, but how far can you take it? How small a fragment of your trademarked name can you defend? *Craft, *raft, *aft, War*, W*craft ? Suppose Microsoft produced a game in the same genre as Warcraft, with a similar kind of theme, and called it Witchcraft. Would Blizzard be justified in sending them a cease-and-desist? Suppose MS's Warcraft-alike game wasn't based on solid ground, but instead was somehow always aloft, and they called it Aircraft? Only one letter difference - C-n-D? And of course, the sequel would be Aircraft II... Where would the madness end?

Imagine Blizzard C-n-D'ing the Navy for using *craft carriers - warlike theme, virtually god-like powers, attack and defence, etc - a clear violation of Blizzard's trademarked name..

Re:This is bad, but..

[kenthorvath]

In that case, they should make the orcs wear bras and claim its a parody. Then release a no-bra mod...

Re:This is bad, but..

[Babbster]

You're missing the fundamentals here. If someone releases an RTS game in a medieval setting and calls it *Craft, it's clearly intending to call to mind the Warcraft name and ride those trademarked and copyrighted coat tails. If, on the other hand, someone opens a burger stand and calls their restaurant "Meat Craft" it clearly has nothing to do with the Blizzard video game.

You can continue coming up with similar examples. Taking the above further, if I open a burger joint and my name is Bob McDonald I still can't call my place "Bob McDonald's" because the McDonald's name is already trademarked and it would be argued that I'm trading on the well-known corporate brand. If I instead open a hardware store and call it "Bob McDonald's Hardware" I'm in the clear because I'm not using the name in association with fast food.

Re:This is bad, but..

[angle_slam]

I'm still unclear however. Was the main problem the name? It sounds like it, and if so, it was just a move to protect their trademark.

How do you know? The /. story and link are bereft of actual information, including using the term "cease and desist order" which doesn't actually exist. (Lawyers send cease & desist letters to request others to stop doing something. Courts do not term any of their orders "cease & desist".

Re:This is bad, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd agree with you except for one thing that differs from all of your examples: the FreeCraft guys aren't making any money off this. They aren't charging for their software, so how are they "riding the coat tails"?

Re:This is bad, but..

[surprise_audit]

I agree with what you say, but the question still stands - how few letters can reasonably be claimed to be infringing? Would a medieval RTS called Raft be considered to be infringing? Never mind, I'm sure whatever we agree on is guaranteed to be different to some lawyers opinion, and that's what really counts, isn't it?

Apparently, McDonald's believe they have the sole right to use the two letter prefix 'Mc', judging by the threat of legal action against Mary Blair and her McMunchies sandwich shop back in 1996. She sells cold meats and cold sandwiches and has a Scottish Thistle and St.Andrews flag on her sign.

The McDonald clan is fighting back, though. Lord McDonald, head of the McDonald clan, has appointed a clan member, one Ronald W McDonald, to be Sergeant-Major at Arms of the Guardians of Clan Donald: the linear descendant of the chief's bodyguard. The Guardians of Clan Donald aim to uphold and protect the dignity and honour of the ancient and honourable name of Clan Donald by all legal mean

Blizzard sUX0rZ! WTFOMG!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they get this.

Re:Blizzard sUX0rZ! WTFOMG!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF is that? It looks like a cross between a titty and the cappuchin Mountains!

USA, land of lawyerdom

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately I don't live in the US and I can wipe
my ass with this C&D.

New name suggestion:

[vegetablespork]

"Whorecraft" Let's see them threaten over that being "confusingly similar."

~~~

Re:New name suggestion:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Whorecraft" Let's see them threaten over that being "confusingly similar."

So let's see the screenshots :)

Re:New name suggestion:

[tangent3]

Cool! A new RTS where you have to out-micro your opponent and manage your economy to whore more slashdot karma points!

Re:New name suggestion:

[kfg]

That's a good one, but it doesn't include the obligatory "Free" that apparently must appear in the name of every OSS copy of some commercial program.

So taking your thinking, but modifying it properly for the genre, I get "FreeWhore."

I admit I like this a bit better than my own idea, which was to redo the artwork so that it featured strange, cylindrically shaped aliens and calling it "FreeBeer."

KFG

Re:New name suggestion:

[gearheadsmp]

Or, if you really want to send them a message, "LitigousBastardCraft"

RIAA/MPAA vs Open Source

[HanzoSan]

Vivendi Universal is the owner of Blizzard. Vivendi Universal hates the free software movement, why? Because its assosiated with the Mp3/FileSharing movement.

I think people need to consider certsain media companies to be a threat to open source, and a threat to our personal fair use rights, Vivendi Universal is one of these companies.

Microsoft takes alot of heat, but I think even more heat should be given to companies like Vivendi Universal who sue anyone and everyone who is a threat to their monopoly power and business.

They sue file sharing companies who create new ways of distributing music, they sue open source companies who create new ways to play games, they will sue you and I if we use these networks, even if they dont know why we are using them.

Its not about piracy anymore, its about competition, if they cant own all the code, and all the distribution companies, they sue.

Re:RIAA/MPAA vs Open Source

[Frohboy]

Vivendi Universal is the owner of Blizzard. Vivendi Universal hates the free software movement, why? Because its assosiated [sic] with the Mp3/FileSharing movement.

Isn't this the same Vivendi Universal that owns EMusic? (An online subscription-based MP3 downloading service.)

Re:RIAA/MPAA vs Open Source

[HanzoSan]

Yes, that one.

Re:RIAA/MPAA vs Open Source

[ihatesco]

Offtopic:
I don't want to be there when Vivendi/Universal starts bossing people around with taxes on water since they bought their water company -_-;

Intopic:
Anyway, I think that Opensource code is great because I could take freecraft code, put a brand new game (maybe a role playgame) and my former code isn't dead. Of course I should have thought of making my code reusable and modular enough, but the most important and reusable thing in computing is experience.

Re:RIAA/MPAA vs Open Source

[thdexter]

Kudos to you for being a subscriber, but how is
the free software movement [...] assosiated[sic] with the Mp3/FileSharing movement? Proprietary systems don't run under the same rules that OSS does; creating a WCII workalike and calling it *Craft is as much a troll as I suspect your post is.

Um...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't FreeCraft just a blantent ripoff of WarCraft?

Re:Um...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, um, yeah, but... shut up!

Re:Um...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is an engine replacement so you can play the original games under linux.

Re:Um...

[arose]

Isn't WarCraft just a ripoff of Dune II?

Re:Um...

[The Creator]

Isn't FreeCraft just a blantent ripoff of WarCraft?

"ripoff"s are fully legal.

Um . . .

[WalterDGeranios]

due to the name 'FreeCraft' causing possible confusion with the names StarCraft and WarCraft

Sorry if this is a stupid question--but which one of these was the open source game, and which were the Blizzard games? I can't ever keep them straight.

Re:Um . . .

[rtaylor]

They should rename it to CruftFree.

That'll help keep them straight.

Re:Um . . .

[thePfhitz]

I can't ever keep them straight.

You think you've got it bad... I thought I was getting some fun strategy game, but all I got was this lousy van.

Was I trying to get StarCraft or FreeCraft? *shrug* Aren't they the same? The names are so similar, I can't tell the difference!

Re:Um . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

So then who owns the trademarks to tradecraft and metalcraft? What about "Arts & Craft" stores?

Isn't the [*]craft brand confusion argument similar to the one about Lindows vs. Windows?

Re:Um . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether a computer geek like you can tell the difference between "FreeCraft" and "WarCraft" isn't the point. The point is the team working on FreeCraft was riding on Blizzard's coat-tails. It was a real-time strategy game, for fuck's sake, not the name of a recreational vehicle.

Not obvious at all

[SlamMan]

What did they expect? It's like starting a company called 'Appel' to sell a photo editing prodocut called 'ifoto'.

Re:Not obvious at all

[Anonymous Coward]

What did they expect? It's like starting a company called 'Appel' to sell a photo editing prodocut called 'ifoto'.

Much more like starting a company called Freeple to distribute a product called Freefoto.

Re:Not obvious at all

[Dark Lord Seth]

That will get you trouble with the dutch division of Apple. Wether deliberate or not, you just managed to do a nice and flawless translation of Apple products from their english names to their dutch equivalents. :P

Not funny

[hackwrench]

Ever hear of the ends justify the means?

Re:owning "derivitive" works

[Anonymous Coward]

>Blizzard doesn't hold the rights to the whole RTS genre, if >that was the case then C&C and AoE and lots of others >would be in trouble.

Why not? SCO is claiming rights to "the whole of Unix" and all derivitive or related work in much the same way and under much the same legal principles. This is where the danger of a "IP" centric mentality supported through a legal structure will bring us if this kind of nonsense is not stopped now dead in it's tracks.

Read Slashdot!!

[attobyte]

I hope someone over there reads slashdot because the will know how many people the pissed off. But we ( the human race) likes businesses walking on us. I will not purchase a game of theres ever. I am sure Warcraft 3 will make it to the $2 shelves and I still wont buy it. I have always disliked that company. Blaming it on there parent is no excuss, even though I probably dislike that complany too.

We will companies learn that eveything is not a threat?

Re:Read Slashdot!!

[Uart]

FreeCraft was a threat, a threat to their trademark. If you don't defend your trademarks, then you stand to lose them. Thats why you can't open a small coffee shop and call it Starbucks, or a courier service called FedEx.

Its called "dilution" when the infringing title is similar. There was a famous case where FedEx sued a NY State coffee shop called FederalExpresso for trademark dilution. I think they won, (That was a far-fetched case, obviously).

IANAL, but I think the law requires them to do this. I doubt they can stop FreeCraft from changing their name and continuing development though.

Re:Read Slashdot!!

[attobyte]

Then they can rename it and continue. So how different does it have to be? I don't think Lindows lost there suit. Thats still half of Windows(tm). Just like Freecraft is half of Starcraft(tm). I know they don't have the money to fight. They should just change the name and continue.

Mike

Re:Read Slashdot!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope someone over there reads slashdot because the will know how many people the pissed off. But we ( the human race) likes businesses walking on us. I will not purchase a game of theres ever. I am sure Warcraft 3 will make it to the $2 shelves and I still wont buy it. I have always disliked that company. Blaming it on there parent is no excuss, even though I probably dislike that complany too.

I work for Universal (not in software) and trust me we won't miss your 2 dollars. If we can deal with thousands of paying customers cheating and getting banned a few linux nerds screaming about free software will not bother us.

Re:Read Slashdot!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Judging by your spelling and grammar, it looks like you're about 10-11, so I doubt you have the money to buy their games anyway. Not that they'll care either way.

Re:Read Slashdot!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe someday you'll piss off the wrong "nerd" who's a little unstable and have a meatspace problem in or around your corporate HQ. Wouldn't be the first time someone's gone off half-cocked and started shooting over being mad at a corporation. If I worked there, I'd take a different route to work each day, and wear my kevlar. (I'm not threatening to do anything like this. I just hope someone does.)

Re:Read Slashdot!!

[Creep73]

Sorry but blizzard isn't going to be hurt by anything they do. You may not like the company but very few people care enough about the issues to actually inconvenience themselves. They will continue to by blizzard products just like they continue to buy music from these companies. When was the last time you bought a CD or a game associated with universal? When large companies put out good products they can do what ever they want because people just want to play that new cool game.If they read slashdot will they care? No, because they know that there market share is secure. People like you are me do not decide their success. Its the masses of people who are driven not by the ills of the world but their own desire to have fun and have conveniences.

Re:Read Slashdot!!

[attobyte]

I know, I know, but I can HOPE.

I am going to crawl back in my hole and come out in a year or two and see how we're doing then.

Re:Read Slashdot!!

[EllisDees]

Blizzard does not have a trademark on the word "Craft". Therefore, it is not trademark infringement to call your game (anything)Craft. Sure, if they had called it Free Warcraft, then there might be some merit to the complaint. As it is, Blizzard is just being a whiny bitch - albeit a whiny bitch with expensive lawyers.

Re:Read Slashdot!!

[Uart]

This would come under the concept of trademark dilution.

IANAL, so I don't know exactly how all this works, look it up if you want further clarification. This is covered very well in West's Business Law, if you can get your hands on a copy.

Re:Read Slashdot!!

[EllisDees]

As someone pointed out below, just having similar names and being in a similar business is not enough for trademark dilution. (Re. the recent Victoria's Secret and Victor's Secret case). There has to be proof of actual harm, and since Blizzard doesn't make warcraft for Linux, that's going to be hard to prove.

Re:Read Slashdot!!

[Uart]

Seems there were Windows and Mac versions of Freecraft.

From here:

FreeCraft is a free cross-platform real-time strategy gaming engine. It is possible to play against human opponents over LAN, Internet, or against the computer. The engine can be used to build C&C, WC2, SC and AOE-like real-time strategy (RTS) games. It successfully runs under Linux, BSD, BeOS, MacOS/X, MacOS/Darwin and MS Windows.

Re:Read Slashdot!!

[rhavyn]

It was actually FederalEspresso. And the coffee shop folded and changed their name because they couldn't afford the legal fees, it never went to court.

Re:Read Slashdot!!

[EllisDees]

Oops. You're right. Still, how many people running freecraft bought a copy of the original just to get the better graphic files? If anything, they had to have sold some copies that they wouldn't have if freecraft hadn't existed.

just a little update!

[LuxFX]

C'mon guys, here's where you have the advantage because you can do something that big-shot software companies can't. Just make a few minor changes in the game artwork, and rename the game. re-release it as a "different game" and under a different company logo if you have to.

the advantage you have that Blizzard doesn't have is that you can move faster than they can, and you're not as tied down to a name/branding.

fly like a butterfly....
.

Re:just a little update!

[Safety Cap]

rename the game

Duh. That would be too easy. Most likely, they panicked when they got the C&D letter, and instead of talking to a lawyer, they said, "Heck with it," and shut down.

C'mon, people, you can find a lawyer very easily. Most offer a low price for the initial consultation. It is in your best interest to talk to one before you take any action, so that you understand the consequence and any repercussions that will arise from your decision. Even capitulation may have dire consequences.

I talked to laywer regarding an IP issue a while back and it only cost me $20 for a 1/2 hour (it would've cost $200 for the next hour---it would have been worth it---but I didn't need that long).

Re:just a little update!

[Qeyser]

Just make a few minor changes in the game artwork, and rename the game.

But this is what you /can't/ do. Follow the link and look at the screenshot. The characters and buildings look /identical/ to those in WC2.

While I think that you should be able to make a free knockoff of someone else's game, I think that taking artwork crosses the line. As much as I hate to admit it, Blizzard is in the right here . . .

Re:just a little update!

[cicatrix1]

Yay. Another undeducated nit-wit just frothing at the mouth to post. Go America!

Freecraft gives you the option of using Warcraft II artwork IF YOU OWN THE GAME. You can run a script and it will extract the artwork off of the CD. Otherwise, you have to download their rather bad looking art pack.

Re:just a little update!

[moonbender]

And how were we supposed to know this? Reading the article is courtesy before commenting on Slashdot, but this doesn't follow from the article at all. And whether this changes anything is arguable, as well. Anyway, others managed to point it out in a normal fashion, there really was no need for name-calling.

Re:just a little update!

[Anonymous Coward]

duh..that screenshot is from someone who uses the original game data. No problem there.

Re:just a little update!

[Jugalator]

But this is what you /can't/ do. Follow the link and look at the screenshot. The characters and buildings look /identical/ to those in WC2.

That's because they use the Warcraft II data files in that case. They don't need to do that, and can use different files. Sure, the engine might work very closely and that might be why a simple name change doesn't suffice. It isn't due to the graphics in any case, since you need to own the game to use those.

Re:just a little update!

[Anonymous Coward]

this still doesn't mean everyone is able to afford the time to deal with it

Re:just a little update!

[Anonymous Coward]

So wouldn't this be covered under the fact of using their artwork without prior permission for a different game?

You may own the game but you can't plug the art into another functional game to compete with it.

Re:just a little update!

[MyHair]

The other advantage is that it's GPL. I thought I had the source, but I don't; I have the FreeCiv source. :-(

I didn't get a C&D letter. Did you? Fork it as a new project.

Re:just a little update!

[asteinberg]

Is that even really necessary? Is what they did actually illegal?

It seems to me comparable to all the "brand-x" stuff you see in a grocery store. Look at all the Dr. Pepper rip-offs [quick google search...] - here - most have names that start with Dr. and end with something similar to Pepper. Those are legal, right? How is this any different?

Re:just a little update!

[Qeyser]

Yay. Another undeducated nit-wit just frothing at the mouth to post.

Whoa, back off there. The article doesn't mention that little tid-bit.

OpenSource proggies developed under P2P?

[kenthorvath]

What would happen if they continued to work on the project, releasing it over Gnutella or something similar, but without specifically taking credit for the coding? How could Blizzard ever prove WHO was actually writing the code? Without a target to send a cease and desist to, how can they sue for trademark damages? They can't feasibly C&D every person on a P2P network. And this isn't a case of copyright infringement. What could they possibly do?

Still available...

[meringuoid]

# emerge freecraft freecraft-fcmp

Yep, here it comes. I'll cease and desist downloading this right now, of course...

Re:Still available...

[mrybczyn]

LOL, good idea, time to boot up that gentoo box and check it out...

Thanks to Vivendi for pointing this game out to me.

Cheers,
Mitch

Re:Still available...

[Anonymous Coward]

liar. the only mirror source for it is at sourceforge, currently shut down.

Re:Still available...

[debrain]

Since this sort of thing takes a while to get to debian ...

http://[debian mirror]/debian/pool/main/f/freecraft/
http://[deb ian mirror]/debian/pool/main/f/fcmp/

And, for those of you using debian ...

$ apt-get install freecraft
$ apt-get source freecraft fcmp


Cheers ...

Blizzard contact info

[Anonymous Coward]

E-mails:

sitelicense@blizzard.com

support@blizzard.com

macsupport@blizzard.com

Long distance phone: 1-949-955-1382

Call them and tell them what you think!

did anybody download the source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone download the source before this thing .. and how close to the latest version?

Usually people dont bother downloading sources of open source software. Let this be a lesson. Download the source of all your favorite open source software (no matter if you think it's popular and mad people have the source) and burn a copy to CD, and keep that CD in a safe place. Cause you never fucking know when shit like this may happen.

I'm not just talking about software such as Samba, gnutella etc. Even Open Office, Gnumeric etc. You never know when The Nazis will shut them down. More copies out there the better.
Nowadays it's easy to claim patnet infrignement etc. The patent system is fucked up, and so is the judicial system. This applies to every country, not just the one you live in. This a global phenomenon.

Call me paranoid but when it was predicted over 3 years ago in http://features.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?lts n=2000-02-22-004-05-NW-0003 that SCO may eventually start suing people everybody laughed.

Re:did anybody download the source?

[Tyreth]

Bah, not a problem at all. It's mirrored on probably thousands of computers at the moment. I just emerged it myself to make sure I had the code.

You can find it anywhere. As I'm australian, this was my server of preference - http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/gentoo/distfiles/

Re:did anybody download the source?

[Anonymous Coward]

bullshit
it is a problem: the development halted.
who is going to maintain it now?

Re:did anybody download the source?

[pillohead]

Usually people dont bother downloading sources of open source software. 99% of FreeBSD users do, it's called the port system all the software that has been ported to it is compiled from source. NetBSD has pkgsrc and OpenBSD has the ports like FreeBSD. cd /usr/ports/games/freecraft;make install clean Where'd you think Gentoo got the idea :p

Re:did anybody download the source?

[The Mgt]

http://www.lies.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/mirror/freecr aft_1.18.tar.gz

Private mirror here (.au)

[leonbrooks]

Be kind to it, only fetch if you're going to do something useful with the code. Some of the real mirror sites are still up (wayback is your friend) and may be faster if you're in the USA or Europe. Of course, if you're hitting my ISP from WAIX then ArachNet won't care about bytes, so go for it.

Re:Private mirror here (.au)

[vegetablespork]

Any chance you could seed a P2P network or three with that? Once it's there, your trans-oceanic bandwidth will be happier :).

~~~

Re:Private mirror here (.au)

[ihatesco]

Sorry, where it is? I downloaded a 600kb zipfile -_-;

Re:Private mirror here (.au)

[C32]

That site on wayback (and your mirrored file, taken from the same site) is hopelessly outdated..
See the "2001" in the url?
FreeCraft is at version 1.18 (or more), haven't checked lately.

Re:Private mirror here (.au)

[blibbleblobble]

"Be kind to it, only fetch if you're going to do something useful with the code."

If you have downloading problems, put the file onto Konspire or Freenet

But dammit, change the name and make sure the project development continues. Don't just treat the whole thing like a legal hot-potato just because somebody's spoken nasty words to the project.

If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game,

[HanzoSan]

Perhaps if you spent some of this money buying or donating to Freecraft not only would we have better games, we'd have free games. Free games would hurt Vivendi Universal and Blizzard more than anything else. Free Games that are good would kill them.

We need to set up a way to support development of games, perhaps a transgaming style game development company, where people subscribe, vote on the type of game they want and its features, and then the coders code it out.

They'd only have to charge 5$ a month, theres plenty of open source game engines to use, they'd only need to hire artists, and do some coding.

Open source game development means once one game is done they'd never need to reinvent the wheel, this means we could have higher quality Open Source games than the current game industry simply because everyone would use the best engine and improve on it instead of everyone writing or licensing their own.

Imagine what could be done? But we first need a way to fund enough games to get millions of people interested. The best way to make these greedy companies pay is to setup a whole open source PC game movement, on a large scale, and let the gamers fund it.

Transgaming is doing pretty good at version 3.1, they have allowed hundreds of games to be ported to Linux within a matter of years. Now I think its time for a company to step up and do a Linux game development setup, and not like what Loki did, but in a transgaming style payment setup.

It makes no sense for us to use the outdated old business model for open source products. Its proven that it doesnt work, the transgaming model is proven to work.

I'd subscribe to a FreeCraft subscription if there was a company out there willing to transfer my money, or if FreeCraft becomes a company and sets it all up. If they make a good game, I keep subscribed to them and if their game sucks I can subscribe to more established game development people who are better.

what bullshit

[dh003i]

So, because these jack-offs chose to put the word "craft" in their game -- a common every-day word, to describe something -- they get to sue everyone who uses the word "craft" as part of their game title?

This is fucking bullshit.

Re:what bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new to this world.

Welcome. Pay $2.

Re:what bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it did not help that the devs describe the game as "a Warcraft 2 clone".

Re:what bullshit

[damiam]

No, they get to sue everyone who uses "Craft" in the name of a game whose appearence and gameplay is obviously copied from Warcraft. I wish Blizzard wouldn't do this, but they do have a case and it is their right.

Re:what bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

no, it's because some jack-offs decided to make a game with 'craft' in the title of a game that was in effect very very very similar to another game with the word 'craft' in the title in essentially the same context.

you can go back to fucking your bullshit now, knee jerk.

Hmm. Seems reasonable.

[Anonymous Coward]

In many ways, it seems like a reasonable thing for Blizzard to do -- they're protecting their investments and working (in their eyes) to do what is best for their company, their employees, private investors, etc.

I don't completely agree with the actions taken by either side, mind you.

First, the Freecraft project probably shouldn't have tried to so closely mimic Starcraft in name and graphics. Surely, the developers MUST have realized that something like this was bound to happen, especially given Blizzard's propensity for shutting down free "stuff" (e.g., bnetd servers). In the very least, they should have called the project something different.

Second, while I'm not a lawyer, I would think it reasonable for the project to open itself back up again under a different name (and after changing its races names, graphics, or whatever else Blizzard thinks might be infringing on their rights). The underlying engine is sound, and it wouldn't take long for the developers to resurrect it, free of legal issues.

Third, I think that Blizzard should have taken the stance of warning the project developers first (e.g., "advising" them to change names) before resorting to their big guns. But, again, I'm not a lawyer (and not well versed in such contemptable American corporate law).

Finally, I would suggest the following: if you disagree with Blizzard's actions, don't buy Blizzard products. I, for one, am not overly surprised, and am not "incensed" by Blizzard's actions. I believe Blizzard to have acted reasonably given the circumstances, though I think that their legal actions could have been executed more cleanly.

Play with fire, get burned

[osgeek]

Why did the FreeCraft people choose a *Craft name? Because they were trying to horn in on some of the success of Blizzard, obviously. They wanted there to be a strong name association between their project and a branded one that Blizzard created.

You guys making FreeCraft should have flown a bit more under the radar. Blizzard developed the brand, let them have it and create something of your own. Spending time in court over something like this seems counterproductive, if your goal is just to get good fun free software out to people. Spend your time coding instead.

Re:Play with fire, get burned

[Anonymous Coward]

KIllustrator, anyone?

Names for software aren't that hard to come up with. There's no need for a 'Years Passed Since the Birthdate of Empires', or a 'Tremble III', or a 'Full-Life', or a 'VeryLengthyQuest'.

Or even a 'CombatUpontheSurfaceofaPlanet'.

Apparently, the open source community, even while reviling commercial industries for lack of innovation and creativity, suffers from the same.

Ripping off gameplay? That's fine and well. After all, that's what Blizzard is founded upon. (Dune 2, anyone?)

But when I see open source projects that can't even come up with an original name, I find myself wondering if the code behind the game will even live up to the archaic original that they're ripping off.

Re:Play with fire, get burned

[geekster]

It was a clone, how could there not be an association?

Re:Play with fire, get burned

[dougmc]

Why did the FreeCraft people choose a *Craft name?

I don't know about you, but I don't find the name `FreeCraft' to be `confusingly similar' to `WarCraft' or `StarCraft'. And `confusingly similar' is the bar that must be exceeded when one pursues a trademark case like this.

Blizzard does *not* have a trademark on *Craft. (Or maybe they do -- I haven't checked. But they can't trademark all possible words with the word `Craft' after them.)

The real reason that FreeCraft folded is that they have no budget to fight back with -- it's the old `big company with lots of lawyers' go after those with none, because they feel that the need to protect their trademarks requires it. That, and people may be playing FreeCraft rather than buying Blizzard games -- that's just an added bonus.

Re:Play with fire, get burned

[osgeek]

I don't know about you, but I don't find the name `FreeCraft' to be `confusingly similar' to `WarCraft' or `StarCraft'.

You don't, but these cases aren't decided by /.-reading geeks, they're decided by technologically ignorant judges and juries who would be presented with the names of all of the Blizzard games, as well as a healthy variety of game names in the industry. For an unknowledgeable judge/jury, anything that uses *Craft, is advertised as based on the WarCraft II game, and looks similar is going to be deemed "confusingly similar".

I don't see the EFF stepping up to defend this one.

For non-Gentoo users

[meringuoid]

That emerge command grabbed the source from http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu/distfiles. You're after freecraft itself and fcmp, the additional media packs that let you play it without having to actually buy Warcraft.

Re:For non-Gentoo users

[PhoenixFlare]

That emerge command grabbed the source from http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu/distfiles. You're after freecraft itself and fcmp, the additional media packs that let you play it without having to actually buy Warcraft.

Methinks that would be the problem right there....You want to play Warcraft, spend $12 and buy the damn game instead of stealing it :P

Re:For non-Gentoo users

[meringuoid]

Well, I just played the game for a while, and I think I _am_ going to buy Warcraft. That media pack is just not very good. The background music is a godawful MIDI file, and the graphics look like they were made in MS Paint. It's the same problem FreeCiv had - programmers generally aren't great artists. I installed the graphics files from a real Civ2 CD on FreeCiv, and I think I'll have to do much the same in FreeCraft.

Re:For non-Gentoo users

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are there so many fucking retards who have no idea how this works?

To get warcraft 2 graphics with FreeCraft, YOU MUST OWN WARCRAFT 2. You cannot play the original on Anything but windows. Now you see the whole point of them making this game, don't you? OMFG PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP UNTIL YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.

GG

Re:For non-Gentoo users

[unborn]

I was going to mod you down, however, I decided to waste my chance to moderate this interesting discussion, in order to correct you.

The text that you bolded does not imply theft. "the additional media packs" have been designed independently by the FreeCraft project. The engine has also been written by them. So, the entire bundle FreeCraft + FCMP is not 100% property of FreeCraft.

The only issues are issues of whether making software clones is allowed and improper naming. There is no theft involved.

If clones are not allowed, then say goodbye to projects like xpde, scummvm, samba and even wine. I think Blizzard went way over their line here...Can the FSF attorneys help out in this case?

Re:For non-Gentoo users

[PhoenixFlare]

My apologies. That statement and much of the other readily available info on FreeCraft gives the impression that the media pack is a direct copy of Blizzard's material....Lead me to make a false conclusion.

I still do think Blizzard could have a legitimate grievance regarding dilution of their trademark, however. I could see someone trying FreeCraft, thinking it was a true representation of the real version, and developing bad blood towards Blizzard.

Re:For non-Gentoo users

[Anonymous Coward]

I still do think Blizzard could have a legitimate grievance regarding dilution of their trademark, however. I could see someone trying FreeCraft, thinking it was a true representation of the real version, and developing bad blood towards Blizzard.

Hopefully Lucasfilm will go after Blizzard too for Starcraft. As soon as I see the word "Star" I think "this must be a Lucasfilm product" just like you with the word "craft". Will this confusion never end? :(

Re:For non-Gentoo users

[PhoenixFlare]

Umm...Where did I say it had anything to do with "Craft"?

At the moment, all the engine seems to be able to do is Warcraft 2-esque play, hence my point.

Re:For non-Gentoo users

[Jonner]

What if you want to play Warcraft II on a non Microsoft or Apple platform, like Solaris or GNU/Linux on Alpha? Even on x86 GNU/Linux, it may work better than Warcraft on DOSEmu or Wine. The free art is definitely inferior, so the solution is to buy Warcraft and use FreeCraft. FreeCraft runs on *nix and can use the media from Warcraft. FreeCraft benefits Blizzard because it enables their game to be played on more platforms. It's a project that adds value to their product at no cost to them and they're trying to destroy it. This is very similar to LucasArts going after ScummVM. Both companies are treating their customers and fans as enemies or competitors to be destroyed. For examples of friendly companies, look at Id and Valve. They see their customers as potential fellow developers and give them the tools to enhance and reuse the games and engines.

Re:For non-Gentoo users

[juhaz]

You were talking about "dilution of a trademark". Which automagically equals it has everything to do with "Craft".

Because "Craft" is only thing in Blizzard games that is, or even can be trademarked. "Warcraft 2-esque play" is not a name, or logo, that could in any way be trademarked, it MIGHT perhaps be patented, but there have been no mentions of patents here so I assume it has not been.

Why not just change it?

[MaestroSartori]

Disclaimer: IANAL, but I am a games programmer...

Why didn't the project team just:

1) Change the name of the project, removing the source of the confusion with the Blizzard titles

then

2) Remove anything which looked like it might directly infringe on Blizzard's IP (I'm guessing there's things like similar artwork here, since gameplay mechanics cannot be copyrighted).

This would leave the cease-and-desist without a legal leg to stand on, as the grounds it had been sent under were no longer valid. After all, plenty of people out there clone other games, it looks like these guys just cloned *Craft a bit too closely and have annoyed someone with a lawyer...

Re:Why not just change it?

[RickHunter]

No, game mechanics can't be copyrighted. But in case you haven't been paying attention to the whole DMCA fiasco, that doesn't matter anymore. Big companies use the law like a hammer - and it doesn't matter if you're in the right, because they're the ones with deeper pockets and crack teams of trained attack lawyers. They can force you into bankruptcy long before you've had a chance to "prove your innocence". Which is, BTW, exactly what you have to do, as most judges will rule in favour of big corporations by default, and the corp gets their choice of corts to sue you in.

Re:Why not just change it?

[_xeno_]

(I'm guessing there's things like similar artwork here, since gameplay mechanics cannot be copyrighted).

Last time I checked out FreeCraft, not only was there "similar" graphics, there were icons and images ripped straight out of StarCraft. Like various tiles from the grassland StarCraft mapset, likewise with tree "doo-dads" from StarCraft. I think they also flat-out stole a Terran Marine as a unit.

Creating your own free RTS game is a worthy goal. FreeCraft is attempting to recreate StarCraft or something. FreeCraft was asking for this to happen. My first thought was "it's about time" - I would have expected this to happen a long time ago.

Maybe some of the FreeCraft code can be resurrected into a truly new game, but not only was the current game not that interesting, it was also a fairly blatant ripoff of StarCraft.

I think I'll write a game.

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'll call it siegecraft.

And it'll have nothing to do with the lack-of-strategy genre.

Blizzard can feel free to discourse with my lawyer.

My lawyer, btw, is IN MY PANTS.

uhoh

[jesler]

Some personal projects I may have to rethink:

BarCraft - Can you restore the broken supply line of ale for the underaged teens lurking in the carpark outside?

DartCraft - The expansion pack for BarCraft. It's RTS darts, with uh... resources and stuff.

ParCraft - Play 18 holes of golf while repelling invading loons in golf buggies.

FarCraft - Like a regular RTS, but it'll take 3 and a half days to cross the map.

RarCraft - You have to play with all game data (gfx, sound, etc) still in compressed form.

LoreCraft - Get the Law School upgrade on your Fortress to produce a phalanx of patent-happy lawyers.

BoreCraft - The only unit is a peasant. Buy the expansion for female peasants!

Re:uhoh

[Anonymous Coward]

mod up to funny

Re:uhoh

[Anonymous Coward]

FarCraft - Like a regular RTS, but it'll take 3 and a half days to cross the map.

See, now that has ties with both Blizzard's *Craft line of games and Sony's Star Wars: Galaxies. There could be some problems even if you do rename it.

Re:uhoh

[ConceptJunkie]

Don't forget:

LaraCraft - Twice the fun, twice the action, twice the legal troubles.

Re:uhoh

[suss]

AssCraft - you practice proctology on Orcs, even though they don't want or need it.

SlashCraft - you link websites on here and watch them blow up.

SCOCraft - you try to sue a Dark Templar and die.

The Craft - a movie with Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell who are witches'n'stuff.

C-Raft - Strom Thurmond, Ross Perot and a pig are put on a Raft in the middle of the pacific, with a live satellite feed present. (Slightly more amusing than C-Span)

DalCraft - you try and retry to connect to IRC servers while they are being DDoSed by the RIAA

Re:uhoh

[TrixX]

BoreCraft already exists. But it's called "The Sims".

Re:uhoh

[Seclusion]

FarCraft - Like a regular RTS, but it'll take 3 and a half days to cross the map.

I've played that, it's called Age of .... but watch out, Microsoft owns the rights to that and I'm sure they wouldn't hesitate to sue.

Re:uhoh

[RCVinson]

"BoreCraft - The only unit is a peasant. Buy the expansion for female peasants!"

.....er. "PornCraft"?

*hangs head in shame*

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[damiam]

theres plenty of open source game engines to use

There are? I can think of CrystalSpace, and Quake II as the only decent open-source FPS engines (and none of them is that good, compared to the likes of DoomIII, HL2, Halo2, etc), and Freecraft was the only decent RTS engine. Is there some secret 31337 open-source engine repository I'm missing out on?

Oh PLEASE

[geckofiend]

Only an idiot would start a project to produce a RTS with a name that's only a few letters away from an established line of RTS games.

I have ZERO sympathy for these people. It takes about 30 seconds to realize that maybe the name + genre was a bad idea. But hey we get folks starting projects all the time based on TV shows without permission. Then they come and cry months into the dev cycle when they get a C&D.

Coyboy Neal & Co, how would you feel if YOU were Blizzard and someone was trying to ride on the coattails of the brand you worked your ass off to build?

Re:Oh PLEASE

[Tyreth]

How do you feel about freeciv?

Re:Oh PLEASE

[DeadScreenSky]

I wonder how Westwood, Jordan Mechner, Miyamoto and others felt when Blizzard essentially rode the coattails of their pretty innovative game designs that they worked their asses off to make? They certainly didn't sue Blizzard, though.

I do agree the TV series mods and the like are a little ridiculous (of course they will and do get sued), but I still have sympathy to the people who try and do it. When our cultural stories and mythology are mostly created by big corporations, I don't care that copyright laws protect them. Stuff like Star Wars, Aliens, Buffy, DBZ*, Simpsons, etc. etc. Especially considering how much power these companies wield to prevent the 'common people' from creating popular stories, or to steal them when they appear regardless.belong to us too, now. They are our shared culture - these are our stories now too. Culture is beyond Copyright.

*In the case of anime and manga, most Japanese companies/creators actually do understand that the myths belong to the people at least a little, and allow all sorts of fan creations like doushinji. I am not sure how much this extends to things like mods, though. The American licensors of these series certainly don't allow any of this, AFAIK.

Re:Oh PLEASE

[aliens]

Riding the coattails? Yeah, they're really racking in the dough now. Man I should start my own free open source project cause I too want to be filthy rich!

Re:Oh PLEASE

[FroMan]

FreeCiv?

Re:Oh PLEASE

[Anonymous Coward]

I laughed so hard I spit on my screen!

Re:Oh PLEASE

[geckofiend]

Honestly? I think it's lame as hell. I mean really folks, if you want to write a game great. At least TRY to come up with your own idea.

Re:Oh PLEASE

[geckofiend]

If you think an OS developer has nothing to gain from a high profile OS project you are a fool.

Reagardless of monetary gain or not the fact remains that they did not create the brand. So they should not stand to benefit from it or exploit it in any way.

Look at it this way: If they didn't have something to gain by the association with War/Starcraft then why name it that?

Re:Oh PLEASE

[Snaller]

Nobody is trying to ride on their coattails - its just retarded lawyers on ritalin going nuts again.

Re:Oh PLEASE

[Quazion]

Might i say however the game might not be an orginal, the play style is. Freeciv is imho the only good multiplayer civ game, something the orginal probably still lacks.

Freeciv created an active civ playing community of people who love the orginal civ game. Its not that i and maybe other dont like to pay for the original (which i did, i own two diffrent versions). Its just that freeciv offers something the original doesnt.

And there for i disagree thats its LAME! wake up and smell the coffee...

Re:Oh PLEASE

[geckofiend]

Just imagine what they could have come up with had they applied their talents to an original idea instead of cloneing someone elses idea..

Re:Oh PLEASE

[Scott Wood]

What difference does it make? They apparently wanted multiplayer Civilization, and Civilization on platforms it previously did not support, not something else. It's their time to spend as they wish, not yours.

Re:Oh PLEASE

[Anonymous Coward]

and just image what you might be able to do with you "talents" if you didn't spend every waking moment like the rest of us posting to slash dot!

Re:Oh PLEASE

[Jad LaFields]

I know very little about freeciv and how similar it is to Civilization, but the fact that Meier and company has not gone after what might be a similar trademark violation as FreeCraft is does not make what Blizzard is doing *wrong*. (If my mailbox gets stolen, and my neighbor's does too, just because I decide not to persue the case doesn't mean he's wrong if he does).

Re:Oh PLEASE

[cybermace5]

They should have named it "FreeCrap."

Re:Oh PLEASE

[aliens]

I highly doubt the decsion to name their project went so maliciously as, "Let's name it after starcraft and warcraft, that way we can get the recognition those games already have!!"

More likely since warcraft and starcraft are huge brands that everyone thinks of when RTS is mentioned, FreeCraft was just the first obvious name to pop into the geek mind for a Free Open Source RTS.

You make it sound like they're exploiting Blizzard. What exactly do these developers gain from doing this in their free time? Some recognition amoung fellow geeks? Maybe the chance that some company will see their skills and hire them? What they do gain is experience, but I guess we should sue them for that back too!

Re:Oh PLEASE

[EllisDees]

You mean likie Blizzard did with Warcraft?

Original? Hahahahaha!

Re:Oh PLEASE

[Holger Spielmann]

Only an idiot would start a project to produce a RTS with a name that's only a few letters away from an established line of RTS games
Just for the records - the idiots did it:

• about six years ago - why does Bli**ard start to sue them now, he?
• it was first under the name "ale-clone", and renamed to FreeCraft some time later
• FreeCraft is configurable - you can tune the engine to any kind of RTS you like. No copycat!
• If you liked to play the default W*rCr*ft-style game, you needed the free graphics provided by FreeCraft or an original W*rCr*ft2 CD to get the graphics from
• AFAIK there was a Windows version of FreeCraft, but IMHO this project was primarily targeted at the Linux and BSD communities, people about which Bli**ard cares a f*ck

I imagine there will be a day where at least some free software can only be published under pseudonyme any more, and only in places like Sealand or Russia.
:-(

Re:Oh PLEASE

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

What have YOU written?

It isn't the first time...

[botzi]

..for Vivendi to go after OSS which's in competition with some of their products... story here

Even if in the case of Freecraft, it doesn't seem as they were chalenging Blizzard's market or something...

Re:It isn't the first time...

[m1chael]

its got to do with mindshare and dilution of thought.

C+D?

[caluml]

happypenguin.org is struggling to come to terms with Slashdots own form of Cease and Desist :)

Sad.

[mikeee]

I made some very minor contributions to this a couple years ago; it's pretty much playable these days.

OTOH, I always thought it would have made more sense to build it as a generic engine, with at least one totally original theme, than a 100% clone of Warcraft mechanics. (In fairness, I think the plan was to move in that direction eventually).

But like a lot of these, probably 70% of the code was written by one guy, I think, so if they've chased him off the project is toast. :(

How about "WitchCraft v1.0"

[GnuPengwyn]

Seems like WitchCraft has been around a lot longer than any of Blizzard's "*Crap." I ain't got much more to say, cept that Blizzard is a very misguided company. I wonder if the Guitar Cord maker "SwitchCraft" could cause Blizzard some collateral damage? CrisCraft Boats? Too bad the Wiccan's aren't organized better.

Re:How about "WitchCraft v1.0"

[The Only Druid]

I know you're a troll, but there are several serious flaws in your argument:

The word "witchcraft", composed of two complete words ("witch" and "craft") cannot be trademarked or copyrighted, since its a common word. This is, of course, why you wont ever see a game called "Witchcraft" without a subtitle. Thats why the game is called "Sid Meyer's Civilization" instead of just "Civilization".

The word "warcraft" was NOT a word in the english language (or any language on the planet) at the time that Blizzard thought it up for their first game in the series. Nor, frankly, where there many if any significant strategy games of this format. They wisely did all the proper steps to get a trademark/copyright. They did the same for "warcraft 2", "starcraft" and the internal names involved.

Now, the series of these names clearly established a pattern. When people see "*craft" they think Blizzard, if its a video game. The makers of Freecraft understood this completely: how do I know? Because (1)They built the game off Warcraft 2 (including needing the CD or a rip to play it), (2)They used the name pattern to intentionally make people connect their game and Blizzards' games at first glance.

Legally, the whole issue of trademark and copyright infringment is that you cannot create or use a product that could be "confused for the original by a reasonable person". Not only could someone reasonably confuse "Freecraft" as being a Blizzard product, but the makers of Freecraft intended such confusion to happen.

They were idiots, and now they're getting punished. You want to know the lesson here? If you're making a free game, GREAT! Just dont intentionally try and rip someone else - someone who makes their living making a not-free game. Instead, make up your own name, your own graphics, and stand on your own two feet.

Re:How about "WitchCraft v1.0"

[m1chael]

they should have called it, "the craft of war"...

Re:How about "WitchCraft v1.0"

[el_chicano]

The word "warcraft" was NOT a word in the english language (or any language on the planet) at the time that Blizzard thought it up for their first game in the series.

The Oxford English Dictionary disagrees...

Re:How about "WitchCraft v1.0"

[GnuPengwyn]

You got to absolutely love the last line on that link. "These scribblers..would have us..cease building war craft." Cease And Desist. Oh the irony.

Re:How about "WitchCraft v1.0"

[Anonymous Coward]

The word "warcraft" was NOT a word in the english language (or any language on the planet) at the time that Blizzard thought it up for their first game in the series.

I think normally I can tell when a post's being sarcastic, but the rest of this one was so straight... did you really think "warcraft" was a new word? How old are you and what's your native language?

Re:How about "WitchCraft v1.0"

[Anonymous Coward]

The word "warcraft" was NOT a word in the english language (or any language on the planet) at the time that Blizzard thought it up for their first game in the series.

They were idiots, and now they're getting punished.

THEY were idiots? Let's face it, at best you must have a stunningly poor vocabulary.

Will You All Remember This?

[suntse]

Will you all remember this when the next big blizzard game comes out? Or will you all just run to the store to buy it, just like Warcraft 3?

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want to say that I stood my ground and refused to buy Warcraft 3. They definitely lost a sale with me.

I also cancelled my subscription to Spider-man comics right after the spandex fiasco this week.

Fuck'em.

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[NDPTAL85]

I keep my personal fun and my politics separate.

I'll be one of the first ones in line to buy their next game.

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[SQLz]

I haven't bought a Blizzard game since the bnetd thing and I never will. Not only that, I put up signs and information at a local LAN gaming place and I know Blizzard lost about 30 sales from that.

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[RickHunter]

The last Blizzard game I bought was Starcraft. They haven't gotten a cent of my money since then, precisely because of attacks like this. Though the fact that their games show even less imagination than FreeCraft helps a little.

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[nuggetman]

Blizzard lost about 30 sales from that.

You showed them who's boss! I bet they couldn't sleep that night.

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[Snaller]

What's your point? Oops, didn't have one.

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[Anonymous Coward]

I refuse to purchase games that I have to setup an often-confusing compatibility API for. Even if I did have a Windows box (heh), I sure as hell wouldn't be buying something from blizzard. I think ID or Valve could use my money in better ways (like making TF2 appear faster).

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know Blizzard lost about 30 sales from that.

You go girl.

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[Anonymous Coward]

Never bought Warcraft 3. The only Blizzard game I've got is Diablo 2 ( and that came from eDonkey )

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[kangasloth]

You do realize that that's basically the definition of hypocrisy, right?

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, I will probably buy the game ;) I loved StarCraft...

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize I expect this in the Soviet Unionâ(TM)s Stalnist strand of marxism

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[Ogerman]

I keep my personal fun and my politics separate.I'll be one of the first ones in line to buy their next game.

That sounds all fine and good until somebody else's politics start infringing on YOUR personal fun. How would you feel if you were one of the FreeCraft developers? You and the persons that modded you up need to grow a backbone and start standing up for what's right and for your freedoms. Blizzard had no right whatsoever to target these guys. By supporting them, you support more evil and corruption. Someday, it'll turn around and bite you.

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[Maul]

I haven't personally even touched Warcraft 3 because of the bnetd thing. Now Blizzard has given me even more of a reason to completely ignore their products. Blizzard is being a bully now, that's all there is to it.

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[Eisenstein]

Yes I will. They make great games and the Bnetd- and FreeCraft-maker should have talked to Blizzard about legal things beforehand.

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[FreeUser]

I keep my personal fun and my politics separate.

I'll be one of the first ones in line to buy their next game.

Then you will be one of the fools responsible for our complete loss of digital rights.

It is hedonistic, short sighted fools who put their own immediate gratification over their own medium and long term interests, and worse, over the interest of their community at large, that are responsible for this sort of behavior not only working, but being richly rewarded.

Keeping your "personal fun and politics separate" when the two clearly collide like this, is remeniscent of the demise of the Tram manufacturers in America. If you are a student of history, you'll recall that they kept their quarterly profits firmly separate from their long term survival. They sold every tram they built for a number of years to the automobile companies, who were willing to pay more for the trains than were the cities. But the cities needed the trams to keep their mass transit systems running. The tram manufacturers ended up surprised when the automobile industries stopped ordering and scrapping their product (go figure) leaving none of the cities with no tram systems, and the tram manufacturers with no customers.

Go ahead and put your immediate need for gratification ahead of your interest in having access to free software and software freedom, and enjoy the fruits of that shortsighted decision just as the trams companies of America enjoyed thei fruits of their decision to sell their product to their competitors for scrap metal and leave their customers in the lurch did, when they went out of business completely less than a decade later.

Just as we have no trams as a result of the tram manufacturers incredibly shortsighted decision, if enough people like you take this approach, we will have likewise little or no have no free software.

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, nice to see that you don't care enough about the world to live out your values.

Loser.

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[NDPTAL85]

What the fuck is a tram?

And whats the value of free software to someone with enough mony to buy all the commercial software he needs?

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[WNight]

They lost at least as many from my circle of friends over the cd check in Diablo 2 and their reply to me when I couldn't get it working. "Get a new CD drive."

If two people who have both vowed to never buy from them again, and who influence their friends, have seen this and posted on Slashdot, how many more people do you think have done the same and not bothered to tell anyone?

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[EllisDees]

>And whats the value of free software to someone with enough mony to buy all the commercial software he needs?

How about NOT WASTING MONEY?

I bet you drive an SUV too...

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[NDPTAL85]

Not yet but I plan on buying two soon. A Nissan Pathfinder and that Lexus SUV.

Its called "disposible income". You know, money that can be spent on anything without subtracting from your investments or savings?

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[GnuPengwyn]

Blizzard lost about 30 sales from that. You showed them who's boss! I bet they couldn't sleep that night.

But the thing that isn't funny about that nuggetman , is that this could have easily been one of the 20 folks that told the 20 folks I was talking about earlier

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not the only one, dickhead.

Speaking up affects Blizzard more than remaining silent. Sorry your Vivendi stock is going down...

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[iq in binary]

Man, I had to give up modding you as a troll to chew you out.

hyÂpocÂriÂsy ( P )
n. pl. hyÂpocÂriÂsies

1. The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.

2. An act or instance of such falseness.

The guy professed that he keeps his political views and personal fun seperate. This means that while he doesn't support Blizzard, he holds no bias towards things that he finds fun because of said company's actions. Therefore, he's going to buy Blizzard's next game because it is fun; not because he finds Blizzard Entertainment's business model to be lucrative.

Hypocrisy? No. Hypocrisy is an insult for a reason, it used to be because everyone knew what it meant and would use the word in a like manner. With idiots like this running around that don't know what "practice what you preach" means, I can't trust a person's use of it anymore.

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[TrancePhreak]

I don't think you know what you're talking about. WarCraft 3 was quite different than StarCraft or WarCraft games before it. FreeCraft blatently made their game almost identical to WC2.

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll run out and buy it, because I don't really care about FreeCraft or bnetd or any of that. Sorry to defy your perception of the hive-mind mentality, but personally I think Blizzard was right to defend their copyright.

Blizzard makes fun games, and personally I think a bunch of clowns making a free clone of someone else's intellectual property is the wrong place to take a stand on the free software issue.

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[andrewski]

A tram is a streetcar or small train. They are a popular and efficient public transport in some of the more responsible parts of the world.

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will you all remember this when the next big blizzard game comes out? Or will you all just run to the store to buy it, just like Warcraft 3?

Hey; I pirated it good and proper after Blizzard's bnetd bullshit. And I don't pirate everything, I had legit copies of Warcraft 1, 2, and the expansion for 2. But when it came time for 3, I got it for free, and distributed it as well. Doing my part to fight back in a broken system. >:-)

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of chewing you out for having a well-defined set of priorities that don't happen to line up with my own, could I ask that you consider donating a like amount to an organization that would defend/support people that could face similar litigation from Blizzard or like-minded companies in the future?

Assuming, of course, that you feel that situations like this are unfair to open-source developers, this would be a neat compromise, wouldn't it?

Re:Will You All Remember This?

[WWWWolf]

Sure, I won't get Frozen Throne. I'll be waiting for Myth IV: The Take2 Heresy or something instead.

Je-sus. The bnetd case was at least marginally justifiable, but this case just proves that Blizzard has gone full 180 from what they once stood for.

I look back at the days when they encouraged all sorts of Warcraft II modding, and see that now they're going after these projects too, a sure sign that they're not truly getting the idea anymore. Sad. Really really sad. I have absolutely no sympathies toward Blizzard left.

Fantastic Idea!!!

[HanzoSan]

They should do just that, then release the code on Freenet or Gnutella. The coders could code in Secret, upload code in secret.

OR how about a better idea, why not develop a P2P Network designed for just this specific purpose, annonymous development.

Re:Fantastic Idea!!!

[vegetablespork]

Would there be a problem if we called it Freeforge?

Re:Fantastic Idea!!!

[HanzoSan]

Freeforge haha thats perfect.

Re:Fantastic Idea!!!

[QuMa]

How about freenet? Got your anonymity straight out of the box, and if you're happy with just passing patches to the maintainers you've already got messaging via frost or FMB over freenet. There is some thought going on about a RCS over freenet, but that's not there yet.

Death to Yevgeny Nourish!!!

[cnelzie]

Death to tRancendenZ!!!

Death to PIlgrimage!!!

(If I have to explain this...)

Quick put it up on Freenet!!

[HanzoSan]

Someone insert the whole site if you can on freenet, so we can keep it alive forever.

Developers who want to develop on it can use Invisible IRC and Freenet.

Upload the code to Freenet, and communicate with other developers via Invisible IRC.

Victor's Secret

[drdale]

I am not a lawyer, but on the surface this case looks similar to one the Supreme Court just decided recently in which Victoria's Secret sued a sex-toy company called Victor's Secret for trademark infringement because of the soundalike name. Victoria lost---the Court held that you must present strong evidence of serious harm before you can sue for trademark infringement over a similar-sounding name. The CBS news story is here.

Re:Victor's Secret

[justrob]

If Victor's Secret were selling lingerie it would be similar to the FreeCraft case.

Re:Victor's Secret

[Anonymous Coward]

...the Court held that you must present strong evidence of serious harm before you can sue for trademark infringement over a similar-sounding name.

That's not quite accurate. One can pretty much always sue, it is a question of whether or not one can win a suit. There is always a risk when bringing a lawsuit against an entity (being contersued, running into anti-SLAPP laws, creating bad publicity, creating a court record that could be used against the plantiff in the future, developing bad relations in the court system, losing court and attorney fees with no return on investment, etc.). Even sending out a cease and desist order carries the risk that the recepient might drag everything into court by seeking a declaratory judgement.

However, if the recipient of the cease and desist order rolls over, then the sender has won, no matter what would happen in the courts. It is probably a good idea to do a little research and actually call when if it is likely that the threat is a bluff. That way, all these "big-bad-corporations" will not have the power to enforce rights that go beyond those guaranteed by law.

A good example of someone calling a bluff is "Tom 7," writer of embed. Information about this can be found at http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~twm/embed/dmca.html.

Re:Victor's Secret

[Chilltowner]

This could be the key to their defense against the C&D letter. Blizzard does not port its games over to Linux. It would be VERY diffcult for them to prove that the existence of Freecraft interfered with their business in a market where they do not even wish to operate. If they've lost money, it's because they have never chosen to sell their work to Linux users.

That said, I like Freecraft well enough to hope that a simple name change will bring the project back to life. That, or start developing it on freenet. In fact, I'm kicking myself for not having the latest code, 'cuz I'd insert it right now.

Re:Victor's Secret

[drdale]

As an adult novelty store, though, they aren't that far away from the lingerie biz. In fact, this CNN story refers to them selling "wild outfits" (the mind boggles). It is not like the Delta AIrlines/Delta faucets similarity that one of the justices mentioned.

Re:Victor's Secret

[el_chicano]

If Victor's Secret were selling lingerie it would be similar to the FreeCraft case.

Actually Victor's Secret would have to be giving away lingerie for this to be similar to the FreeCraft case...

Just so no one is confused

[TheDauthi]

Today is Saturday, and they haven't released a game/major patch in two weeks, so we hate Blizzard. Also, the time this was posted was well before 1:00 p.m., so this is BAD news. And this is Slashdot, I shouldn't have to remind you that we have to defend open source against closed source!

Don't buy Blizzard, simple as that.

[TrebleJunkie]

This is why I don't by Blizzard, and haven't since the bnetd fiasco.

They're evil. They don't deserve to have their methods funded by my cash.

Re:Don't buy Blizzard, simple as that.

[CuteAlien]

Not so simple i am addicted :(

It would be about as easy as to stop smoking - yeah i know cigarettes are evil - i still buy a new package each day.

Mhm, but maybe i can sue Blizzard one day for not telling me that they sell addicting stuff .Hm, and the long sleepless nights caused be theire products were certainly bad for my health, there should be some millions in there for me :)

Too big for their britches...

[Obiwan Kenobi]

An old saying, but damn, has Blizzard become anti-community or what?

Me and my friends, who have bought every game Blizzard has produced (all the way back to Blackthorne/Lost Vikings), use PVPGN. Why? Because its nice to host your own servers, to have your own games, to not have to worry about who is on there, to have total control. It's a nice thing to have, and to play around with.

Of course blizzard shut it down, because you don't need an "official" key to use it. The honor system has become suprisingly worthless nowadays.

Galactic Civilizations decided to (*gasp*) TRUST their customers and not put SafeDisc or any other type of copy protection on the install discs. A lot of people have problems with these types of anti-piracy methods and generally it just hurts your end user, not that pirates who can get around it with various cracks/hacks/or cd copying programs. Its this kind of trust who now, unfortunately, seems to the be the odd man out. id software did the same thing with Quake3. It was either the first or second patch that took out the cd check, because it annoyed the user more than it actually helped anti-piracy.

I think the worst part is that Blizzard now requires you to buy a "gaming site license" for any gaming venue in which you charge a fee to enter, even if every user has their own, official, bought and paid for copy. This is just sad. You don't see Valve having a fit over Counter Strike players and their LAN habits, yet Blizzard needs more and more cash for reasons that just don't make sense.

Here's the irony: Blizzard is owned by an asshole, very profit-driven company (Vivendi International, AFAIK). The developers have generally been very cool, and sometimes even listen to the community at large (they ignored War3 beta testers, but seemed to actually listen when I participated in the Frozen Throne beta). Even though they might be great people who make some really nice games, this is like PR hell. Give the gamers something great, then stab them in the back once you have their money.

They can't cry "we're just a small developer!" anymore. Not with millions upon millions of sales, and huge development houses around the country.

I say screw this "Don't blame Blizzard, they've got a bad parent company." No, if the Blizzard heads really wanted to dig their feet into the dirt and stand their ground, they would. If they got fired, and worked the press releases well enough, they would start another gaming company and all those brilliant minds would go there, instead of suffering through this idiocy in the name of cash.

Sigh. Dare to dream, folks.

Re:Too big for their britches...

[Eisenstein]

Of course blizzard shut it down, because you don't need an "official" key to use it. The honor system has become suprisingly worthless nowadays. This might be because if there is any possibility to get a game for free the "honorable customers" use it. Remember Warcraft 3 was three weeks before the official start of sale availiable on P2P. Multiplayer and the key are the main reason why Blizzard sells a lot of games. Of course they are not happy if someone takes away their main reason to sell their (excellent) games.

Re:Too big for their britches...

[brkello]

I hate to counter this "insightful" post, but did you ever think they needed cash to say..um...develop new games, support battlenet, pay off lawyers to protect their products? I doubt you even heard of FreeCraft. So you are just complaining that you didn't get to LAN the game easily. If there is no problem getting a pirated version, just do that and don't complain. Why in the heck should they trust the customer? Why doesn't the government just trust you on how much tax you are paying? Because people are dishonest. Quit living in this little idealistic world where people are good. If people can get away with stealing software, a lot of them will. If companies want to survive, they have to protect themsleves.

Re:Too big for their britches...

[M3wThr33]

Sierra/Valve is ALSO owned by Vivendi. Them's got nutin' to do wit d'em COP-E-RITES.

Re:Too big for their britches...

[TrancePhreak]

It might be just me, but I remember that Valve gave away CounterStrike to anyone who had Half-Life.... Whereas you _must_ buy WarCraft II in order to play it.

Re:Too big for their britches...

[Obasan]

And I doubt they lost a single sale because of this. People who were going to buy it bought it, people who weren't, didn't. Yawn.

As you fail to grok - copy protection doesn't stop pirates. It takes them about 5 minutes of google'ing to find the hack, or download off a warez server. Ironically, they often have an easier time than legitimate users. (Please insert cd 'x'.)

I buy my games yet I use daemon tools anti-safedisc/securom 'haxx0r' tools all the time. Why? I like to have the whole game on my hard disk, and I hate when my CD drive hiccups on the invalid data areas on some of the copyright cd's.

Re:Too big for their britches...

[Kefabi]

At LAN sites, the rule is normally, if you want to play a game, and you own it, you can bring in your own CD and use your own CD-key, or whatever, and play.

However, if the LAN site has to provide the game for you, then it must own a copy of the game for every person it provides the game for.

If a LAN site has 15 copies of StarCraft, then 15 people can be playing StarCraft at a time. If someone wants to bring his own StarCraft CD from home, then that doesn't count towards the 15 CD limit.

It sounds reasonable to me. I hate to think what would happen if at one of these thousand man LAN's a single copy of a game got distributed to a thousand computers and ables everyone to play.

Re:Too big for their britches...

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

With Starcraft you can spawn a copy onto other computers strictly for multiplayer lan games. In fact, that's how I learned to play it (on the computer at school)

Nothing wrong with that, it's an option in the installer. I haven't played any other Blizzard game since (or even before to be honest) so I guess they must've gotten rid of that feature.

Re:Too big for their britches...

[NeoOokami]

I'm sorry, a part of me would like to agree with you but I just can't. The honor system was the basis of old shareware. And old shareware is mostly dead. It doesn't work because most people just don't respect the fact that the programs they get ahold of actually took work to be made. The vast majority shareware apps these days use serial numbers for this very reason, and even then it takes little more than a google search these days to even get around that. It's not that Blizzard hates the community, it's that they can't trust them. It's pretty much the exact same reason I lock my door everynight. I don't hate my home town but I certainly don't trust them.

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu/distfiles/freecraft- 030311-src.tar.gz
http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu/distfiles/freecraft- 020630.tar.bz2

You might be right as these seem old and small (1.8 MB)...

Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

Is it just me? or is freecraft a blatant ripoff of warcraft. I saw a screenshot that could have come from warcraft. Little green orcs, harvesting gold and lumbar. There was even the building with the telescope in it. It's not hard to start a computer company, it's just hard to start a company called "Mikrosoft".

Make up your own damn game. Don't remake someone else's.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Tyreth]

The artwork for that screenshot was using the warcraft 2 cd's art as far as I know. In other words, you have to own a legal copy of WC2 to make it look the same. For those that don't own WC2 there is a (IMHO) pretty bad looking art set available.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually. FreeCraft is mainly used to run your old warcraft 2 game in a *nix OS. and then they came up with FcMP(Freecraft media project) so some can have fun with the engine.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Denor]

It is a ripoff of Warcraft, yes. Their goal was to clone the engine, as a open-source way to play WCII in linux. The reason the art in the screenshot looked the same as the game is because it is the same; Freecraft came with a script which would take the art off of a WCII CD you had and put it in the game so you wouldn't have to use the programmer art they'd put in.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Anonymous Coward]

It looked the same as WarCraft2 because you can load the graphics from wc2 CD. The graphics that come with the game don't look anything like WC2 (see http://www.icewalkers.com/Linux/Software/510060/Fr eeCraft.html for a screenshot).

To quote the FreeCraft description:
"FreeCraft is a free cross-platform real-time strategy gaming engine. It is possible to play against human opponents over LAN, internet, or against the computer. The engine can be used to build RTS games like C&C, WarCraft, StarCraft or AOE. It successfully runs under Linux, BSD, BeOS, MacOS/X,MacOS/Darwin and MS Windows. Since FreeCraft only provides the engine, you need either the FcMP (FreeCraft Media Project) OR THE ORIGINAL WC2 GAME (NORMAL OR EXPANSION CD), SO FREECRAFT CAN EXTRACT THE NECESSARY FILES."

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[boowax]

What you all seem to be missing is the fact that this game was being developed as some what of tribute to a game we all love and to see if such a game could be developed under the open source model. Much like FreeCiv, this is a similarly named project simply because it is intended to immitate the orginial. Now, whether or not this violates trademark is not for me to say but I will say that this is a great way to alienate some gamers out there. Way to go Vivendi Universal, you sure do know how to call your customers theives.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me? or is Linux a blatant ripoff of Unix. I saw a screenshot that could have come from Unix. A bash shell, same window manager. You could even run the same software once it was recompiled. It's not hard to start on OS, it's just hard to start an OS called "Linux".

Make up your own damn OS. Don't remake someone else's.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[SQLz]

Actually. I think its just you.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[boomgopher]

Little green orcs, harvesting gold and lumbar

Oooh neato, like those spine-stealers from 'Battle-Angel Alita'?

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

eh, spelling happens.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

I still use windows98. It can run warcraft II.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

Yeah, I see how it is a coldhearted move. It means more money for a corporation, and less game products for the masses.

If they make the game work on linux, that's great. Why don't they give the code to blizzard and let blizzard sell it, it's blizzard's game. You want to give a game away for free, make one that's not a carbon copy of one that's still for sale.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

That's like saying that you arn't infringing on ford's patent by selling fords without paint. You could say that the car can be made into any type of car, and it will only be a ford if you already own ford paint for it.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

Warcraft II without the proper art is still warcraft II, it's just a crappy version of it.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your point being what, exactly ?

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

The exact point of what I wrote above is that I use windows 98 as my operating system, and that windows 98 is an operating system that can run warcraft II. While linux cannot run warcraft II.

The point of my argument is that you cannot attack the arguer instead of the argument. Maybe linux is a ripoff of unix. My original argument still stands.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

blizzard owns the whole game, not just the graphics.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

yes, but it can also be used to play warcraft 2 without buying it, albeit with newer suckier graphics. Therefore, blizzard has every right to ask them to stop.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[mdwh2]

That's like saying that you arn't infringing on ford's patent by selling fords without paint.

Since when did Blizzard own a patent on Warcraft-style games?

I don't see how Ford could stop other people from making cars, just because it was possible to paint them with Ford paint. If they were selling them as "Thord Cars", then perhaps they would have a case..

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Phil John]

No, it's a game engine, which allows you to play both the original and the free game files that have been dev'd for it. Hell, it's more akin to a mod for unreal or the like...wanna make those illegal too? Refer also to ScummVM, which allows people to play old lucasarts adventure games on modern PC's (try running those on 2k or xp). Lucasarts have been on at them...but last time I checked it was still available, plus theres a PocketPC version so I can play it on my GF's iPaq ;o). Hey...wait a minute...iPaq, iMac...hmmm...blatant trademark infingment there. And don't give me the shit about running 98 then instead of 2k or XP, I run XP because Cubase XS requires 2k or XP, and 2k sucks doggy doodoo with the amount of time it requires to boot up. Well, that's my $0.02...use it and go buy a clue.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Eisenstein]

They own the grapics FreeCraft uses when it rips them off the CD to use it.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Eisenstein]

Damn. This should read as: "Blizzard owns the graphics, which Freecraft rips off the Warcraft-2-CD to generate the art of Freecraft."

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

Your two cents arn't worth much.

It's more than a game engine, it's a game engine that plays exactly like warcraft II.

It's not a mod, it's a reverse mod, they left the game the same and changed the engine.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was attacking the argument, not the arguer. The situation I gave was similar enough and the legality of Linux is not in doubt.
By your logic x86 compatible chips are illegal, ScummVM is illegal and every IBM compatible pc is illegal.
Luckily the world doesn't work like that. Cloning is not illegal.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

Ford could stop people from making cars if they are inch by inch identical replicas to the ford cars. minus the paint. This is not "warcraft-style", this is nothing to do with the style. This is an identical game. Same units, same responses, same gameplay.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Stephen Samuel]

Try wrapping html around the URL, </A> next time...

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

So, is it legal to create an identical replica of a macintosh computer? complete with identical osX functionality? So long as it looks different, right?

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, as long as you don't infringe on any patents. Apple may not like it and will probably even sue the creator, but that's about as far as they can take it.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[EllisDees]

Yes, but you can play the game exactly as well without using those graphics. If you happen to have a copy of the original sitting around, all you get is better graphics.

IOW, Blizzard has *no* claim on anything in Freecraft.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

They don't own the code that the Freecraft guys wrote though. Damn. Now I have to find a troll to remove from my foes list, I'm out of room, and you definitely qualify.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ridiculous. Warcraft II without the proper art is just a real time warfare simulation engine like dozens of others out there. The creators of Freecraft did not use any of Blizzards code to make their engine.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice straw man argument. If you were to make an analogy to cars, this would be more accurately like making your own custom car that has a similar engine and frame to an existing Ford car then buying a Ford car and taking off all the panels and the bumpers and the lights and, yes, I guess the seats and the steering wheel too and putting them on the custom car. In the real world, with your own real property, you can do this and it is not illegal (depending on how well you do it, it might not be legal to drive it on public roads of course, but this has nothing to do with Fords rights).

I guess that one of the things it comes down to is if "intellectual property" is property or not. I may be wrong, but I am betting you are one of those people who does not see a difference between "intellectual property" and actual property. Well, if "intellectual property" is actual property, then you should be able to knock yourself out and modify the copy of Warcraft in any way you want for own personal use. If it is not actually property but really just an intentionally misleading name for a loosely related set of government monopoly grants, then maybe you can't do it, but maybe you can because it does not change the fact that this is a fair use gray area. So, logically, no-one should be able to argue both that "intellectual property" is property and that this Warcraft modifying is illegal.

Anyway, the point is that your analogy is stupid. It is not an inch by inch replica. Without the Warcraft bits stuck on it, it still has a similar look and feel, but look and feel is not really copyrightable. The internals are completely different, even if they achieve the same effect. Let's see Nissan go after Hyundai because its Elantra looks too much like Nissan's Sentra. That would be ridiculous. They look just like every other sedan on the road.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that it means less game products for the masses. How does it mean more money for "a corporation"? Are you talking about Blizzard? Please explain how, because you seemed confused and confusing.

As for "You want to give a game away for free, make one that's not a carbon copy of one that's still for sale", you really do like to willfully misunderstand, don't you? It only looks like a carbon copy of Warcraft if you have a Warcraft CD. In case you try to use the ridiculous argument that people who use Freecraft will simply copy the Warcraft CD and pass it around to their friends, I have to point out that they can do the exact same thing if they do not have Freecraft. So, basically this does nothing to Blizzard except possibly increase sales of Warcraft CDs slightly.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It's like someone making most of the parts in a car on their own, and saying, "buy a Ford, take it apart, and use the body for our car."

Car analogies are bad anyway.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is legal.

If "OS X functionality" means, say, rewriting an operating system that can run Carbon and Cocoa binaries, then yes, it is damn legal. GNUstep already implements most of Cocoa, although it is not binary compatible.

If "OS X functionality" means it has OS X on it, then yes, it is legal, as long as the copy of OS X is legitimately purchased from Apple.

You can probably get Mac OS to boot on a non-Apple machine... It used to be that it required a proprietary ROM chip from Apple, that had core OS code. Apple even licensed these ROM chips to clone makers in the 1990s! (They don't make them anymore, but there are Mac clones out there...) But as of Mac OS 8.5 in 1998, the proprietary ROM chips aren't even an requirement anymore. And since Macs are mostly commodity hardware these days, it's probably easier to make a Mac clone than it ever was in the past.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

No, they didn't use blizzard's code. But they imitated the function of blizzard's code. And they imitated it in a way where the output is identical. It's plagiarism with a different pen.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

I don't own warcraft II, If I wanted to play it right now, I could either buy the game, or I can download freecraft instead. Because of freecraft, blizzard didn't get whatever profits they would have from selling their game to me.

I don't mean to confuse anyone, nor do I believe that I misunderstand. My argument assumes that the game is still warcraft II, even if the graphics are modified.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

"If you were to make an analogy to cars, this would be more accurately like making your own custom car that has a similar engine and frame to an existing Ford car then buying a Ford car and taking off all the panels and the bumpers and the lights and, yes, I guess the seats and the steering wheel too and putting them on the custom car. In the real world, with your own real property, you can do this and it is not illegal (depending on how well you do it, it might not be legal to drive it on public roads of course, but this has nothing to do with Fords rights)."

Unless you tried to market and sell the car.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

And if you don't have a copy of the game. You are still playing warcraft II. Anyone who thinks freecraft is not warcraft II is probably in denial because they want to play the game for free. That's fine. I wouldn't mind playing freecraft myself. I just acknowledge that it's illegal.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

I really don't care about any "foe list". I think that If you can't remember my name I'm not really your foe. I also think that "foe" is a stupid word, but nevermind.

They don't own the code to freecraft. But the code to freecraft mimicks a product that they do own, namely warcraft II. It mimicks it with ultimate precision, and I would consider it a violation of copyright.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Anonymous Coward]

You could certainly sell the car. Why wouldn't you be able to sell the car? People modify cars to the extent of fully recreating them all the time. It is more common for people to make kit cars in which they put a custom body on an different cars frame, but some people do it the other way around. Then they sometimes sell it. It is legal as long as you do not try to make the buyer believe that it was made that way by Ford or whatever car company made the body.

A good example of this is custom limousines. There are car modifiers out there who will take your car and turn it into a stretch limo. They have to replace or at least greatly modify the frame and, depending on the original engine, upgrade the engine. They keep the original body, but they add extra paneling and maybe doors and so forth. This is not illegal.

Honestly. I am not sure where you get your ideas, but you seem to be stretching your reasoning to an extreme point.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Anonymous Coward]

You would consider it a violation of copyright? Are you a judge? A lawmaker? Even a lawyer? If the answer is no, then praise be. Trouble is, there are plenty of people like you in all those professions. People who do not actually grasp the law, but have their own little twisted internal version of it.

It is not illegal to mimic functionality of a copyrighted product. It is not illegal! It is not Illegal!!! Get it through your head. That is what patents are for, not copyrights. If I'm wrong, show me. Give a concrete example where I am wrong. But, don't you dare try to use works of fiction as an example. Character copyright protecting characters created in fiction is a special case of copyright and is an exception, not the rule. It does not apply in non-fiction works. The Warcraft engine is a non-fiction work, even if the story of the game itself is fiction (which it could be easily argued is ripped off from JRR Tolkein in some respects).

I think in another post you gave an example where someone could not take your book and go through it and paraphrase everything and resell it. I have news for you, someone could. If the book is not a work of fiction, then anyone can convey the same information without infringing on your copyright as long as they do not use your words. I believe there was one court decision on a case like this where the judge decided that, since the paraphraser had maintained the same chapter structure and organization, that copyright had been violated. In my opinion, that is a very bad decision. However, all it means is that the paraphraser would have to juggle around the structure.

Considering the opinions you've shown so far, you will probably be appalled at this. But your opinion is ridiculous. Everyone builds their work on the work of others. Show me a publication that contains entirely new information that does not draw on any previous work. It's just the way human knowledge works. So, if you argue that paraphrasing someones work is illegal, you have a slippery slope. At one end, paraphrasing is legal and only direct copying is a problem and, at the other end, new documents can only be written about any given subject every 90 years or life of the author of the last document plus 70 years. A line has to be drawn somewhere. It seems that you want that line drawn a lot further down the slope than it actually is.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Anonymous Coward]

But if you download Freecraft and do not have a Warcraft II CD, you do not get the experience of playing warcraft because it does not have the original graphics and sounds. If you want to argue that you do get the same experience, then you must be arguing that the Warcraft graphics and sounds do not add any value to the game. Are the graphics and sounds worthless? I have a hard time seeing you argue that.

What you seem to be arguing is that there is some magic hybrid of copyright and patent that Freecraft is violating that stops them from making a game like Warcraft. Why doesn't it stop all of the other games companies from making games like Warcraft? Why didn't it stop Blizzard from making warcraft since there were other games like it that came before? What, precisely, have you been smoking?

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

Experience varies from person to person, It's not only about the experience. You can't sell VHS dubs of movies you don't own the copyright for even if they have the sound removed. It's true that a movie with no sound is not the same experience, but it's still the same movie, you could redraw a movie pixel by pixel, frame by frame, till it looked exactly like the original, and no matter how much of the original product you didn't use, it's still a violation of the copyright to sell it.

There is no magic, they can make a game like warcraft, they just can't make warcraft, which is what they did. It didn't stop blizzard because there wasn't already an identical game.

"What, precisely, have you been smoking?"

I'll assume you mean that question as an attack on my character. Next time you wish to be hostile, you should sign on with a real username.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

Ford has patents on most of their parts as well as their cars, you can't imitate the parts exactly, even if you made them with a different machine or process. If another company makes a car identical to a ford, it infringes on the patent. The only way to use ford parts is to pay ford for them.

Freecraft was not licenced by blizzard.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[Qender]

"You would consider it a violation of copyright? Are you a judge? A lawmaker? Even a lawyer? If the answer is no, then praise be. Trouble is, there are plenty of people like you in all those professions. People who do not actually grasp the law, but have their own little twisted internal version of it."

HOLY CRAP! That's one hell of an elitist paragraph. Am I a judge, lawmaker or lawyer? no. Am I allowed to consider this a violation of copyright, yes. You want to try to stop me, go ahead. You would have to either kill me or convince me of otherwise. Accusing me of not holding the authority to sentence blizzard does not negate me from discussing it.

Do you know the entire law? Have you memorised every law that was ever passed? word for word? do you know how every law related to every other? Which laws are valid in different states? in different countries? I would say everyone has "their own little twisted internal version of it." Our goal is to make our little internal version as least twisted as possible. (or do I need to be a psychologist to understand that?)

The law is not a definite, thing. Hence your slippery slope. If you believe it is legal to make an exact replica of a computer game and sell it, you could make a lot of money starting your own softare company. Freecraft is an identical game to warcraft II, the only difference is that the code was written over. This is not a paraphrased book, it's really more of a book written again with a different pen.

Then again, I'm not an english major, so am I even allowed to write any of this?

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff.

[mink]

You have clearly never played video games any time in the last 20 or so years have you?
Everyone mimicks whatever is popular at the time.

who is to blame

[Lust]

I like to tear down corporate America as much as the next person, but companies are obligated to stop us from duplicating their work. If they don't, it sets a legal precedence that says FOR PROFIT companies can do the same.

This isn't specific to software. Take the humble rock group Phish, for example. They hate doing it, but they cannot allow fans to use the Phish logo on concert merchandise. Once they KNOWINGLY allow one person to use it, the door is wide open.

So don't act like we're hard done by because we can't use other people's ideas for our own purposes. Anyone that's invested their own lifesavinging into building a company should understand that.

Re:who is to blame

[NullProg]

You cannot copyright or trademark an idea. You would have us believe that we can only buy cars, computers, clothes, etc. from the original company that invented them.

You can copyright methods, not ideas. Please go back to being a turd.

Re:Hmm. Seems reasonable.

[1qa2ws3ed]

> they're protecting their investments and working (in their eyes) to do what is best for their company, their employees, private investors, etc. yeah, the only ones they don't care about are their customers.

Looking at FreeCraft

[Eisenstein]

I understand why Blizzard has a bit of a problem with it.
As anyone of this project even bothered to inform Blizzard of what kind of game they want to make? I looks nearly like *Craft, it sounds like *Craft - no wonder Blizzard isn't happy with it.
Has nobody learnt a lesson from the Ultima-Remake-Stories?

Re:Looking at FreeCraft

[Anonymous Coward]

Ultima was a ripoff of wizardry. Freecraft is a ripoff of warcraft. KDE is a ripoff of Windows which is a ripoff of Apple etc. Nothing illegal in making a simular competing product.

What your insinuating is that only Ford has the right to make cars.

Moron.

"Plays Warcraft 2"

[LordKaT]

Could somone describe this for me? Exactly what does "plays warcraft 2" mean? Does it use the same files from WC2? Is it a direct clone of WC2?

If it uses the same files as WC2, well, there might be a problem, but I can only see one if they were distributing those files, or using those graphics.

Now, if it's a full clone, then they should check out the Hasbro vs. John Doe. Hasbro sued a crapload of indie game develoeprs because they made games similar to Atari games.

But saying that the name is too similar . . . I have to disagree. didn't we already go through that with Windows vs. Lindows?

While the business side of me says "maybe" the slashdot side of me says this is an RIAA/MPAA move. It's pretty clear that Blizzards parent company is NOT kosher with the idea of fanworks. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they had Sierra go after the Space Quest 7 fangame, or the many AGI/SCI projects out there.

Of course, if that happens, then, well, I think people should kick up some shit.

--LordKaT

Re:"Plays Warcraft 2"

[thrift24]

We run this game all the time, and here's how it goes. For this game to be worth anything you HAVE to own one of the WarCraft II cds. Then once you have one of the cds you use a tool for the game that extracts the maps, graphics, and scenarios from the WarCraft II cd and skins the game to make it look and play very much like the original WarCraft II. I don't see why Blizzard has a problem w/ this considering the original WarCraft II doesn't work in many of the windows operating systems, and people still have to buy the WarCraft II cds from Blizzard. So those people using unsupported operating systems gets to play, and Blizzard gets to sell more of it's game...how is this a problem.

Also this game adds a lot of features beyond WarCraft II. There are a few additions to the actual game, like the ability to pump out critters from farms, but they have also dropped the original warcraft II network system(that involved using ipx and then kali to emulate tcp/ip) and gone straight to tcp/ip. The game also allows more people for network play, from the original 8 to now 16 and the map size has gone from 256x256 up to a possible 2048x2048.

We tried for quite a while to get WarCraft II working on bootable dos cds so that we could run our operating systems of choice and then boot up a cd to play warcraft, but dos netcard drivers suck. This is the only way we could easily set up WarCraft II for network play, and yes we own many copys of WarCraft II and the expansions.

It's sad to see Blizzard attacking such a good program. I hope that the people behind freecraft just put their foot down, don't rename the damn thing and just keep doing what they do well and contribute more code to the project. If worse does come to worse though they could just rename the game and actually get some usable artwork. Either way, when Blizzard shutdown bnetd i said I would never buy another Blizzard product, and I haven't...now I'm to the point where I just want to take MY WarCraft II cd, make an iso, and put it up on kazaa or gnutella....which I think I'll go do.

Re:"Plays Warcraft 2"

[thumperward]

While I think this is a bit of a shame, you have actually answered your own question. For a twenty-player LAN game, you need exactly one WC2 CD to get the media from, which is 19 less than Blizzard implied in the license. Further, it clearly states on the box what the minimum system requirements are to use the CD, and they include Windows. If the Wine project was just about duping Windows kernel functionality and expecting the end user to copy all the cabs off of a Windows CD for decent fucntionality, I'm sure Microsoft would be unimpressed as well.

- Chris

Re:"Plays Warcraft 2"

[G00F]

Have you actually ever played warceaft II before?
"While I think this is a bit of a shame, you have actually answered your own question. For a twenty-player LAN game, you need exactly one WC2 CD to get the media from, which is 19 less than Blizzard implied in the license."

You could play a game with 1 cd before, not with 19 people at once, but that is only because the game didn't support that many. They even made it so you could install "friend" version os the game. Same with starcraft. However, Blizzard is no longer a consumer oriented company.

Re:"Plays Warcraft 2"

[Anonymous Coward]

I have sworn of all Vivendi Entertainment since bnetd. I am currently out of options on how I could make Vivendi and Blizzard pay for their stupid behavior.

Re:"Plays Warcraft 2"

[MarkCollette]

I wish open source developers had a bit more business sense. They make some software that works in conjunction with commercial software, but get themselves caught in a situation where they're at risk of getting sued by the makers of the commercial software. I bet it never occurred to any of them to simply approach Blizzard with their code, offer to sell it to Blizzard, and have it put on the official CDROM so Blizzard can say it supports Linux/Solaris/etc. Hell, it's GPLed, so Blizzard wouldn't even have to pay, they could just do that themselves.

But no, they're incompetent, and now they're just throwing their whole project away.

Re:"Plays Warcraft 2"

[Anonymous Coward]

"they're incompetent"

from your misinformed arrogant waffle above id say they are more intelligent than you Mark.

Re:"Plays Warcraft 2"

[Anonymous Coward]

For this game to be worth anything you HAVE to own one of the WarCraft II cds.

NOT TRUE. After reading this I got interested in FreeCraft, so a ..
apt-get install freecraft fcmp
.. later and the free levels/graphics are actually pretty good. A world better than when I had tried them out a year ago.

Maybe Bizzard are getting fussy now because it is actually getting competitive, and as we Americans know, competition is actually bad when it costs large corporations money.

Re:"Plays Warcraft 2"

[MarkCollette]

I know I came across as a jerk, but I really think that too many coders out there only think about the tech, and don't think of the ramifications. A proper analysis of the ramifications can make the difference between getting your ass sued off, and anonymously contributing a life changing tool to the world. It can also make the difference between making a financial living at what you enjoy, through proper business methods, and squandering your time.

I think that we haven't heard the last of FreeCraft, and that whatever has happenned so far has only been a series of knee-jerk responses that will end up getting cleared up - if the members involved get their shit together. And that includes Blizzard/Universal.

Re:"Plays Warcraft 2"

[thrift24]

Perhaps I should have added an IMHO before that. What I meant to convey was two things. One was that the graphics package that comes with freecraft IMHO sucks. The other was to address that many of the screenshots people were referring to were already skinned from a Blizzard WarCraft II cd, and the look is probably more of what Blizzard is all upset about. So for what Blizzard is getting upset about you have to own one of the warcraft II cds anyway.

its all still in CVS

[alitaa]

including the web site http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/fre ecraft/

Re:its all still in CVS

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. I used this to get everything and make tarballs of them, then put them on Kazaa. I also found some release tarballs in various places and will be making them available.

I did the same thing when bnetd was shut down. Not because I play Blizzard games a lot (just once in awhile), but because I think it's a real shame to see such wonderful and useful projects go down like this.

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[PhoenixFlare]

Perhaps if you spent some of this money buying or donating to Freecraft not only would we have better games, we'd have free games. Free games would hurt Vivendi Universal and Blizzard more than anything else. Free Games that are good would kill them.

Why, exactly, does the purpose of supporting a game/company need to be to hurt and kill another?

Even if you hate them personally, or they (or their parent company, more likely) do nasty things sometimes, admit it- Blizzard makes kickass games that LOTS of people love. Starcraft is 5 years old, and yet there's still around 10,000 people playing it on Battle.net at any given time.

Imagine what could be done? But we first need a way to fund enough games to get millions of people interested. The best way to make these greedy companies pay is to setup a whole open source PC game movement, on a large scale, and let the gamers fund it.

Imagine what could be done? But we first need a way to fund enough games to get millions of people interested. The best way to make these greedy companies pay is to setup a whole open source PC game movement, on a large scale, and let the gamers fund it.

Starcraft Battle Chest: $20

Diablo II: $20 each for the main game and expansion.

Warcraft II: $11.99

Battle.net: Completely free.

Yep, they're sure being greedy alright.

It makes no sense for us to use the outdated old business model for open source products. Its proven that it doesnt work, the transgaming model is proven to work.

So you're saying that games without monthly fees are outdated? Thanks, but no thanks. I have enough monthly fees to pay already.

Sam Lantinga, creator of SDL, went to Blizzard

[Anonymous Coward]

SDL is arguably the most popular game development library for linux, and the creator was Sam Lantinga. After Loki went belly up he moved over to Blizzard. After this turn of events I'd think he'd be ashamed to continue working there. www.libsdl.org is the library's site.

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, The nebula device from
http://www.radonlabs.de/
I don't know why this marvelous engine hasn't caught the attention of the slashcrew yet. But it's all I ever wanted in an engine. Professional games that even have hit the shelves have already been made.
Check it out. radon labs deserves "our" support

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[geekster]

Well, there's Ogre. A pretty nice, extendable, 3D engine.

what's in a name?

[louzerr]

How about "FreakRaft"? Screw 'em!

Naive To Think This Wouldn't Happen

[reallocate]

>> ...the only competitors to worry about are the ones who can afford lawyers and actually hold competing market share...

Well, yeah, if you can't put up a fight, you aren't much of a competitor.

It is rather utopian and naive in the extreme to imagine that any business wouldn't come after any organization perceived as threatening their sales. Open source has a habit of cloning and mimicing commercial products and tagging them with names that are intentionally reminiscent of the orignal commercial product. A business has every reason to see these efforts as a direct threat to their bottom line. A cease-and-desist order is an obvious approach. The other side can get their own lawyers if they want to contest it. (Can;t afford lawyers? Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you started.)

Re:Naive To Think This Wouldn't Happen

[arose]

How is it there, in the land of the free and the rich?

Re:Naive To Think This Wouldn't Happen

[reallocate]

Well. hotshot, I don't know about wherever it is you live, but around here you don't need to be rich to pay a lawyer. However, you do have to be smart enough to use one if you're starting up a business, especially if you plan to "borrow" from the name of an established company.

The people who own, operate and work for any business have the same rights as the people that set about making imitation knock-offs. I'm guessing these coders think they have the moral high-ground and presume that means they should win against the "evil" corporation. Well, they don't hold the moral high ground. What they hold is, at best, the high ground for naivete. If you try to market imitations of someone else's products under a name that plausibly conveys the impression that your products are made by that competitor, you're just asking for trouble. And there's nothin "evil" or "unfree" about that.

Re:Naive To Think This Wouldn't Happen

[arose]

Where I come from you don't need to be rich to buy a judge, just richer than your opponent. But we are doing fine for having reaquired our independence mere 12 years ago.

Re:Naive To Think This Wouldn't Happen

[reallocate]

Yes, 1991 was an eventful year for Latvia and many other countries. I was living in London at the time and happened to have some Lithuanian firends who worked as linguists for BBC. I've lost touch with them but still remember the night we learned the Soviets were shooting up the Vilnius television center.

It's easy to assume that all businesses and politicians here in the U.S. are crooked, and that everyone is either rich or dirt poor. After all, that's the image we keep pumping out in the movies and music we make. And, that assumption is often buttressed by media outlets like Slashdot, where content is intentionally filtered, slanted and packaged to appeal to the sentiments of the outlet's core audience. Slashdot, for example, always portrays the open source community as innocent rebels bravely opposing the vast forces of the evil corporate wprld. It isn't a coincidence that Slashdot's core audience is comprised of people who like to think of themselves as precisely those innocent rebels.

But, in truth, much of the animosity and emotion that people express here is generated out of a conviction that they have made the right moral decision and that only corruption and venality can prevent their wishes -- which are, they believe, morally pure and superior -- from becoming reality.

At best, this is simple naivete. At worst, it is intentional manipulation.

Almost everyone in the U.S. is neither poor not rich. Most of us lead comfortable lives on moderate incomes; and most of us spend almost all of our income to pay our bills. Most of us, and therefore most of our politicians, judges, and business people, are honest (as is true in Latvia, I'm sure). We are also very competitive and quite willing to fight long and hard to keep what is ours. That's why no one should be surprised to see a corporation take legal action against an organziation that has usurped its brand, reputation and image.

Re:Naive To Think This Wouldn't Happen

[arose]

I know that is all true, but I happen to believe that making your first conntact trough lawyers is a wrong thing. They could have conntacted the developers in a friendly manner, and asked to correct the situation, wich I am sure they would have done.
Hey Blizzard, these people where not out there to destroy you, they where fans of your games.

Re:Naive To Think This Wouldn't Happen

[reallocate]

>> ....making your first conntact trough lawyers is a wrong thing...

Why?

Business is the real world. The emotions of the people making the knock-off don't play into it. The cease-and-desist order was issued because a legal case could be made. If the cease-and-desist order is ignored, that provides the basis for additional legal action.

Even if a simple request has been the first approach, lawyers would be needed to prepare binding documentation to outline and record the terms of the agreement.

FreeCraft Stole Blizzards IP

[Anonymous Coward]

If this screenshot is any indication:

http://happypenguin.org/images/cloneshot.gif

Then it's obvious why Blizzard shut them down. They RIPPED OFF THEIR GRAPHICS!

Re:FreeCraft Stole Blizzards IP

[Anonymous Coward]

Yo, dumbass: to use the WC graphics, you had to take them from your own legal copy of WC.

Re:FreeCraft Stole Blizzards IP

[Tyreth]

See this post.

Re:FreeCraft Stole Blizzards IP

[Anonymous Coward]

I stand corrected.

Re:FreeCraft Stole Blizzards IP

[Golthar]

Some people need to get a clue about what they are talking about before they start pointing and shouting.

other *Crafts?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about they send a C+D letter to Mindcraft next? I doubt anyone would miss them, and their ignorance hurts any market they touch.

sources

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone got really recent sources+graphics?
I want to host it on my site. In Europe. I will perhaps change the name, but I do not think I can be convicted for redistrubuting this game (and I do have a lawyer in any case).

Re:sources

[Anonymous Coward]

ah..cvs still seems to work

Bittorrent

[Ice_Balrog]

Is someone who already got the source going to post a .torrent so we can all share in defying Blizzard?

This is like...

[dafoomie]

...using the ballista on a peasant. Ouch! Last time I checked, the FreeCraft people weren't trying to make a buck. Which isn't a free pass to break the law mind you, but I don't see anything wrong with them. I'd change the name and make a few minor modifications to appease them anyway. How about FuckBlizzard? Or WarCrap? Did they even try to contact them and ASK them to make a couple changes before they sent the Cease and Desist? If they made the effort but the FreeCraft people refused outright, I might side with Blizzard a little more, but I doubt thats the case.

Re:This is like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey dumbass,

it doesn't matter whether they were making a buck. You can't give away cow urine in paper cups at baseball games and call it "Cudweiser."

Furthermore C&D order CAN BE interpreted as a request to change the name.

(you may now make jokes about the cow urine tasting beter than standard american beer, to which others will reply, in equal comedy, how do you know what cow urine tastes like).

Re:This is like...

[nuggetman]

Did they even try to contact them and ASK them to make a couple changes before they sent the Cease and Desist?

I do believe that is the point of a cease and desist letter. It just asks in a more forceful way.

Re:This is like...

[Eisenstein]

Did they even try to contact them and ASK them to make a couple changes before they sent the Cease and Desist?

Well did the FreeCraft people ask Blizzard if there is a problem if the use their graphics and name the game FreeCraft? Would have been the sensible way.

Re:This is like...

[dafoomie]

Yo Dickhead, Last time I checked, the FreeCraft people weren't trying to make a buck. Which isn't a free pass to break the law mind you. I've heard of read the fuckin article, but read the fuckin post? Unbelievable.

Theres ALOT more than just those two.

[HanzoSan]

Theres dozens, theres a few that are pretty good, no they arent as good as Doom3(until ID releases the source) or Turbines engine, but they dont have to be, they just have to be good enough to make PS2 quality games.

Most of these games would look better than anything on the PS2. There is an open source game repository but are you willing to donate money to make these games good? Or will you complain about quality when you dont pay?

Well here are some engines.

Genesis3d
Nooface
WorldForge

Reality FactoryM

Ogre

Obsidian

More at LinuxGames

Re:Theres ALOT more than just those two.

[Suppafly]

how many of those engines you've listed are actually done enough to make a decent game? the problem with opensource is that people quickly get in over their heads an abandon project before they complete enough to mention.

Re:Theres ALOT more than just those two.

[CommandNotFound]

the problem with opensource is that people quickly get in over their heads an abandon project before they complete enough to mention.

Sorry, as a developer of almost 10 years I have to comment. I can't count how many closed-source projects I've seen (some I have been a part of, unfortunately) that never saw the light of day for the same reasons or due to internal politics. It's not an open-source development problem, it's a development problem. With closed-source, however, the projects sit and rot on a company's hard drive. At least with OSS someone can pick up the code later and make another go at it.

Re:Theres ALOT more than just those two.

[Snaller]

And? Were any of them shut down by Blizzard?

Re:Theres ALOT more than just those two.

[Stephen Samuel]

Sorry, as a developer of almost 10 years I have to comment. I can't count how many closed-source projects I've seen ... that never saw the light of day.....

The difference between open-source projects and closed source projects like this is that the self-destruct process is just as public as the code is.

Re:Theres ALOT more than just those two.

[Anonymous Coward]

At least with OSS someone can pick up the code later and make another go at it.

Except that in reality they won't, of course. It's more fun to write your own code than maintain someone else's. And it's easier and more fun to be Lord of My Own Project than to be just another code monkey on someone else's project. And then, if the first project failed, it might well have been for a reason, and you're better off not having that code anyway.

Re:Theres ALOT more than just those two.

[DeSigna]

You forgot to mention one of the largest/most popular OSS 3D SDKs, Crystal Space.

Gnutella enabled FreeCraft

[jeanicinq]

FreeCraft developers only have to change the name if desired to comply. The look and feel issue is already a moot point because of Apple and Microsoft.

But now, the developers might find a new way to distribute the game. People want to play. Bad call on Blizzard's side. We expect to see the game on Gnutella. Since Gnutella is open source, the developers might think of how to add features of Gnutella directly into the game.

Blizzard lost out on a potential market for developers to build software that interacts with the commercial product. People want to play more.

Don't forget

[Ice_Balrog]

The Lindows vs MS case. The last thing I heard, the judge regected MS's case and MS decided to appeal.

Re:Don't forget

[angle_slam]

The Lindows vs MS case. The last thing I heard, the judge regected MS's case and MS decided to appeal.

Not exactly. MS sued Lindows and sought a preliminary injunction. The injunction wasn't granted. Then Lindows filed a Motion for Summary Judgment. It was denied. The case will be going to trial in the Fall. The Lindows site is down right now, but they have a page dedicated to this suit.

And Blizzard puts out such original material, too!

[DeadScreenSky]

Anyone else find it silly that Blizzard, makers of such innovative games as Warcraft I (Dune2 with Orcs), Blackthorne (Prince of Persia with guns), Rock and Roll Racing (Mario Kart with better music), Diablo (Nethack with better graphics), etc. are complaining about someone else copying them?

Yeah yeah, I know this is probably Vivendi's doing more than Blizzard, but it just seemed a little silly to me. Blizzard has made a very good business for itself around essentially updating and modifying other people's games. It would be like if Britney Spears (Madonna with the actual ability to sing) sued some young and upcoming pop slut...

Name of parent company

[colk99]

VIVENDI is the name of blizzards parent company and they are just nailing more nails in their own coffin

Re:Name of parent company

[Anonymous Coward]

VUG (Vivendi Universal Games) is in fact the parent company, whose parent is, you guessed it, Vivendi Universal. This isn't the first time we've seen them strong-arming Blizzard fan projects, either - just look at what happened to bnetd.

Well, no surprise the conglomerate has been making monumental losses with this kind of attitude... Blizzard is to be sold off as an asset, we can only hope the new owner isn't as litigous.

"under the radar longer"

[mumblestheclown]

so what you're saying is that OSS developers should try to infringe on others IP, and you've offered them a helpful way to lessen their chances of getting caught.

more slashdot duplicity at work.

I dont hate Blizzard

[HanzoSan]

I want to punish their parent company in an attempt to get them to sell Blizzard off. If you keep supporting Blizzard they'll own Blizzard forever.

Starcraft Battle Chest: $20

Diablo II: $20 each for the main game and expansion.

Warcraft II: $11.99

Battle.net: Completely free.

Yep, they're sure being greedy alright.

Every one of those games were made before Universal purchased Blizzard, World of Warcraft will not be free.

So you're saying that games without monthly fees are outdated? Thanks, but no thanks. I have enough monthly fees to pay already.

No I'm saying the gaming industry should go open source. Imagine if you could pay $5 a month, or $60 a year and get hundreds of free games, vs just one game for $60 each.

How is this possible? Heres how, CODE REUSE. The hardest part of making a game is writing the code, not the artwork, not the music, its the code. By paying for the actual development of code creation instead of the whole package, we allow hundreds of thousands if not millions of talented artists and fans to create their own versions.

This worked fine with Doom, mods appear when you give people access to the Engine, and new games are created based on the old engine. Open source would take this to the next level where all games would use the same engines, the difference in games will be the storyline, the art, the music, and the gameplay.

Re:I dont hate Blizzard

[KDan]

How is this possible? Heres how, CODE REUSE.

Why do I have the sneaky feeling that this code reuse on a large scale would also result in about 2000 games that are all pretty much the same, each being just a slightly different version of the same game, going by the personal vision of each lead developer?

Now I'm not saying that the current commercial model is at all successful in making original games (practically everything is either an FPS, an RTS, or a graphical mud - though there's the odd exception), but it seems to me that code reuse would only result in games that all look and feel the same.

Daniel

Re:I dont hate Blizzard

[GnuPengwyn]

Why do I have the sneaky feeling that this code reuse on a large scale would also result in about 2000 games that are all pretty much the same, each being just a slightly different version of the same game, going by the personal vision of each lead developer? Now I'm not saying that the current commercial model is at all successful in making original games (practically everything is either an FPS, an RTS, or a graphical mud - though there's the odd exception), but it seems to me that code reuse would only result in games that all look and feel the same.

That's pretty much the same argument the Big name drug companies are making. If we start charging you less for drugs, then we will need to slash our R&D, and you won't get any new drugs. My response to that is, "Were not getting any new drugs now anyway." And so, we are not getting any really "NEW" games now either. So what difference will it make. Except that everyone can freely audit the code (especially if it's a network game.)

Re:I dont hate Blizzard

[OneEyedApe]

Last I looked, World of Warcraft is going to be an MMORPG. So far, any major MMORPG has been pay-to-play. Those need a good bit more support in the server department than helping 2-4 people find each other for a game.

Re:I dont hate Blizzard

[Anonymous Coward]

the hardest part of making a game is writing the code, not the artwork, not the music, its the code

This statement couldn't be more wrong. Take a look at the credits for any decent modern game out there. You'll see fifty names, maybe five of which are actual programmers. The rest are artists and musicians. Games stopped being the product of a couple of hackers in the basement a long time ago. Now, it takes an entire diverse team to produce a major title.

I'd opine that the hardest part of making a game is designing the game. Not designing the code, but the game itself independent of the implementation, the rules and relationships that make it work.

Re:I dont hate Blizzard

[Nihilist_CE]

The hardest part of making a game is writing the code, not the artwork, not the music, its the code. By paying for the actual development of code creation instead of the whole package, we allow hundreds of thousands if not millions of talented artists and fans to create their own versions. This worked fine with Doom, mods appear when you give people access to the Engine, and new games are created based on the old engine. Open source would take this to the next level where all games would use the same engines, the difference in games will be the storyline, the art, the music, and the gameplay.

This logic doesn't stand up to the facts. How often do you find free games based on these tried-and-true engines? A mod is one thing. A completely new game with brand new art, sound, and music (not to mention gameplay) is something else altogether. Art assets are expensive. Was Hexen free?

Re:I dont hate Blizzard

[Joe Tie.]

The hardest part of making a game is writing the code, not the artwork, not the music, its the code.

I strongly disagree with this. I've been working on a rpg for quite a while now, and if all that was called for were code, we'd be long done. Because of code reuse, the coding has become a fairly trivial matter. Graphic loading and blitting, a few lines thrown to sdl. Same with movie and sound playback. It's the artists on the project who've been getting the brunt of the work, trying to create something that a player won't exclaim "Ew, OLD!" upon their first look at a screenshot.

Re:I dont hate Blizzard

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes sure now games are like film, and no more
funnny: take C&C Geneerals for exemple many
artists, musician graphists etc for a game with
3 really hard missions and no interest at all.

So i prefer the time of Indy 3 & 4 where they were
more research on scenerii than on graphism.

Please

[dh003i]

Let's not pretend that the people playing FreeCraft think it was produced by Blizzard.

Trademark laws are there for the CONSUMERS, not Blizzard.

Obviously, the consumers want FreeCraft to be named FreeCraft, so blizzard can fuck off and go to hell.

Re:Please

[Boing]

Actually, trademark laws are there for Blizzard, not the consumers. They're there so that innovative companies can safely invest money in marketing their name without a competitor mooching off it. Consumers indirectly benefit, because we're not led to use cheap knock-offs without clear knowledge.

FreeCraft uses Blizzard's naming heuristic for a product that directly competes with (and in this case, imitates) Blizzard's similarly named product. It's a means for FreeCraft to be easily remembered as the name of an open source RTS game, since it fits with the well-established naming convention of the leading proprietary games.

So explain to me how you can justify Blizzard's marketing dollars being used to increase recognition of a product that will likely hurt Blizzard's sales.

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[GnuPengwyn]

Why, exactly, does the purpose of supporting a -game/company need to be to hurt and kill another?
Although, I sniped out what you were refering to, I think you need to look in the mirror and ask yourself, why does Blizzard need to "hurt" FreeCraft. And why did they wait so long!? FreeCraft didn't harm anyone. Blizzard did.

admit it- Blizzard makes kickass games that LOTS of people love.
But ask yourself, how much longer until they reach the point of diminishing return, by pissing off the very folks that buy their products. WC3 was a piece of bloated buggy crap. (wouldn't even install correctly on two different boxes) And that was $50.00 a pop at COSTCO! The support was crap, and then battle.net won't let you logon (even with the right password.) They have too god damn much personal information about those using Bnet. They Killed the Open Source Version of BNet Servers. That pissed more people off.
Now they killed FreeCraft, yet pissing even more folks off, what next? Who are their lawyers going to screw next? What products will they ruin next.

Before you go and boycott the game industry.

[HanzoSan]

You should support the open source game development industry, instead of just not buying games, you should buy games which are open source or games like neverwinter nights.

Re:Before you go and boycott the game industry.

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Oh I agree with that. Not talking about boycotting the industry as a whole. There are some GOOD companies, and some great people working on open source. Blizzard is off my list permanently though...

Quick! While there's still time!

[Bradmont]

apt-get install freecraft :)

FreeLords

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the user comments here give me the creeps. I took the same approach (www.freelords.org), because YES it has a relation to the original, but the reason why you develop this piece of software is because you loved the original game. I can't threaten SGI (publisher of the original), because they have thousands of users and I have a handful. Getting a C&D after spending 100's of hours developing code (for no competition at all) seems _very_ strange.

Michael Bartl

Netcraft?

[ottffssent]

When should we expect to hear about Netcraft being sued?

Obviously, netcraft is Blizzard's next hit, wherein the few remaining human loyalists valiantly defend their networks from the hordes of Zerg viruses. Those survey folks are just confusing people.

Re:Netcraft?

[GuidoJ]

Right after they sued the people behind crafty, which is a game where you have to defend your king against the enemy along ancient game rules on an 8x8 square map. Blizzard does not own the genre, they even haven't a game yet, but having that same syllable in the name, it must be evil and therefore destroyed.

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[nuggetman]

They have too god damn much personal information about those using Bnet.

I've never played Warcraft III online, but Battle.net never asked me for anything more than a username and a password. The whole profile thing is optional, and most people put "your worst nightmare" for name, "your closet" or "right here" for location, and "yes" or "please" for sex.

What went wrong here ?

[datadictator]

Doesn't Sam Lantinga work for blizzard ? You know, the former loki coder who wrote SDL ?

I mean LOKI employes a man, without whom Linux gaming would be ten years behind - UT2003, and pretty much every OSS game makes use of SDL these days.

On a different point, since when is it illegal to create clone software ? I mean clone software is a very rich source of many things. OpenOffice is nothing but a clone. A lot of the nicest OSS games are clones of old favorites, think FreeTrek, Kpackman and the like.

For that matter, FreeCraft wasn't even a true clone, it was a cloned engin, capable of playing *craft on many platforms. It still used the gamedata from your *craft CD's to do this, there was a sepperate project to create a set of unrestricted free (as in beer) media packs for the engin as well though.
If anythign I think freecraft did Blizzard a massive favor, people who would otherwize have shunned warcraft X, would buy it to play with freecraft on the linux boxes.
Some people may have chosen their own gamedata, but who cares - they are the small minority who would never have bought anyway.
If this is really just about the name, the blizzard is stupid as it is totally nondilutional. If the freecraft people want to really snappy - let them change their name
to:"CloneOfStupidBlizzardGame" and when the next C&D letter comes, write back with one word only:"Protected Parody"

oh ok, lets do this

[HanzoSan]

ID should be able to sue every company who makes a first person shooter who has the name Q, D, or W in their name simply because they created the genre and have patent rights to any game which even looks like it.

Right? Thats fair?

Re:oh ok, lets do this

[damiam]

Not all FPS games are clones of an id game, while Freecraft is most definately a Warcraft clone, in both appearence and gameplay. Also, there's a big difference between the using the word "craft" in an obvious attempt to play off of Blizzard's naming scheme, and using the letter 'D' because it's part of a name that you came up with for your game.

Re:oh ok, lets do this

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

" Not all FPS games are clones of an id game,while Freecraft is most definately a Warcraft clone, "

Oh really?

How did you come to that conclusion, Spanky? Every single FPS I have ever played has been more similar to every other FPS I have played than RTS games are. As far as I'm concerned, Unreal, HalfLife, and Postal 2 are as much Quake clones as Freecraft is a Warcraft clone.

Newsflash: THere's nothing wrong with cloning a game, if you're not stealing source code.

The Craft thing was stupid, but Blizzard could have gone about this in a better way. It's not like the Freecraft guys were PROFITING off this...

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[cicatrix1]

Uhm, all wrong. That's just all there is to say.

What, no mention of Bnetd?

[Grog6]

or has everyone forgotten about the Open Source alternative to battlenet?

That's why I'm STILL not buying Blizzard anything.

BTW, does no one get the cocaine reference in 'Blizzard"?

That was the origin of 'Blizzard of Ozz', the insiration for their name.

Buncha damn powderheads.

Re:What, no mention of Bnetd?

[Eisenstein]

Oh yeah the alternatives where everyone could play with his illegal copy of Blizzard games. Damn Blizzard for shutting them down, I always loved to play with guys who have stolen their copy of the game, they are much more mature than the usual Blizzard crowd.

Re:What, no mention of Bnetd?

[ken.quach]

There were many other reasons why bnetd (and it's clones fsgs etc) was so great. Battle.net is not the greatest place to play games like Starcraft or it's expansions when you live outside the US, Asia or EU.

The game LAGS when trying to play with many others across the world on dialup.

The Battle.net emulator allowed smaller communities to set up online games bypassing battle.net.

Most did not support piracy, but were unable to check for CD keys as Blizzard would not aid them in this.

(I'm not suggesting Blizzard give out an algorithm to produce valid CD keys, but the same model games like Half Life use where a central server validates the key could have been implemented, but Blizzard were not interested).

Well, DUH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yah, great, so I had this idea of a first-person shooter called BOOM III where you're, like, a marine fighting evil aliens from mars and I did this cool version with the green-armored marine and the zombies and knights of darknesswhatever and then those EVIL CORPORATE GREEDY MONKEYS from iD sent a C&D letter to me! I mean WTF?!

Viva la resistance! Let's all make a fool out of ourselves! Long live the GPL movement! Don't EVAR buy iD software AGAIN! That'll teach them!

Send them a letter...

[c_oflynn]

From the website:

Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., Blizzard Entertainment was founded in 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by chairman Allen Adham, president Michael Morhaime and vice president Frank Pearce.

And:
Blizzard Entertainment P.O. Box 18979 Irvine, CA 92623

Oh, and the parent company: is public so here are some more names, the address is at the side... e-mail just doesn't cut it!

Do your own marketing ...

[Titusdot Groan]

Why do open source products have to name their products as close as possible to the product from which they are ripping all their ideas off?

This wasn't supposed to be the ideal of Open Source -- it's not to make mediocre and blatant copies of commerical products, complete with a "punny" name like FreeCraft, FreeCiv, Lindows or ...

We're supposed to be making better, faster, original stuff. Either just plain better (compare the GNU Unix tools against the Solaris versions) or new and better, leading edge stuff like emacs (which was amazing when it came out; although I prefer Vim :-), perl, tcl, python, ...

And, damn it, pick a name that doesn't attempt to ride the coat tails of the commercial version so you get free marketing name association. If you're too lazy to market it yourself than you deserve to be ceased and desisted.

Re:Do your own marketing ...

[datadictator]

And, damn it, pick a name that doesn't attempt to ride the coat tails of the commercial version so you get free marketing name association. If you're too lazy to market it yourself than you deserve to be ceased and desisted.

Very interesting statement considdering your sig nitwit.

Re:Do your own marketing ...

[Titusdot Groan]

Well I must be a nitwit because I can't for the life of me see how this is an inconsistent stance?

Please enlighten!

Re:Do your own marketing ...

[blibbleblobble]

"Why do open source products have to name their products as close as possible to the product from which they are ripping all their ideas off?"

Because in most cases they're intended as a direct, drop-in replacement for the offending proprietry software.

If there's something which Free Software can't do, and that people want, then the free version will be written, it'll trounce any proprietry alternatives, and that will be the end of that. We have no need to support software companies who aren't contributing anything to the community. If they can't release software under a free license, their software will have to be replaced with a working alternative.

Re:Do your own marketing ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh let's see...first you tell the freecraft guys to change their project, then your sig implies that if somebody (you describe a Stahlman/Maddog Hall like) wants you to change the name of your project, that is an intrusion on the freedomn of your product.
I get the idea in fact that your are implying that RMS insisting we call it GNU/Linux undermines his own stated ideals of freedomn.

Don't get me wrong here, I agree on that point. For the same reason it is not called OpenGL/Quake.

What struck me is this:
FreeCraft - Change your name !!!
RMS - Don't tell Linux to change it's name !!!

Oh I get it - the one is about FreeCraft and the other is about Linux - not inconsistent at all. Sorry my bad.

Re:Do your own marketing ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... except that, at least in the Games arena, there's nothing "Free" that has "trounced" the "propriety" alternatives.

These software companies have contributed to the community by releasing their software. Games that were years of hard work. And their software DOES work.

Your post comes across as that of yet another zealot who is determined everything must be free, regardless of the actual cost. Yet, of all the varieties of software that affect freedom, games do so the least. There's no lock-in because you never need them. They're entertainment, and they're disposable entertainment at that.

There's as much lock-in with a game as there is with a novel or a movie, in fact.

So please, take your arguments about "Freedom" elsewhere. They're dubious about many forms of software out there, but when it comes to games, they're quite literally a joke.

Re:Do your own marketing ...

[Titusdot Groan]

Ahhh, I see.

My problem with Stallman is his hypocrisy at attempting to control the usage of his software when such control is exactly what the GPL is intended to prevent. Stallman's political goals are often served by free software but this incident shows he is obviously willing to sacrifice the spirit of the GPL when the goals of free software clash with his agenda.

My problem with the FreeCraft guys is that Blizzard owns WarCraft and StarCraft and has not given up any such control. Obviously Blizzard has led the way by having multiple products with the Craft moniker so they are well within their rights to defend it. The FreeCraft guys are just trying to cash in on the ground Blizzard has already staked.

Re:Do your own marketing ...

[SQLz]

Why do open source products have to name their products as close as possible to the product from which they are ripping all their ideas off? It was a trend sometime back but has sort of died out. Its where there are so many email clients named after trees. Also..I hardly think at this point, you can't rip off' a 2d RTS game where dudes mine gold and chop trees.

Re:Do your own marketing ...

[Anonymous Coward]

We're supposed to be making better, faster, original stuff

And I thought that freedom meant be able to do what YOU want rather than what others think you should do.

Re:Do your own marketing ...

[Bill Kendrick]

pick a name that doesn't attempt to ride the coat tails of the commercial version so you get free marketing name association

I never paid much attention to the FreeCraft project, nor have I ever played it, but I thought the main purpose was to allow people to play WarCraft under Linux. (e.g., using the user's own WarCraft CD that they went out and purchased)

The name just makes sense. "FreeWarCraft" would have been even more accurate, it just doesn't sound very good. ;^)

Shadowsource movement? Re: make them all martyrs.

[ihatesco]

1) change the name to the project
(freezzard?)

2) adopt a warez-style release with private ftps, .nfo files and p2p

3) sign your code with gpg keys, eventually telling
people to recompile the code from scratch (if one
key and hash is marked as bad by someone,
word-by-mouth will spread and no-one will get
that release)

4) gather on specific usenet newsgroups for patching
(alt.hipcrime.patches.freezzard)

5) eventually your releases will get attention like the something-"reactor" style websites...

+ + + +

I can envision the day when Hasbro will get pissed with roguelikes, Quartex will release Nethack, and only http://userfriendly.org (as satire site) will be able to say that the new version is out (but not pointing to the ed2k, it's a satire site, not a warez site)

Or you could be a little fucking original

[I Am The Owl]

Way to go, Blizzard, now the only competitors to worry about are the ones who can afford lawyers and actually hold competing market share.

Yeah, now only the people with original ideas will be able to compete! What a crock of shit!

Seriously, will OSS ever produce an original idea, or will it all be about copycat-ism?

Re:Or you could be a little fucking original

[cheesybagel]

Do not be a jackass. OSS has produced original concepts since way back. Ever heard of NetHack and NetTrek?

Regarding WarCraft is it really that original? Or is it yet another rehash of Dune II with spice having a different name?

Re:Or you could be a little fucking original

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, Slashdot used to be a decent place when it was a Linux site. These days, the Windoze-using idiots have taken over, as evidenced by the above post and the two idiots who enjoy getting fucked up the ass by Bill Gates who moderated the post up.

Re:Or you could be a little fucking original

[Executive Override]

Seriously, will OSS ever produce an original idea, or will it all be about copycat-ism?

You mean, like Warcraft was an original idea? How about games like Dune II that came before it?

I don't now about OSS, but Free Software is about freedom. Therefore the idea of improving your favorite game instead of making a completely different one is central.

Re:Or you could be a little fucking original

[Anonymous Coward]

But in the end, he is right. Nothing original has ever come out of the Open Source Community. Everything from their window managers to their office clones are just that - Clones of their Windows Counterparts.

Re:Or you could be a little fucking original

[rmohr02]

Who the fuck modded this up?

Re:Or you could be a little fucking original

[Anonymous Coward]

NetHack's just a rehash of Rogue, in that case.

NetTrek's a rehash of a number of different games that came before it, too.

Re:Or you could be a little fucking original

[Bill Kendrick]

Seriously, will OSS ever produce an original idea, or will it all be about copycat-ism?

1) "OSS" _has_ produced original ideas.
2) Go right ahead! Write an original game and release it as Open Source. Or was someone stopping you? :^P

Re:Or you could be a little fucking original

[I Am The Owl]

Go right ahead! Write an original game and release it as Open Source. Or was someone stopping you? :^P

Um, no. If I invest that much time in writing a game, I'm not giving it away for free. What kind of point are you trying to prove?

Slashdot is not important!

[NDPTAL85]

Aren't you overestimating the influence of Slashdot just a tad? The overwhelming majority of Blizzards customers don't even know Slashdot exists and even the ones who do don't always agree.

Take me for example. I'm a Blizzard customer and a Slashdot user. But I hardly ever agree with the Slashdot groupthink. I see nothing wrong with Blizzard's actions today and will remain a customer for years to come.

Why?

Because I like GOOD video games and Blizzard makes em. I don't want to have to wait 2 to 3 years for an open source half-assed equivalent to come out. Some of the very BEST open source games look like something that was first introduced 5 years ago. And before anyone goes off on a rant about how GOOD games don't always need the best graphics well I agree. But that doesn't mean I also want to be a second-class citizen on the video gaming front.

For the love of GAWD can't you pedantic nerdy geeks keep politics out of ONE realm of your lives? Folks just want to play games not stand on idealogical grounds for or against something. Whatever happened to just appreciating good work without an alterior motive?

Re:Slashdot is not important!

[Anonymous Coward]

well...I cannot help it that you are not ideologic.
I can appreciate good work, and than happily continuing living with my morals. Do you think a priest cannot appreciate a beautiful woman? He still doesn't have to fuck her.

And if she is a whoring bitch, perhaps he will try to keep his friends away from her.

Ofcourse, you do not have any such objections...

Re:Slashdot is not important!

[attobyte]

See the real point is people on slashdot have more of a clue about business and politics and how they work. Where the rest of the world don't all they care is what effects their little world. Most people are clueless and I can't help that. At slashdot you get a little more of the story that you don't see in the real world. Of course I am not talking about the 99% of trolls out there either. The people that just read and don't really post are the intellegent ones. I don't know why I started posting again anyways.

Re:Slashdot is not important!

[moebius_4d]

Shit, with friends like that...

Re:Slashdot is not important!

[GlassHeart]

For the love of GAWD can't you pedantic nerdy geeks keep politics out of ONE realm of your lives?

I don't actually have an opinion on the Freecraft issue, but if you can keep it out of just one aspect of your life, then it's not a principle.

Re:Slashdot is not important!

[EllisDees]

If Blizzard didn't suck so bad that they live in fear of a "half-assed equivalent", you might have a point.

Have they ever even had an original idea for a game? Doubtful.

> Folks just want to play games not stand on idealogical grounds for or against something.

Maybe because you're a sheep. As long as you're being fattened up, you don't care what your handler does.

Re:Slashdot is not important!

[cabra771]

You lost me here...are you for or against the whole Freecraft thing? Wait a second...dammit, I got trolled again!

Re:Slashdot is not important!

[Babbster]

Amen, brother. I know Slashdot exists and I *do* care about truly unjust cases of legal attacks on ANYONE (including, obviously, open source developers). Despite that, I will continue buying Blizzard games, both because they're fun and I think that in this case THEY'RE RIGHT.

The developers of Freecraft were, in essence, making a Linux port of a game to which they have NO LEGAL RIGHTS, and to top it off they were even making their intentions clear by naming the game as they did.

Go Blizzard (and Vivendi).

Re:Slashdot is not important!

[Anonymous Coward]

These Slashdot users don't have a head to think with. They're business students, windows xp users, mac morons and, more commonly, a lot like yourself. I think "middle of the road" is the phrase you people apply to yourselves, but it just seals the middle management 'merka (3M) syndrome.

Got more news for you: Blizzard is crap. Yeah, it's true. I played Warcraft 2 and Starcraft on an almost religious basis. I realized, around the time that my pathetic woman-flesh learned to play Warcraft 3, that Vivendi subsidiaries make games that sell. The word "good" does not enter into the description unless you're talking about market share. This makes sense, and we all know the reason why (Tribes2 development/aftermath).

Vivendi is cutthroat. This recent action is proof of that. I ask you something: if you're such a good business student, why aren't you reading the Wall Street Journal or some equivalent shit rag? They've got stories in there about establishing profit margins and market share that would make you sweat blood. Blood is what Vivendi wants, because that's what modern capitalism is after. They don't like you and they think you're stupid. Which isn't to imply that they're wrong if you like the end results (Starcraft, Warcraft, Half-Life).

Remember: good games are ones that make you think. And not in the "jam your finger up your nose and sit down for a good yarn" think like with Deus Ex (yes, I've heard all the other miserable excuses for MoR-3Ms to enjoy post-Spector template gameplay; you can take that game and shove it.) Not even think like "wow, this polygon art is almost tolerable or recognizable." No, Half-Life is not a good game, either. It is neither playable or enjoyable on any other level than "trance."

Re:Slashdot is not important!

[Anonymous Coward]

Have they ever even had an original idea for a game? Doubtful.

*cough*Diablo*cough

Re:Slashdot is not important!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I like GOOD video games and Blizzard makes em. I don't want to have to wait 2 to 3 years for an open source half-assed equivalent to come out.

What does that have to do with whether Blizzard's actions are right or wrong? Or are you under the impression that Freecraft will put Blizzard out of business, leaving only the "open source half-assed equivalent"?

Re:Slashdot is not important!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankfully, people like you are kept well away from capitalism so we can enjoy our lives without giving more than a passing thought to your quaint bolshevic nonsense.
Capitalism works. Capitalism is the reason the United States owns the rest of the worlds' socialist asses. Now if everyone would just stop being so lazy then they could take advantage of the oppurtunities given them by capitalism and not get left behind to moan and whine. Or just stop smoking pot so you can pass a drug test and get a job. I think the problem with people like you is that you DO have a choice. You'd rather be told what to do so you didn't have to really earn your own way.
Eh... just my opinion, anyway. :)

If by "like", you mean "not like"...

[stewby18]

On the surface, this is really nothing alike. On one hand, we have a company making sex toys, with a name sounding like a company that makes underwear. (I'll grant there could be some overlap, but they are basically distinct industries). On the other hand, we have a real-time strategy game with a very similar name to an established family of RTS games.

Any judge who found that there wasn't a possibilty of confusion ("Sweet, Blizzard released a new *Craft game!") would have to be insane.

Re:If by "like", you mean "not like"...

[MrGrendel]

The ruling was that the plaintif has to demonstrate that actual economic harm has been done. It isn't enough for a company to simply state that harm has been done, or even to show that the potential for harm exists. The opinion even acknowleges that providing the level of proof that is required would be extremely difficult and expensive. This is good because it places the burden of proof back on the plaintif where it should be. And it should put an end to lawsuits about one name sounding like another (of course, nothing will stop legal bullying of hobbyists). The trademark laws are intended to prevent someone other than Blizzard from making a game called StarCraft or WarCraft. It is not intended to stop competitors from making similar games or even making games with similar titles. No one is going to think that FreeCraft it a version of WarCraft that Blizzard decided to publish on SF for free and then not buy WarCraft. They may not buy WarCraft because they think using FreeCraft is good enough, but competition is not trademark infringement.

It is too bad that despite a unanimous ruling from the supreme court, companies are still engaging in this nonsense. Most likely, it would be enough to have an IP lawyer send them a response saying "you know you can't win a case like this anymore." But even that can be prohibitively expensive for hobbyists. What is really needed is a legal defense fund for Free software projects. However, it is doubtful that anyone will actually set one up, or that many Free software programmers (or users) would donate to it even though it would be in everyone's best interest.

Re:Bnet issues

[GnuPengwyn]

Yeah, you can lie on YOUR profile. The point is some folks don't. The point is they collect the information. A first time user wouldn't know not to give their email address. So, it's easy (as duh) for you to sit there and tell us all how you lied in every single field when you went after your username / password. Others did not lie.
By paying $50.00 they don't fscking need to know who I am. They didn't need to nuke the Bnet Server Clones either. That's like Radio Shack asking for your name and address when you come in to buy a fuse for your god damn CB radio. And look at RadioShack now... You might notice they DONT ASK anymore. There's a reason behind that.

Now regarding the username and password on Bnet, let me just be the first one to tell you that for no god damn reason, the username / password CAN just stop working. With there being no other servers other than Bnet, I took my fscking CD out, and it's been on the shelf ever since. You want the god damn disk?! I'll give you the fscking thing. It's worthless to me. Just like Blizzard is. The only thing they're good for is harassing folks, and screwing others and Bloated Buggy Anti-Pirate Software that does not work correctly.

Ripoff and more ripoff

[Convergence]

You're right. Linux is just a ripoff of BSD. BSD is just a ripoff of UNIX. The Windows is just a ripoff of the Mac. The Mac is a ripoff of the computer at PARC. Slashdot is just a ripoff of USENET. Clone computers are ripoffs too; do YOU have an authentic IBM machine?

The parent comment is just a ripoff of other comments. Big deal. How many clones of Doom have come out over the last decade? Freecraft may be similar to warcraft/starcraft but who gives a shit. This is just a company going for a landgrab and cybersquatting. This is a bully threatening others.

Really, this is incident is like Walmart sending hired goons to threaten a lemonaid stand across the street. Sure, it 'competes' with the in-store drinks, it may even be a 'clone' of the in-store lemonaid, but there is nothing illegal abouot that.

I'm just sad that the frightened people at FreeCraft didn't remove the downloads and post the letter and let the discussion rage, (like bnetd) rather than fold up and immediately disappear.

Re:Ripoff and more ripoff

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up, you pathetic ripoff of your parents. :)

Re:Ripoff and more ripoff

[Qender]

Luckely for us. When they ripped off the older computers, they added newer functionality and improved the computer. If they had done as strict an imitation as FreeCraft is of Warcraft. Then all the clones would still be 8088 computers.

This is not like walmart attacking a lemonaid stand. This is like walmart sending a cease and desist letter to "walfree" across the street, asking them to stop giving away items shoplifted from the walmart. And no matter how big and evil walmart is, they have all the right to do so.

Re:Ripoff and more ripoff

[Qender]

Well, first of all. Humans and computer games are different things, and the same rules do not apply to both. (I know, I've used computers enough confuse the two on occasion.)

You obviously ignored my argument. I am not a direct imitation of my parents. I am an abstraction, with many and random genetic mutations. FreeCraft is not Warcraft II's child. It is Warcraft II's clone.

And as far as I believe, blizzard also owns the rights to warcraft's "children".

Re:Ripoff and more ripoff

[cheesybagel]

You people keep using fallacy in your arguments.

How is a game made from scratch by someone else a carbon copy? The fact you, as a player, can use Warcraft II graphics in it if you own Warcraft II is irrelevant and inconsequential.

Was bnetd server also opposed because of breaching the graphics look and feel?

Re:Ripoff and more ripoff

[Qender]

a xerox machine makes every page it prints. The ink is in different places, the brightness is original to that copy, everything is created on that moment. But it's guide for creaton was the original document.

The game was not made from scratch, they didn't do any preplanning or pre-development, they just took someone elses game and made it again.

Re:Ripoff and more ripoff

[cheesybagel]

Yet more sophistry. Are you telling me that the effort involved in making a Xerox copy is the same as for making a game clone? Are you telling me that programming a game, regardless of being based on the concept of anything, involves no effort, no design, no engineering?

Have you ever programmed anything substancial in your life?

If design was everything, why does a game take days or weeks to be designed, months and years to be implemented?

Re:Ripoff and more ripoff

[Qender]

"Yet more sophistry."

I see nothing factually wrong with any of my statments. The only things incorrect are the assumptions you made.

"Are you telling me that the effort involved in making a Xerox copy is the same as for making a game clone?"

No, I'm not telling you that. I never even mentioned xerox copies and games in the same paragraph. I was comparing the two, but I never said they were the same. Surely you understand that imitations of any kind have similarites in at least the nature of the imitation process.

"Are you telling me that programming a game, regardless of being based on the concept of anything, involves no effort, no design, no engineering? "

No. I never said that.

"Have you ever programmed anything substancial in your life?"

Yes.

Re:Ripoff and more ripoff

[cheesybagel]

If you are having CS you should be having some classes about logic. Inquire in your class about false analogies, i.e.:

The sky is blue, hence
Dogs are purple.

You cannot use an analogy to prove your assertion of an unrelated matter.

In the end the easiest way to disprove these false analogies is to look at reality. To sum up my previous affirmations: The reality is the process of Xerox copying involves little effort while the process of implementing a piece of software requires more effort than designing it, regardless of what they say in software engineering class.

Re:Ripoff and more ripoff

[Qender]

I understand logic fine. Don't worry about me. I'm not a computer science student. I'm a film student at an art school.

I never made any remark concerning the effort required. It does not relate to the argument about the legality of the situation.

My statement concerns the similarites between warcraft 2 and freecraft.

I think a lot of effort was put into reproducing warcraft 2.

Don't be mindless, simple as that.

[NDPTAL85]

Yeah they're evil for protecting their work from the likes of those who probably won't ever leave their parents basements before they die.

Its not like the workers at Blizzard have families to feed or anything. And any company that tries to protect its IP is obviously evil because here in the Slashdot world, the dot.com mentality still exists where online business are somehow "different" from regular brick and morter business where its ok to earn a living. BUt not online! Don't you dare try to earn a living online! If you do, you're EVIL!

Re:Don't be mindless, simple as that.

[TrebleJunkie]

First off, most open-source creators do NOT live in their parents' basements. Most have good jobs or at least good skills. Most are own their own, have lives and/or families. Most are just doing what they do because they enjoy it. Your stereotypical generalization of them does little to further any debate here, nor does it paint your comments in a decent light.

And you'll find from most of my other comments that I don't fit your definition of the typical Slashdot-worlder (if there is such a thing.) I pay for music, I pay for games. I have strong opinions about intellectual property, yes, but they would probably be closer to yours than to what you believe everyone elses is. I believe firmly in making money, but I believe in doing so based on your abilities, and not by lobbing cease-and-desist grenades at those who 1) haven't done anything wrong (STUPID maybe, more on that in a minute) and 2) can't afford to fight you.

I believe that Blizzard is a lot of talented people, and they make fine products, but, frankly, the way they treat their customers and supporters needs a LOT of work. Maybe a handful of people there are calling the shots, formulating the tactics. Their tactics ARE evil. So, Blizzard as a whole is probably evil the way the Germans where (OH MY GOD HE DIDN'T JUST BRING NAZI GERMANY INTO THIS!!! WOE TO ALL!!! Bite me, it's a good example of how *most* companies work. Most do a lot of things that their average employee would never stand for if it was being done to them, but for some reason, they show up for work every day.) in that mostly, their nice, talented people, they just take their marching orders from an evil few.

It's one thing to protect your IP, it's another to go after hobbyists who did *not* infringe on your IP, who played by the rules, reverse-engineered (LEGAL!) the bnetd protocols with the help of packet sniffers -- NO original code -- and disingenuously accuse them of circumventing your copy protection in order to shut them the hell down.

FreeCraft is a slightly different story. Granted, FreeCraft's maker(s) could have been smarter, and 1) called the game something else and 2) not used graphics that look an awful lot like those from WarCraft. Hell, I'd almost recommend to them if they're out there that they change the name, get other graphics, change the gameplay enough to get Blizzard off their backs, and keep going with their work.

As for Blizzard, you make a damn good product -- accept that, and use your resources to sell your product instead of writing cease-and-desist letters. Learn something from the rest of the gaming industry that lets players mod and extend their games, often to the increased success and sales of the original product. And most importantly, stop treating your *supporters* as the enemy, because at some point in time, your enemy *will* wise up and stopping buying your products.

Re:Don't be mindless, simple as that.

[EllisDees]

> Yeah they're evil for protecting their work from the likes of those who probably won't ever leave their parents basements before they die

What do you mean? That's their core audience.

Re:Don't be mindless, simple as that.

[MrGrendel]

Protecting copyrights and trademarks is one thing, elliminating competition with legal bullying is something entirely different. The fact that workers at Blizzard have families to feed is completely irrelevant. They are not entitled to be free from competition, even if the competition is giving its product away.

Would you care to identify what IP is being infringed upon that Blizzard needs to protect? It can't be copyright. Copyright does not protect ideas, it protects implementations. I don't think there is any accusation of Freecraft taking code from Blizzard. It can't be trademark because the supreme court recently ruled that actual economic harm has to be demonstrated for infringement to have occured. And it has to be harm caused by consumers confusing one product or company with another. Being reminded of another product or company is not enough (ie soundalike names are alright as long as no confusion can be proven). That leaves patent infringement. Has FreeCraft violated any patents? I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that they didn't.

It is completely proper for people to be upset by a company harrassing a bunch of hobbyists by claiming IP infringement when they know very well that no infringement has taken place. They should compete with products, not with lawyers. If you have evidence of IP infringement, then by all means post it and prove me wrong.

BTW... I program Free software and I also have a real job, a wife, and a child. I have not lived with my parents for many, many years. I can write Free software because I make a lot of money writing software in my regular job. That is the case for most Free software programmers. I have yet to meet a single Free software programmer working on a serious project (mp3 players et al excluded) who fits your slacker stereotype.

Three Strikes

[CoolMoDee]

I say we enact the three strike laws for corporations. This is blizzaard's second strike by my count. 1) Shutting down the open battle.net server 2) This current Freecraft deal. Let's hope they screw up one more time so we can lock the whole corporation in jail for life without a possibility for poroal.

I let bnetd slip...

[heXXXen]

Bnetd pissed me off for a little while, but this is just rediculous. Especially since a group of friends and I had started developing a strategy game on the engine!

I was going to buy Frozen Throne, but nevermind that. Not that it matters, it'll be the fastest selling expansion pack of all time anyway.

HANZOSAN IS A FUCKING IDIOT, YHBT!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

clearly you readers and moderators are morons if you keep getting trolled by this fucktard.

what game?

[Suppafly]

What game is the two headed guy that used as the topic icon for rts games from?

If by "not like", you mean "not not like"...

[drdale]

While I think there is more similarity between a lingerie store and an adult novelty store than you apparently do, the real likeness has to do with the fact that both cases involve companies claiming their trademarks are infringed by other companies with soundalike names. And the point is that the Supreme Court ruled that in such a case the company suing must meet a very high standard of proof (at least under federal law): they must show that they have actually lost some non-trivial amount of money because of the similar names. Not that they might, but that they really and truly have.

Yeah thats what happened with Linux right?

[HanzoSan]

All linux software is the same?

Wrong, we have tons of different Window managers, and tons of different software, while most of this software uses the exact same libraries and all of this software runs using the Xfree core.

Now I'm not saying that the current commercial model is at all successful in making original games (practically everything is either an FPS, an RTS, or a graphical mud - though there's the odd exception), but it seems to me that code reuse would only result in games that all look and feel the same.


Considering look and feel depends on the artists work and not the engine behind it, I'm not so sure you are right.

Alot of people would say Halflife looks nothing like Quake. Both are FPS but people dont consider those two games the same.

You are right most games are the same type of games, thats why we only need a few good graphics engine backends.

Also, if we get some open source projects in development, we should allow the subscribers who are paying to decide who the lead developer is and what kinda game it becomes.

The problem isnt the engine, you dont really need a new graphics engine for the same type of game, all RPGs and FPS's could use the same engine, its the gameplay that seperates them.

Re:Yeah thats what happened with Linux right?

[BlackHawk-666]

Alot of people would say Halflife looks nothing like Quake. Both are FPS but people dont consider those two games the same.

These games are based on two different engines and they don't share code. But aside from that, they do look different and much of it appears to me to be the texture maps they have used. I can usually spot a game based on the Helf-Life engine because it has a certain "look".

Re:Yeah thats what happened with Linux right?

[Uncle Ira]

IIRC the Half-Life engine was based on licenced Quake 2 code.

Re:Yeah thats what happened with Linux right?

[BlackHawk-666]

Doh, yes, apparently Half-Life was a Quake engine licensee. I seem to recall reading that they heaviliy modified the engine however...but that could simply be the second time I'm wrong today (and I've only been awake an hour) ;->

Re:Yeah thats what happened with Linux right?

[Obyron]

Common misconception. The original development started using the Quake I engine.

Re:Yeah thats what happened with Linux right?

[Fryed]

I'm pretty sure you're right on that. I remember reading an article when Half-life first came out saying that after they got the rights to use the Quake 1 engine, they basically rewrote the entire engine in C++. Granted, it's been a while since I read this, so it's entirely possible that I'm mistaken.

Coming soon...

[fluxrad]

A new on-line realtime strategy game from the makers of...um...food.

Build a cheesy empire with Velveeta! Sail into battle with ChipsAhoy! Or tear down your opponent's battlements with an oreo trebuchet!

Play as one of four exciting new races: Macaroni&Cheese eaters, The Salad Dressing-ites, StoveTop Stuffers, or People of the Jell-o!

WarKraft

who's up for doing the box-art?

Didn't it used to have a different name?

[gotr00t]

As I recall from the window header of Freecraft, it used to be called "ALE clone". Why not just rename it back to its old name?

In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Dairy Queen has filed a lawsuit against Blizzard for the illegal use of the name "Blizzard". Joined with Dairy Queen in the lawsuit is The Weather Channel, the states of Alaska and Minnesota, and a WWF wrestler.

Folks, it's going to get to the point that we won't be able to start a new business, sell a new product, or even name our own children without pissing off somebody.

Spike Lee, go to hell.

Re:In other news

[ihatesco]

Folks, it's going to get to the point that we won't be able to start a new business, sell a new product, or even name our own children without pissing off somebody.

Chilling resemblance to how European dictators were pissed if you named your children in a way that they didn't like.

Spike Lee, go to hell. Amen.

Re:Bnet issues

[nuggetman]

So, it's easy (as duh) for you to sit there and tell us all how you lied in every single field when you went after your username / password. Others did not lie.

I can't say I've ever seen a profile where someone puts their full address in. If people want to put an email address, it's their perogative. You edit your profile on SC/WCII by double clicking on your name in the chat box. Seriously, how many people do you think accidentally wound up there and said "Gee... I'd better fill in all my real personal information".

By paying $50.00 they don't fscking need to know who I am.

Then don't fill out the OPTIONAL profile that isn't even made PREVALENT that it exists..

Now regarding the username and password on Bnet, let me just be the first one to tell you that for no god damn reason, the username / password CAN just stop working. With there being no other servers other than Bnet, I took my fscking CD out, and it's been on the shelf ever since. You want the god damn disk?! I'll give you the fscking thing. It's worthless to me.

You aren't charged a single cent to use this free massive multiplayer network (EXCLUDING the cost of the disk), and you're gonna stop playing the game just because of a glitch occasionally on the server. Personally I've never lost an account unless I didn't use it for 90 days. I'll be glad to take the CD off your hands.

On another note... using "fsck" and "god damn" every other word in your post makes you look like an angry, angsty teenager.

Re:Shadowsource movement? Re: make them all martyr

[jmv]

adopt a warez-style release with private ftps, .nfo files and p2p

That's exactly what they want: drive the project underground. Same as DeCSS: you know you can't eliminate it entirely but just driving the project underground is enough. For example, that's why Linux distros can't ship with a DVD player by default.

Official Fork Of FreeCraft: Project Inferno

[diablo-d3]

I am the lead developer for Project Inferno, and Im inviting everyone to come to #projectinferno on irc.freenode.net

Re:Official Fork Of FreeCraft: Project Inferno

[llzackll]

Great news! This proves you can never completely kill a free software project.

Just rename it FreeWorld...

[Daniel Phillips]

...and I, for one, will never again buy any game from Blizzard.

I.E., Blizzard does not own the word "craft", nor should they.

Re:Just rename it FreeWorld...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's the name for my free HomeWorld knockoff. You can't use it.

Re:Just rename it FreeWorld...

[Daniel Phillips]

...and I, for one, will never again buy any game from Blizzard.

I.E., Blizzard does not own the word "craft", nor should they.

Actually, now that I think of it, the obvious name would be FreeWar. Just a little cynical-sounding as well, but whether that's inappropriate is an open question.

Why don't they just change the name...

[Anonymous Coward]

...to Firebird?

Err, wait a minute...

Next... FreeCiv?

[prakashj79]

It's a wonder FreeCiv hasn't got a C&D yet -- the web site even proclaims, "'Cause civilization should be free". If it ever gets up to speed, Firaxis' lawyers would be around with a polite, "Stop it, or else..." letter.

Re:Next... FreeCiv?

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeCIv has been up to speed for a while now; 1.14.0 had everything CIV I had except diplomacy with AIs. The up-and-coming 1.15.0 will have diplomacy with AIs.

Even without AI diplomacy, FreeCiv is a perfectly playable and enjoyable game.

It's such a pity...

[Snaller]

... that Blizzard actually makes quality games - they would be easier to hate if they were also incompetent (like say, Westwood)

HAHAHAHAHAHAH

[Anonymous Coward]

This is SLASHDOT.

The first article is about the "evils of the RIAA/MPAA". The next article will be about the next MUST HAVE ANIME DVD THAT EVERYONE MUST GO GET DROOL!

If you're looking for consistancy, you've come to the WRONG place.

Luck break for them

[SandSpider]

A lot of people have mentioned that all they have to do is change the name. This is agree with, as it's simple enough and not that big a deal. Besides, it'll be be maybe fun for the whole 30 seconds that it'll take them to come up with a new one.

The reason that you pick a name closely associated with the original project is so people know what you are at a glance. A better way to get the word out on your product is marketing and PR. Since I had never heard of FreeCraft before this, they apparently just got some free publicity. So I'd say they were lucky.

Also, you knowm and I know that they're guaranteed to get another story when they actually do change their name. If they're clever, they'll make some sort of special release about it so that they can take advantage of it. Then maybe people will play the game, if it's worth playing.

That's the nice thing about the predictability of the slashdot editorial process. It's very easy to generate free press if you want it.

=Brian

Re:Bnet issues

[BlackHawk-666]

Since you purchased your game and registered yourself with the BattleNet servers and because these servers are maintained by exclusively by Blizzard you should have been able to email them with your problem and get your account working again. Unless they caught you using a cheat on your games they would be able to re-instate your profile. That's the advantage to *you* of having registered, the advantage for them is to collect some useful profile information to help them determine what their market demographics look like. This helps them target future titles towards the demographic who are known to currently purchase their titles.

I'm the first person to opt-out of any profiling, *except* when it is by a company that I feel I can trust won't abuse my information by selling it on or direct marketing to me. Blizzard is one of those companies that I feel I can trust since they have consistently produced the best games in the genres (IMHO, yours may differ), have innovated, and have provided high quality, always on, high bandwidth BattleNet servers.

AMD chips are a ripoff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me? or AMD chips a blatant ripoff of Intels. I ran a program on an AMD cpu that could have run on an Intel cpu. x86 instructions, floating point unit, & supports the same os's. There was even MMX support in it. It's not hard to start a computer company, it's just hard to start a company called "intel"(because they copyrighted the letter i).

Make up your own damn instruction sets. Don't remake someone else's.

Re:AMD chips are a ripoff.

[Qender]

There's a difference between competing products that do work and intellectual property. If you make a game, and someone makes a game that has the capability of being indistinguishable from the original, that second game is obviously a ripoff of the original. I hate many of the powers of copyrights/patents/etc, but I think this is a valid case of copyright infringment. There's no good reason to do something like this. The people at blizzard spend a lot of time making the games, and they deserve the profits from people who play the game.

Yeah, so maybe warcraft II doesn't work on linux. It doesn't work without a cd-rom drive either. If I don't have a cd-rom drive is it legal for me to just download it without paying?

Re:AMD chips are a ripoff.

[Scott Wood]

Yeah, so maybe warcraft II doesn't work on linux. It doesn't work without a cd-rom drive either. If I don't have a cd-rom drive is it legal for me to just download it without paying?

No, but it should be legal (but unfortunately probably isn't) for you to buy the CD, get a friend with a CD-ROM drive to convert it to media you can read (or send it to you over the network), and hack the game so that it doesn't obnoxiously require the CD to be present to play.

A reimplementation of the engine for Linux (or any other OS) is no different from a hack to disable CD checking. Both allow one who has purchased the game to play it under different circumstances. Blizzard gets every bit as much profit as it did before, minus the handful of people that are content to play it with replacement artwork and such.

If the latter is such a concern for Blizzard, they could easily set up a system whereby a valid Warcraft 2 CD key is required to download FreeCraft (or any other derivative work that someone might wish to produce).

Re:AMD chips are a ripoff.

[Qender]

Note that it is illegal to create a hack that disables the CD checking. I'm not saying I'm against the hacks, I'm just saying don't act surprised if blizzard would send the hack's authors a cease and desist. Those handful of people who play it with replacement artwork are the ones blizzard is concerned about. The game is more than the artwork.

It would be a nice idea to have warcraft cd key checking in freecraft. But I don't know if all the early versions of warcraft II came with CD-keys.

Yet another bruise for OSS software

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup yup more proof that OSS software is infact viral. I am not trying to make a joke or anything, but being entirely true. I do not know how people think that by releasing something via open source it makes it ok to release software and EXPECT to be protected by it.

Just more proof that propietary software will always take predecent over the cheap, buggy, and free (OSS) software further assuring businesses that Linux was a big ole balloon waiting to pop anyways.

Couldn't FreeCraft...

[DragonPup]

...just get an original name rather than just riding off the obviously inspired by Blizzard ripoff name?

Re:Couldn't FreeCraft...

[cenobita]

Not to mention, it might've been smart to at least *try* to make the game a little different than WarCraft.

Personally, I fail to see how enforcing IP rights on this is such a barbaric thing. People are up-in-arms because it's an open-source project, but I doubt any of you would be too happy if you were running a small dev studio and saw people copying your work and passing it off as their own. It doesn't matter if the game is old or not, it's still *your* creation.

Re:Couldn't FreeCraft...

[DragonPup]

Exactly cenobita. I am willing to bet that if MS made a game that had a name that was nearly indistinguishable from a smaller company, people would be up in arms.

Oh wait, MS is going that with upcoming norse myth mmorpg Mythica. How odd, one of the competitors in MMORPG is Mythic Entertainment, and Dark Age of Camelot has a Norse myth based realm.

Kraft foods moe quickly

[KU_Fletch]

In other news, Kraft foods has issues a Cease and Desist order to Blizzard claiming games like StarCraft and WarCraft might be confused with their yummy, delicious cheese products. Film at 11.

i told them

[alienhazard]

when they started this project that their name might be considered too close to star/warcraft. I said, in these exact words,

ÂThey wonÂt think `freecrap sounds similar!Â

What a waste of effort...

[Nindalf]

IMHO, the project should never have been started.

If these guys don't have any ideas of their own, there are thousands of interesting amateur game-designers who would love to see one of their ideas implemented.

It's an enormous waste to produce an exact clone of an existing game. Take a risk! Make something new!

I don't especially approve of games like Frozen Bubble either, but at least they gave it a refreshing new look and feel.

old game

[sad_]

can't believe they get so worked up over an old game like that (warcraft2), i mean, those must have been released in what; '93? The original (without the networking play) was still a dos game! i don't know where this is all going to, i'm getting real sick and tired of all this lawyer crap. what is next? close down all the tetris, pacman, breakout, space invaders, civilization ... clones? why don't they 'attack' Lords of Everquest, that is basicly a rip-off of WC3 ! even penny arcade made a joke about it. this game could really have an impact on Blizzards sales, (certainly now they are getting the expansion ready for WC3).

Doesn't this count as interoperability software?

[Jerk City Troll]

It's not illegal to write software that can process data from another application. Can this apply to the FreeCraft project? I can see them changing the name, but not caving on the engine. (Meanwhile as I write this, I see ads at the top of each page for another company that uses litigation to smite competition.)

Couldn't be more wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like a typical coder - egocentric.

By far, the following are much more difficult and much more crucial:
1) playability
2) game design
3) story line and premise

i.e. all of the "creative" tasks that develop the underlying premise/plot/interface of the game. Get this wrong and you are fucked. Screw up some of the code and you can still end up with a playable game, albeit buggy.

It is precisely your kind of attitude that hampers the improvement of usability in OSS - that "the code is all".

Re:Couldn't be more wrong

[Pxtl]

Storyline is for single-player masturbation games like RPG's. But anyways - I'm working on a game engine, and even with DirectX taking most of the graphics load off of us (yeah, we're win32 bitches) its still a fuckload of work.

He's not saying that the engine is the hard part, or the most important part (the amount of quality games for the Half-Life engine shows that a shitty engine can produce quality games) its just that its a buttload of work that is being reinvented over and over.

That being said - like the OS world is great at code reuse and building projects. I find that OSS coders are just as bad about reinventing the wheel as professional devs. Unless the project is famous and easy to embed (STL, Python, etc) then they'll work from scratch.

Cube

[Anonymous Coward]

Cube makes a good game engine. It's under a BSD-type license, has good, fast graphics, and good game physics.

Here's the <a href="http://wouter.fov120.com/cube/index.php4"&gt ; site</a>.

What I can't figure out...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't figure out why you folks complain about a big company enforcing its copyright on an infringing smaller company.

If a company owns a copyright and does not enforce it, then it can loose it. So Blizzard is trying to make sure that its copyright stays intact by stopping FreeCraft from infringing.

If the guys at FreeCraft were a little smarter maybe they would've used a non-infringing name to start...

always amusing

[Twister002]

As long as there is still FTP, BitTorrent, Kazaa, ICQ file transfer, and email attachments it does no good for companies to prevent something from being downloaded.

I understand that they want to stop the distribution of something that might be confused with a product they sell or that infringes on their copyright or trademark, but it's kind of like trying to shove the toothpaste back in the tube. You'll never quite get it ALL.

Game Parody

[blixel]

How about an RTS game Parody that makes fun of Blizzard's bully tactics? Instead of humans vs. orcs, it's Free Software Developers vs. Blizzard.

Re:Game Parody

[that _evil _gleek]

Billcraft? Xbillcraft? Take Xbill and spin it into a RTS game...
drones build computers...warrior types fight to install their OS's on computers
Players could be Monopolistic Software Developers: they'd look really nerdy with pocket protectors..., or OSS developers... , or evil cracker-hackers who'd actually destroy the computers... or maybe make that group be Senators.. led by Orin Hatch, not sure yet...

Actually, a total clone seems a little lame... even the UI? why bother unless your going to add improvements... One thing I'd like is an option to change keyboard short cuts
to match position on number pad... It seems so natural... I have to wonder if Blizzard just backed away from doing it that way... menu based control is a 3x3 grid in the right
lower corner... how about matching
7 8 9
4 5 6
1 2 3 to what ever option is the corresponding square... I think it would make for a quicker inteface, and fair better in the heat of combat

Bullshit

[danila]

It's complete bullshit. There is no rule "If you don't defend your trademark/copyright, you lose it". No matter how often this lie is repeated, it doesn't change to truth.

The correct version of the rule is "If you lose your trademark/copyright to public domain, tough shit". When general public will no longer associate WarCraft and StarCraft with Blizzard, then they can no longer own these trademarks. This is obviously not going to happen soon.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

And how does one lose your trademark/copyright, moron? By not defending it. So either you defend it or you lose it.

Re:Bullshit

[swv3752]

If you don't defend a trademark then you lose it. Of course, defending a Trademark cna also cause negative PR.

Copyrights are never lost until they expire. It used to be that one had to keep registering and that is no longer the case. Of course I do believe that one has to register copyrights to be able to sue for infringement.

Re:Bullshit

[danila]

False dichotomy, stupid. Most of the companies who don't defend their trademarks do not lose them. You can probably count the cases when a trademark was actually lost on your two hands.

If Blizzard ignored FreeCraft and tomorrow some company EvilSoftware actually made WarCraft RTS and started selling it, any judge would rule that it's illegal. And any attempts by EvilSoftware lawyers to say "But FreeCraft is distributed, so WarCraft trademark is no longer valid" would be immediately dismissed by the court as BullShit (tm).

It would take much more to make Bilzzard lose their WarCraft trademark, like general public starting to call any RTS "Warcraft" and doing it for a couple of years.

fuck blizzard and fuck you

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck blizzard: lets make a almost unplayable version of warcraft who's usability is in the toylet. lets see after about 30 units from each player and then x buildings, the game slows to a crawl.

and fuck you for giving these assholes money.

Re:Shadowsource movement? Re: make them all martyr

[ihatesco]

That's exactly what they want: drive the project underground. Same as DeCSS: you know you can't eliminate it entirely but just driving the project underground is enough. For example, that's why Linux distros can't ship with a DVD player by default.

Well.

If companies, expecially media companies, aren't mature enough to understand that by driving people underground they are telling people not to come back on the surface again (Joe: "oooh: thankz to the undergroundz scene I can have all the divx movies that I want, why should I come back to the surface to buy a legitimate copy of Warcraft: The Movie?") let them be.

These action hurt us, I agree, but these actions hurt THEM as well.

Do you remember where the IT world was going before Linux come along? Unix was going to die and everyone was going to buy Windows on their servers, and former major players like Unisys were abandoning Unix. Thanks to Linux the Unix market got a lot of fresh techies who underlined the greatness of that platform on the whole.

If thanks Sco linux disappears underground, then Sco will get back to the distruction as it was happening years ago (Sco was going to die anyway, her inferior Unix was too inferior to compete with *BSD, let alone with other commercial unices). Yeah, and the IT world will be all Bill-centered.

The freecraft people being pissed off, is, on the whole, a group of people which will deny to enter the videogame market with their talent, mostly since they will not go and face an interview at a media company saying "Yeah, and we were banished to the underground by blizzard because our FreeCraft stomped on their IP". They would rather enter other jobs, maybe as cooks. Yes, people from Blizzard will not find talented programmers, people will not buy their videogames (they will rather warez them since they will be crappier than Commodore 64 games), but you know what will happen? They will find the best meals at the restaurant in front of their offices. More cooks, more competition, more quality in the restaurants.

This is not anymore 1990's where you could be asked to do the R-Type conversion for the Amiga, after being sent a C&D letter:

http://ign64.ign.com/articles/074/074185p1.html

Back then it wasn't easy to find talented people, but it wasn't so hard to fine-tune your skills by programming. If Blizzard/Vivendi wants to burn all the steps by pissing off programmers, let them be.

My point is: we can't do a lot alone for resolving the shitty situation of freecraft, yet we can do something for every oss developer: band together and make the oss scene prosper, even if we have to move underground.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Jerk City Troll]

Attention moderators, this guy is just plain wrong. Worse still, he's pure FUD. Must work for Blizzard.

The purpose of the FreeCraft project is to create an open source WC2 implementation that can be played on any platform. If you own a legal copy of WC2, you can use the datafiles from the CD for artwork, music, and so forth. If you do not, there's a rather low-quality substitute that is entirely free for anyone to use. This project is great because you might own WC2, but you may not be running Windows (anymore). Wouldn't it suck that your money would have to go down the toilet just because you chose to run a differerent (superior) OS? That's bullshit. FreeCraft is interoperability software and it's perfectly legit. I could see an argument on the name, but there's no reason they can't build a clone of the engine.

If anything, just stop and think about the basics of the situation. You have a group of volunteers creating a program for free who are being shut down by a greedy mega-corporation. Do you really think the FreeCraft project is so evil and Blizzard is justified?

Starcraft is a VAN

[Baby Duck]

Starcraft is also the name of a van, so how can they claim IP rights over it?

Re:Starcraft is a VAN

[cenobita]

Oh give me a break...do you really think that anyone with even half a braincell is going to confuse the StarCraft game with the StarCraft van?

Re:Starcraft is a VAN

[nelomolen]

what is the 'starcraft game' you refer to? i don't hear about all this underground 'gaming' in my starcraft van, down by the river...

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[Daniel Phillips]

Even if you hate them personally, or they (or their parent company, more likely) do nasty things sometimes, admit it- Blizzard makes kickass games that LOTS of people love. Starcraft is 5 years old, and yet there's still around 10,000 people playing it on Battle.net at any given time.

While you may find this difficult to understand yourself, some of us are motivated, at least in part, by things beyond mere hedonism. You go ahead and do whatever you want, and I will do what my morals tell me to do: that is, I will not support a corporation that carries out its business in a cynical, greedy and petty way, not to mention acting like a typical schoolyard bully.

There are plenty of good games out there, I do not need to buy any from Blizzard.

Re:Bnet issues

[GnuPengwyn]

So, it's easy (as duh) for you to sit there and tell us all how you lied in every single field when you went after your username / password. Others did not lie.
I can't say I've ever seen a profile where someone puts their full address in. If people want to put an email address, it's their perogative. You edit your profile on SC/WCII by double clicking on your name in the chat box. Seriously, how many people do you think accidentally wound up there and said "Gee... I'd better fill in all my real personal information".
Well, let me recall. IIRC, you have a serial number on your CD, and that is the one way you get onto the server. By using that number on the CD. To be honest I don't remember if email was a "requirement" to get a password, the handle you could choose as whatever you wanted. But then again, you said yourself, you haven't even played WC3 on Bnet. So you are talking apples and I am talking oranges. By paying $50.00 they don't fscking need to know who I am.
Then don't fill out the OPTIONAL profile that isn't even made PREVALENT that it exists..

It's not the point. a.) Your comments are after the fact. b.) I can't remember if it was WAS optional or not, but at $50.00 bucks a pop to lie in all the fields is rather stupid. Especially if you've already had problems with the game working correctly. c.) you haven't gone through the process yourself, so how can you even comment. Now regarding the username and password on Bnet, let me just be the first one to tell you that for no god damn reason, the username / password CAN just stop working. With there being no other servers other than Bnet, I took my fscking CD out, and it's been on the shelf ever since. You want the god damn disk?! I'll give you the fscking thing. It's worthless to me.
You aren't charged a single cent to use this free massive multiplayer network (EXCLUDING the cost of the disk), and you're gonna stop playing the game just because of a glitch occasionally on the server. Personally I've never lost an account unless I didn't use it for 90 days. I'll be glad to take the CD off your hands.

I was charged $50.00 (actually IIRC it was more after tax.) So, Bnet was NOT FREE to begin with.
I wasn't talking about stopping the use of the game because of glitch's in the software, I was DENIED ACCESS TO BATTLE NET! Can you comprehend that now? I paid $50, then I am denied fair use! On another note... using "fsck" and "god damn" every other word in your post makes you look like an angry, angsty teenager.

I really do not care what you think I look like, the words were used to show "anger." They were not used on every other word. Or you would get a sentence that looked like this:
"fscking nuggetman god damn nuggetman is fscking is god damn fscking talking god damn talking fscking out god damn his fscking god damn ass god damn."
And yeah that looks childish. You are coming from a point of view which you truly believe in. I am coming from a rather point of view based in FACT. There is nothing wrong with expressing dis-pleasure and showing anger in your writing. Personally to me the term "God Damn" could never happen, since I do not believe in the christian god anyway, he (who says god is a he anyway?) can not touch me or damn me in any way, because if he did he would be limited and not a god. (in fact if it was a "he" it couldn't be a god either since god can not be described without limiting it, and if you limit it, it's no longer a god.) And finally fsck is just a nicer way of saying another word which is in the dictionary anyway, and so you don't tell me what to do. Would it have more impact if I just simply said fuck Blizzard. Blizzard does not fucking need to know who I am. And their who phillosophy is flawed, on gaming.

And finally for you. You no longer have anything else to productively argue with me about, so you sink down into the gutter like a troll, to take a stab at my character. That's exactly what you've done. Sure I will give you the CD. Come to Sacramento, California and I will hand it to you face to face. And then perhaps you can see how much I resemble an "angsty teen."

Star* & War* for me!

[MnO-Raphael]

I hereby take ownership of the term "Star" and "War"
Erhem wait...Lucas already has that one...dammit

And Look Who Is Next!

[f0rt0r]

Witch Covens around the world are in a state of confusion after receiving threating "Cease and Desist" letters from Blizzard's lawyers for their product known as "WitchCraft"(c) which may be confused with "StarCraft"(c) or "WarCraft"(c).

When a coven leader was asked how they planned to respond to the threat, she replied "We are split between a rare disease and swarms of insects, though a natural disaster at Blizzard headquarters is not out of the question. Oh, the lawyers won't be a problem, they work for for the same guy (putting hands to each side of her head to make a symbol of horns ) we do."

In other news, Blizzard's CEO mysteriously hired a n exorcist to make a house call. More details at 11.

Re:And Look Who Is Next!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's pretty funny.

But, sorry, I have to say this. I am not a witch. I don't even know any anymore. However, witches don't worship the devil or any such figure. They get irritated when people make this assumption. :)

Even Satanists don't worship the devil, believe it or not. At least, the largest Satanic church in the U.S. and world-wide, the Temple of Set, explicitly strives to emulate the Prince of Darkness (whom they call Set) and would expel anyone who "worshipped" it. The Church of Satan suggests that one consider Satan as an archetype or symbol - it's essentially an atheistic (really more existentialist) religion.

There may be some small groups of so-called Satanists who actually worship the Devil of Christianity, but it seems like a pretty silly thing to do, given that if you accept the precepts of Christianity you are not going to do well on that path.

All of these three can be found in the Encyclopedia of American Religions under (IIRC) "Nature and Magical Religions."

AC for obvious reasons

Re:And Look Who Is Next!

[Anonymous Coward]

Witches do not worship Satan. The belief that they do so is a result of Judeo-Christian mythology propagated during the Inquisition to eradicate pagan religions. It is interesting how long lies can last.

Re:Bnet issues

[Martin Blank]

You aren't charged a single cent to use this free massive multiplayer network

Exactly.

A friend of mine works for Blizzard, and once got to see the rows of cabinets for B.Net-West. Between servers, network gear, and bandwidth, they have millions of dollars tied up in the system -- and it's all free of charge to those who have purchased their games. In addition, they still pay a fair amount of attention to older games, periodically releasing patches with some of them containing gameplay enhancements, as with the coming 1.10 patch for Diablo II.

If you like / dislike this decision, tell them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ranting about this on /. will not do any good for anyone. If you like Blizzard's decision, tell them; if not, tell them.

Personally, I dislike their strategy, and have sent the following email to them:

I am very disappointed about the recent events involving FreeCraft. I find
it very poor practice to order the shutdown of a non commercial, non
profit group simply because a program they create looks like yours. The
majority of the people who download this software already have Warcraft
and / or Starcraft (myself included) and are not looking for a
replacement product, but are simply trying to learn more about programming
than we otherwise could. I have bought many Blizzard products in the
past, and have thouroughly enjoyed them, but a move like this on your
part makes me very unlikely to do so again. I am afraid that you have
lost a very strong customer over this issue.

I thank you for your time, and hope that in the future you will rethink
your 'competition' elimination strategies.

Sincerely,
XXXXXXXX

Re:Bnet issues a box of Ball Bearings vs WC3

[GnuPengwyn]

Since you purchased your game and registered yourself with the BattleNet servers and because these servers are maintained by exclusively by Blizzard you should have been able to email them with your problem and get your account working again. Unless they caught you using a cheat on your games they would be able to re-instate your profile. That's the advantage to *you* of having registered, the advantage for them is to collect some useful profile information to help them determine what their market demographics look like. This helps them target future titles towards the demographic who are known to currently purchase their titles. I'm the first person to opt-out of any profiling, *except* when it is by a company that I feel I can trust won't abuse my information by selling it on or direct marketing to me. Blizzard is one of those companies that I feel I can trust since they have consistently produced the best games in the genres (IMHO, yours may differ), have innovated, and have provided high quality, always on, high bandwidth BattleNet servers.

Although EVERYTHING you said is absolutely correct, I could have had more fun with a $50.00 box of steel ball bearings

If looks a LOT more than trademark...

[nweaver]

If this is a correct screenshot here, it looks like a hell-of-a-boatload of copyright infringement, as the artwork looks to be directly taken from Warcraft 2, which is a BIG no-no.

This is a large company protecting its copyrights, not just trademarks.

Re:If looks a LOT more than trademark...

[Coniptor]

So I suppose you haven't visited their homepage or let alone read the comments up till now have you?
Otherwise you might realize that that's a realtime screenshot of freecraft running with the content OFF OF AN ORIGINAL WARCRAFT CD.
Point being that it's to play WARCRAFT NATIVELY ON LINUX.
DUH!

Re:If looks a LOT more than trademark...

[Clomer]

FreeCraft used the data from a Warcraft 2 CD. If you wanted it to look like War2, you had to have access to a copy of War2. In other words, you needed to buy the game for Freecraft to work.

To me, this qualifies as a fair use of copyrighted material. Yes, those data files are copywrited, but once you buy the game, you should be able to do what you want for your own personal use. And that includes using the files in a different setting, as long as it isn't commercial.

There might be some substance to the trademark claim (the use of "Craft"), but even that is thin ground. "Craft," after all, is a standard English word. But if that's all they can claim, then a simple name change is all that is needed. They could call it "FreeRTS" instead.

Re:If looks a LOT more than trademark...

[Holger Spielmann]

If this is a correct screenshot here, it looks like a hell-of-a-boatload of copyright infringement, as the artwork looks to be directly taken from Warcraft 2, which is a BIG no-no.

(Who the f*ck modded this up?)

1. The screenshot is right.
2. It is the artwork from WC2. FreeCraft gives you the opportunity to choose the artwork to play with, they provide scripts to extract the artwork from a regular WC2 windows version or use free artwork, called FCMP.
3. There's no copyright violation, stupid, you need a WC2 CD to play FreeCraft with WC2 artwork.
4. It's no "BIG no-no", I think I'm allowed to play a game I've legally purchased in the way I like it. Bli**ard never even thought about releasing a Linux version of WC2!

Heck, never seen a story with so many moronic bogus comments modded up. Is this still /.?

Just to set some things straight

[Anonymous Coward]

I see all these comments with peoples' panties in a knot. "BLIZZARD IS ANTI OSS!" "DONT BUY BLIZZARD GAMES! BOYCOTT!"

Well thats all fine and dandy, and is the /. way, but lets get some things straight:

Freecraft's goal was to recreate Warcraft 2 exactly. I know this firsthand as well, because I have played freecraft extensively. The UI is similar to Warcraft2, ALL the gameplay is EXACTLY the same. That means peons, gold mines, lumber, oil, etc. All the buildings are the same, perform the same duties, units cost the same, etc. All this is identical to Warcraft 2. You even have the option of sticking in your war2 cd and it will rip the art from the CD and use it with freecraft!

Blizzard is only protecting their IP which they rightfully own. Freecraft's goal was to make a free version of War2 that plays exactly the same. Like it or not, they are still ripping off war2 completely. And War2 is still a product that Blizzard sells and supports on battle.net so they have a vested interest in protecting the IP of this game (so you cant use the "rom" argument where its an old game that isnt sold anymore)

If you still don't believe me, try a warcraft 2 cheat code in freecraft and see what happens :P

Its clear that the intent of freecraft was to totally rip off Blizzard's IP. Don't go crying and start a jihad against blizzard without at least getting all the info.

Re:Just to set some things straight

[Decado]

This reminds me of the time I wrote my first book, Larry Snotter and the Thinkers Balls (Wizards Balls in the U.S). I read the first Harry Potter book hundreds of times, studied it until I knew it backwards, then went and sat in a room and rewrote the story using an entirely different cast of characters doing the exact same thing. I even included instructions so that if anyone had the Harry Potter books, they could use the names of the chars from that and just interchange them with my own character names. I even had a device which would scan the original book for names and if it found them print over the names in Larry Snotter. And I have to say I was equally amazed when I was told I couldnt release the book. "Look", I screamed, "I do not use any of the trademarks, and there isnt a single sentence the same, I just wrote the exact same story in different words how can they not see that it was a legitimate thing to do?". But no one would listen and so Larry Snotter and the Thinkers Balls was never published. But seriously, I never used FreeCraft but I am betting that it did not require the CD to be in the drive to play or validate CD keys, or make sure that only one copy of the CD key could be used online at once. Assuming either of these was true then the program was no different than the No-CD cracks and the Keygen programs, it removed the copyright protection mechanisms that Blizzard built into their games, the only difference was the level of difficulty involved in doing it this way.

Re:Just to set some things straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmm warcraft 2 didn't have a cd key. There was no support for it for online play. War2BNE is different. I don't think freecraft supported War2BNE.

Re:Just to set some things straight

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Regardless, the Freecraft guys weren't profiting. Being legal doesn't make what Blizzard did right, ethical, or excusable. It also doesn't prevent me from blacklisting them to my freinds and others that take recommendations from me.

THere was no damage happening. The smart thing would have been to work WITH them. Now Blizzard has shown their colors. Let them be damned for it.

Re:Just to set some things straight

[nickco3]

Blizzard is only protecting their IP which they rightfully own. Freecraft's goal was to make a free version of War2 that plays exactly the same.

Like it or not, they are still ripping off war2 completely. And War2 is still a product that Blizzard sells and supports on battle.net so they have a vested interest in protecting the IP of this game (so you cant use the "rom" argument here its an old game that isnt sold anymore)

This is an outrageous attitude. The "Intellectual Property" associated with Warcraft is a copyright on the Warcraft code itself. Freecraft is a clean-room, reverse engineering of Warcraft functionality. Yes it has the same gameplay, yes it has same units, it is a functional reimplementation. There is no suggestion that any of the Freecraft team has seen and/or copied any the original Warcraft code.

This is exactly the same as Phoenix Technologies reverse-engineering IBM's PC BIOS in the mid 1980s and it is permitted in almost all the world's jurisidictions, even the DMCA.

Blizzard's behaviour is nothing more than the deliberate, and sadly all to common, attempt to restrict consumer choice by intimidationg smaller competitors.

And they didn't see this coming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Follow the link and check out the sample pic - the games almost exactly Warcraft 2. They even copied most of the artwork. Hell, it wouldnt have mattered what they named it, Blizzard is still making money off Warcraft 2 and the Warcraft material. It's like making a product called 'Windoze' and then wondering why Big Bill gets sue-happy.

Sorry

[NullProg]

I'll mod myself to troll.

Please go back to being a turd.

I meant to say, please don't be a turd. No flame intended.

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

Well, this explains why I don't get any of those stupid SnowCraft emails anymore, Blizzard must have sued and shut them down!

(SnowCraft was this silly game where you controlled three people and they're throwing snowballs at people who throw snowballs at you... Fun for about three seconds, then you're all like "stop sending me dumb stuff dammit!")

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[Daniel Phillips]

"theres plenty of open source game engines to use"

There are? I can think of CrystalSpace, and Quake II as the only decent open-source FPS engines (and none of them is that good, compared to the likes of DoomIII, HL2, Halo2, etc), and Freecraft was the only decent RTS engine. Is there some secret 31337 open-source engine repository I'm missing out on?

Yes, there is Neoengine. It's decent, check it out.

Download Full Source Code Here

[Newtonian_p]

You can still get the full source for a fairly recent version here (remove the space between freec and raft):
http://http.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main /f/freec raft/freecraft_1.18.orig.tar.gz

Re:Download Full Source Code Here

[kasperd]

remove the space between freec and raft

Why not make it a link? http://http.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/f/freec raft/freecraft_1.18.orig.tar.gz

They brought this upon themselves...

[dave1g]

Who was the idiot who thought they could get away with FreeCraft?!?!?!?! Anyways, since this is a trademark dispute can't the freecraft team simply rename the project and everything will be fine? Blizzard can't do anyhtign about features from their games showing up in others' games.

Bad Marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard is lacking both sufficient reason and tact in issuing this cease and desist order. Indeed, a move to the contrary would be a far superior strategy. Were Blizzard to formally endorse and contribute to FreeCraft they would actually strengthen their brand. FreeCraft is great marketing opportunity for Blizzard. You require an original WarCraft CD to use the Blizzard art; FreeCraft is available for plaforms not supported by WarCraft, so you are essentially breathing new life into an older product. Futhermore, it is doubtful that Blizzard sells many copies of the original WarCraft anyway, so it has little to lose in terms of market share. By endorsing FreeCraft, Blizzard would be establishing ties and generating respect within the OSS community, not to mention demonstrating goodwill to its customers. I'm thinking of writing them about this... Any comments?

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[_UnderTow_]

WC3 was a piece of bloated buggy crap

What exactly makes WC3 bloated? Even with the expansion beta installed the whole thing only takes up ~750mb. Which is about the average a game takes up. And I have never, not even once, had WC3 crash on me, not even during 3 months of beta testing the expansion. I have installed the game on numerous machines and never had a problem. The game works under wine for fucks sake, and has since wine version 2.

And as far as accounts go, they get deleted after 90 days of inactivity.

I guess I just have to conclude from your comments that you're a congenital idiot, and therefore too stupid to install and use the game correctly.

Serious Question....

[Anonymous Coward]

Vivendi Universal hates the free software movement, why? Because its assosiated with the Mp3/FileSharing movement.

Is free sofware really associated with p2p? Is there a perception that it is? I might have my head in the sand, but wasn't napster almost all Windows? Isn't Kazaa mostly windows too? Why would Linux=Mp3/FileSharing?

I'd like more info cause if it's true I don't want to be left in the dark.

original ideas == lawyers and market share?

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to have a problem with your brain, if you cannot distinguish between having original ideas and being able to afford lawyers and hold competing market share. Neither is a necessary or sufficient condition for the other.

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[Anonymous Coward]

"I will do what my morals tell me to do: that is, I will not support a corporation that carries out its business in a cynical, greedy and petty way, not to mention acting like a typical schoolyard bully."

Better start growing your own food if you don't want to support greedy corporations.

CVS tarball

[Anonymous Coward]

A little known fact is that a tarball of the CVS repository for every sourceforge.net project is at http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cvstarballs/$P-cvsroot. tar.gz , and that it is generated daily. Looks like the project was deleted, but the tarball (generated for backup purposes) is still there. Someone should mirror it, since it will most likely be gone by tomorrow.

If you do, please post it here, since that server isn't probably ready for a slashdotting, and the service might be closed if it's abused. That's also why I'm not providing a easy-to-download link above.

Re:CVS tarball

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, there happens to be a convienent mirror at http://cvs.corecodec.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/freecr aft/ Project page at http://corecodec.org/projects/freecraft

Assassins gotta eat too!

[Rev. Null]

I'm sick and tired of the bad press that professional assassins get. They have families to feed, and a prohibition on murder threatens their way of life.

Host it out side USA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't they get around this by hosting it outside the USA?

Windows Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

Remaining copy of latest windows version, someone ought to mirror it.

On another note...

[ProfessionalCookie]

Netcraft confims it...Zerg have taken over the BSD encampment, it won't be long now.

Re:Bnet issues

[nuggetman]

Well, let me recall. IIRC, you have a serial number on your CD, and that is the one way you get onto the server. By using that number on the CD. To be honest I don't remember if email was a "requirement" to get a password, the handle you could choose as whatever you wanted. But then again, you said yourself, you haven't even played WC3 on Bnet. So you are talking apples and I am talking oranges. By paying $50.00 they don't fscking need to know who I am.

So DON'T TELL THEM. It's not a hard concept. You don't need to give a name, you don't need to give an address, you don't need an email address, you don't even need a zip code.

All you need is your serial, a username, and password. You're whining that they don't need to know who you are and they DON'T. They never DEMAND that information from you. Your argument is baseless because you're whining about optional information.

I was charged $50.00 (actually IIRC it was more after tax.) So, Bnet was NOT FREE to begin with.
I wasn't talking about stopping the use of the game because of glitch's in the software, I was DENIED ACCESS TO BATTLE NET! Can you comprehend that now? I paid $50, then I am denied fair use!

What part of "excluding the cost of the disk" didn't you bother to read. If your account was that important (ie a high-level Diablo II character w/ a ton of rare items) you should have simply called Blizzard, and provided them w/ the aformentioned information (as another poster mentioned). Unless you got caught using a trainer or a map hack or something to that effect, you weren't DENIED access, it was a glitch on their part, that could have easily been fixed by a simple phone call.

Personally to me the term "God Damn" could never happen, since I do not believe in the christian god anyway, he (who says god is a he anyway?) can not touch me or damn me in any way, because if he did he would be limited and not a god. (in fact if it was a "he" it couldn't be a god either since god can not be described without limiting it, and if you limit it, it's no longer a god.)

Religion never came into this, let's keep it that way. I couldn't care less what you're assuming when you say god damn.

And finally for you. You no longer have anything else to productively argue with me about, so you sink down into the gutter like a troll, to take a stab at my character.

Actually, I was pointing something out. And my argument is that you're whining that Blizzard has too much information on you when you aren't required to provide any more information than the nessecary serial/username/password.

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[Badanov]

I will start paying $5.00 a month today, this very day, if I knew someone was working on at East Front II port or clone to Linux.

Transgaming has been in business for close to two years now, and while they have done well getting games to run on Linux using Wine, they have ignored the Campaign Series; and I am about to withdraw my support.

Email me stavkaATrkka.org if you know of someone who is working on Campaign series of games for Linux, even if it is just a clone.

The campaign series is practially the only reason I use a Windows machine. Fix that and let me say bye bye to Windows for good.

Re:Shadowsource movement? Re: make them all martyr

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely!

I used to buy DVDs like a trooper, I would select them carefully and mull over them so that I can have a collection of stuff I would like watch a few times since the things are so expensive. And somehow even with that I discovered that I never really watch them more then once. Ever the optimist, I wanted LOTR. It was 50 bucks Canadian. I thought that was a bit pushing it. I mean how greedy you can get. I could stand 25-30 range, but 50? Where does it gonna end? Some pal of mine recommended a P2P network. Ha! Now I watched impressive number of movies and all I can say is that MPAA will never see me again. I find that I delete a DVD rip after watching. They are not worth keeping. None of this crap is worth more then $1 to me. The only thing I regret is that I was a sucker for such a long time and spend over a grand on that crap. In retrospect, the only reason I did it was in a dellusion of being able to save on repeated rentals of those DVDs. Never happened. I feel now like the whole movie/music thing is some brainwash operation designed to milk me out of outrageous amounts of my hard earned money. I am free now. If the P2P nets ever stop... I had my fill already. I will bever spend money on that shit again.

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[wideBlueSkies]

>>There are? I can think of CrystalSpace, and Quake II as the only decent open-source FPS engines (and none of them is that good, compared to the likes of DoomIII, HL2, Halo2, etc),

Um, Doom 3 is still in dev and it's not open source. Check back in 2007 after John C writes his next masterpiece. But that's not my point.

How can you say that the Q2 engine isn't any good? WTF? How many games have been built on top of that codebase? Besides Q2 itself?

Yeah. Maybe when you can actually write an engine youself, you'll have the right to say that another product sucks.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Qender]

ATTENTION MODERATORS: Ignore the parent post. I'm not wrong, he is. AND HE HIT ME!

I don't work for blizzard. I'm a 20 year old calarts student who lives in los angeles. I play a lot of games, I work a lot on the computer. I'm not trying to say that this is a nice thing for blizzard to do. What I'm saying is that it is ethically justifiable.

It is illegal to freely provide such a close imitaion of a retail game, no matter how low-quality you can make it.

I think it would be great if blizzard made a linux version of the game, but if they don't, that doesn't make it legal for someone else to.

Re:Bnet issues a box of Ball Bearings vs WC3

[nuggetman]

Although EVERYTHING you said is absolutely correct, I could have had more fun with a $50.00 box of steel ball bearings

If you hate the game so much, why didn't you take it back to the store, give it to a friend, or sell it off on eBay instead of whining about how evil they are for making a game you didn't like and forcing you to give out optional personal info.

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[PhoenixFlare]

Although, I sniped out what you were refering to, I think you need to look in the mirror and ask yourself, why does Blizzard need to "hurt" FreeCraft. And why did they wait so long!? FreeCraft didn't harm anyone. Blizzard did.

Simple. FreeCraft offers/offered a version of WarCraft II that plays, sounds, looks, and feels exactly like Blizzard's version. Like it or not, they should have asked for and gotten explicit permission before porting it in the manner they did.

Sorry, but just because you hate the fact that something isn't free or under a less restrictive license....That doesn't give you free reign to do whatever you want with it and escape consequences.

But ask yourself, how much longer until they reach the point of diminishing return, by pissing off the very folks that buy their products. WC3 was a piece of bloated buggy crap. (wouldn't even install correctly on two different boxes)

Mmhmm...And was this under a real installation of Windows, or using VMware/WINE/another Windows replacement? Was it possibly a hardware/software problem on your part, and no fault of Blizzard's? Did you actually try and contact Blizzard for support?

And that was $50.00 a pop at COSTCO! The support was crap, and then battle.net won't let you logon (even with the right password.)

Again, were you trying to log on to Battle.net using WINE or something similar? Myself and hundreds of thousands of other people have been able to use Battle.net perfectly fine, more times than I can count, so I question whether you're just pulling an isolated incident out of your ass and trying to make it into a bigger issue.

They have too god damn much personal information about those using Bnet.

The only personal information they have is what you give them. You don't want them supposedly spying on you, put fake info in the profile, or don't put anything there at all.

They Killed the Open Source Version of BNet Servers. That pissed more people off.

I tried some free servers for both Starcraft and Warcraft, and frankly, I thought they were crap compared to the real, free Battle.net. Not as many players, just as much rudeness, and a severe lack of gmes being hosted.

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[DragonPup]

I think GnuPengwyn needs a hug and to put down the tinfoil hat. Jesus, before you insinuate blizzard is a greedy company, do you have any idea how much a network like battle.net costs? Bandwidth alone can easily top 250,000/month. On top of that, I have never, ever, ever recieved one piece of spam from Blizzard, so I dont think they are selling my 'personal info'. Their newsletter thing is totaly opt-in.

And if you hate them so much, why did you buy Warcraft 3? :p

Re:Bnet issues

[bickerdyke]

That's like Radio Shack asking for your name and address when you come in to buy a fuse for your god damn CB radio. Don't give it out and you're a terrorist. Isn't it great when life is that simple?

The 1000 year history of networked gaming ...

[konmaskisin]

Use chess as an inspiration ... it has knights, kings, war etc. as the motif. Adding more complexity and technique to the warfare isn't violating anyone's IPR And evil "we own everything" patents on general ideas like "networked gaming" will fail: prior art is over a 1000 years old.

And "saving" a game and playing it back is cool too ... (in chess there's a notation that can be printed in newspapers etc.) then fans can watch 2 masters duke it out ...

Re:Bnet issues

[PhoenixFlare]

Well, let me recall. IIRC, you have a serial number on your CD, and that is the one way you get onto the server. By using that number on the CD. To be honest I don't remember if email was a "requirement" to get a password, the handle you could choose as whatever you wanted.

No, email is not a requirement to get a Battle.net account, it never has been, and probably never will be. Please actually try the service and refresh your memory before you make comments.

Additionally, you have to enter a CD Key to install the game, and that key must be unique to log onto their system. This does not personally identify you in any way. The closest they come is asking if you would like to choose to submit non-personal system specs.

The CD Key system has been used by hundreds of games, and it's nothing new...Certainly nothing Blizzard came up with first.

Losing suits isn't the problem...

[Entropius]

...it's being forced to fight them. It's not every OSS developer that has the resources to fight things like this, even if they're in the right. In the US (civil, and possibly criminal as well) legal system, being right doesn't insure your victory; it only acts as a force-multiplier. The thing that's multiplied, of course, is how much money you have to sink into lawyers.

IANAL, but how easy is it for a victorious defendant to recover legal defense costs from a plaintiff? Probably not very, or the ACLU/EFF's money would go further...

A reasonable look the the Intelectual Property

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears that Blizzard (or someone in their hierarchy) has two points of contention. 1) The name, and 2) similarity of characters.

Strategic games (with this type of presentation) probably have their roots in two games 'The Ancient art of War' and 'The Sword Of Aragon'. The latter was written bo SSI (Strategic Simulations Inc.) and I would really be interested to know who currently owns the copyright to that work.

1. There is a strong simularity to the name 'The Ancient art of War' and 'Warcraft'. They two phrases could be considered synonoms. When Blizzard originally published 'Warcraft' did they choose that name to attract 'The Ancient Art of War's' old players. It shure worked in my case. I bought it because of the similarity of the title and the fact I really liked 'The Ancient Art of War' when it was originally released. Really neat for its time. Of courst that could have been a Blizzard product in the first place. I have lost the box and have no idea who originally sold the program.

2. Most of the characters from 'The Sword of Aragon' directly translate to 'Warcraft'. They have the same characters and the characters have many of the same capabilities. Of courst 'Warcraft' is far more sophisticated, but a very good case could be made (I believe) that 'Warcraft' was a derivative work of 'The Sword of Aragon'. In actually this would have to be the case because I suspect that many of the coders that worked on the game (Warcraft) either played 'The Sword of Aragon' or actually worked on it also. Fair use allows for the movement of ideas. If you did not have that, we would still be inventing the wheel, an nobody could aford a vehicle that actually had wheels.

It appears that Blizzard's action could be a bad case of the POT calling the KETTLE Black (no racial reference intended, just an old saying referring to the soot from open hearth cooking).

Tom

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Qender]

microsoft word = warcraft II
Word processor = RTS
Anyone disagree?

It's illegal to make microsoft word if you are not microsoft, you can still make word processors. Now, word processors are usually very similar, so yeah, it might look like every word processor is an imitation of the others. But games have a lot more variation than word processors do. It seems as though freecraft has identical game dynamics to warcraft II, the only difference being the graphics.

Some versions of simcity have exchangable tilesets, is it legal to distribute copies of it without the tilesets? no. Maxis owns the whole game. Not just the pretty little pictures.

Dune II

[wotevah]

Blizzard doesn't hold the rights to the whole RTS genre, if that was the case then C&C and AoE and lots of others would be in trouble..

They wouldn't, considering that Dune II by Westwood Studios was the first widely successful RTS, before Warcraft.

Note that I didn't say it was the first RTS, so cool off.

Re:Dune II

[d_strand]

They wouldn't, considering that Dune II by Westwood Studios was the first widely successful RTS, before Warcraft.

And that is one of the reasons Blizzard doesn't hold the rights to the RTS genre... like I said.

Its all bullshit anyways

[pr0c]

I've been somewhat involved in the project for a month or so now so I have slightly more insight than the average person. As far as i can tell their is no fucking letter. This letter was sent to an Xdeveloper who has not shown it to anyone. This same Xdeveloper owns the freecraft domains and as soon as he wasn't involved with the project any longer he put them up for sale... hmmm

Its all bullshit, there probably is no fucking letter. Any other project would have debated this and they would have posted the letter as well, i personally watched them just quit without discussion and fucking everyone else who was working on the project.

Re:Its all bullshit anyways

[Coniptor]

Well. Gee. I wonder if he would even want to continue development for this game given blizzard's actions of late.
I mean I would so totaly want to lead people to purchase this companies products given the way they stomp on the little guy.

Re:Its all bullshit anyways

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you have a copy of all the code, right? Put it on sourceforge and MOVE ON, if that's really all there is to it.

Change the name?

[Nom_Anor]

Is it just me, but why don't they just change the name of the game?

After all, the "ideas within the engine were too similar to WarCraft 2" argument doesn't stand on its own; almost every RTS released since WarCraft 2 contain similar design ideas...

Re:Change the name?

[FLoWCTRL]

the "ideas within the engine were too similar to WarCraft 2" argument doesn't stand on its own

Yeah, but as mentioned, they can't afford lawyers. They probably also have jobs and lives to tend to, so can't afford the time it would take to defend themselves in court...

Re:Change the name?

[Overly Critical Guy]

"After all, the "ideas within the engine were too similar to WarCraft 2" argument doesn't stand on its own."

Of course it does. The intent of the engine was to specifically rip off WarCraft II's engine so you could play it without emulation, using the original graphics off the CD. It's an exact clone. It's not a matter of "similar design ideas," it's a matter of completely ripping off the design ideas of WarCraft II on purpose.

Re:Change the name?

[TekPolitik]

it's a matter of completely ripping off the design ideas

One more time for the dummies - the ideas aren't protected. The code is protected. The graphics are protected. The trademark is protected. Only a patent can protect ideas, and there's been no indication that there is a patent involved.

Sounds to me like these people have way overreacted, but without seeing the letter I can't tell for sure.

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[gbjbaanb]

you don't need a dedicated Game Engine to write a game - choose all the bits that make up a gameengine from free libraries that are out there.

Eg. I use SDL for the windowing wrapper, OpenSceneGraph for the scene graph engine, PUI for the GUI... there are loads of such libraries.

The reason I do this - none of the game engines have all the pieces I want, or have them fully implemented. By mixing and matching libraries I can take the best, or more appropriate ones for me.

Martyrs all the way...

[Peterus7]

What next, they get onto wiccans for practicing 'the craft?'

That would get interesting.

I'm wondering, what next... "Oh, I'm sorry Wizards of the Coast, but we've trademarked the word orc... Oh, and while you're at it, Elves is right out too. We reanimated J.R.R. Tolkein, and he gave us the rights. Now the only type of D&D you can play is politically correct D&D!"

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[TalMaximus]

WC3 was a piece of bloated buggy crap. (wouldn't even install correctly on two different boxes) And that was $50.00 a pop at COSTCO! The support was crap, and then battle.net won't let you logon (even with the right password.) They have too god damn much personal information about those using Bnet. I've seen WC3 successfully and painlessly installed under three different operating systems on my own computer and my friends computers who have their own copy. Battle.net registration only requested an email address, a name, a userid and a password. The name can be an alias such as the one I used the email address is a spam account I keep. I've logged onto battle.net plenty of times successfully and have set up games with friends all over the US. I think we're having a difference in experiences here, but as far as I'm concerned WC3 was a great game, and for a free gaming server, battle.net is great.

Though, me and a few others have wondered how exactly can they afford it. Well, they've done it so far, and I'd rather not look this particular gift horse in the mouth.

We may see a change come World of Warcraft. Perhaps that game like many other MMORPG's will have a monthly fee to play online. Only time will tell.

First FreeCraft, next...

[EvilAlien]

... StarCraft?

I know every time I see one of these these lumbering down the road I get confused and think maybe its a roving Blizzard expo, or promotional thing for the next installment of the tired ol' RTS genre.

I wish Blizzard et al would go after Starcraft RV too to protect me and all the other mindless drone comsumers from the risk of confusing two obviously different products with each other... what about Mastercraft boats, Chris*Craft boats, etc? Blizzard sure has a lot of work to do, I'm glad they are looking out for us easily confused consumers.

On a serious note, I think I'll stop buying Blizzard products all together. My entertainment dollars will go to a company with less intellectual property fascists on staff.

Re:First FreeCraft, next...

[TrancePhreak]

The naming convention only applies to something in the same field as what you have trademarked. IE FreeCraft was a RTS game, so therefore it infringed. If FreeCraft had been something like a boat, or what you pointed out, a recreational vehicle - then there is no case. However, someone's bright idea to name the game very similarly and to blatantly copy the gameplay are both violations. This common legal issue is in place so that the parent company does not take flak if the similar product gets a bad rap.
This is why Blizzard also got the name of a movie changed from Diablo to something else. At the time, Blizzard had the rights to the name as they were making a movie.

Re:First FreeCraft, next...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then your obviously blind, it looked pretty darn close to Warcraft or any of its variants. If thats all "FreeCraft" and Free Software can do is copy,clone, and come up with nothing of there own that is unique then I will never support Free software.

Some Open Sourced, Free software is not bad, but alot of it I see is simply copied cloned from other successful software, now thats sad.

Re:First FreeCraft, next...

[Disevidence]

You're a dolt. Do you think that the Freecraft team would of even named their game Freecraft, and designed it to be similar to Warcraft if Warcraft had even been made? Of course not.

That means, in plainer english, the Freecraft team are basing their ideas and name around another game, of which they obviously did not have permission. If blizzard wish to send them a cease and desist, due to a similarity and potential cause of problems, i see nothing ethically wrong with it. I'd be amazingly surprised if any of the people complaining about this had even played Freecraft, or even remotely cared for either Warcraft II or freecraft.

Im pretty sure blizzard doesn't really care about your entertainment dollars. I'm more than happy to continue buying their great products, as im sure quite a few other people are. They are not alienating anyone besides the 1% of game players who were not going to buy their game anyway, so i can't see the real point on making empty threats.

Re:First FreeCraft, next...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you serious? You post is absolute tripe. The problem Blizzard had with FreeCraft was NOT just that is has a similar name. You honestly believe that the programmers working on FreeCraft had no intention on capitalizing on Blizzard's success, and that they picked the name "FreeCraft" for their REAL TIME STRATEGY GAME project inadvertently?

If they had made a word processor called "WordCraft" there would be no problem. But that's not what they were doing. They were working on a RTS project, FFS!

Give me a break, and get off your high horse. Copyright and intellectual property laws apply to geeks, too.

Re:First FreeCraft, next...

[EvilAlien]

Yes, its called "humor". Perhaps you are familiar with the concept, or need it presented more blatantly. I'll try fart jokes next time.

From what I've heard, if you put the real Warcraft 2 files containing the graphics and so forth in your Freecraft directory, you will not only have the gameplay which Freecraft lifted, but also the graphics... making it nearly identical. I don't really care enough to research this and provide specific links. I don't really enjoy RTS games (which is mostly why I actually don't give Blizzard my money), so I'm not motivated to find out more, so YMMV.

Netcraft?

[heli0]

Does this mean that we will finally see "Netcraft reports that Netcraft is dying"?

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Ogerman]

I'm not trying to say that this is a nice thing for blizzard to do. What I'm saying is that it is ethically justifiable.

Ethically justifiable? It's called competition. If you manufacture pencils and then I start manufacturing pencils, that doesn't give you the right to sue me for infringing on your marketshare. Grow up and go take a basic course in capitalist economics.

It is illegal to freely provide such a close imitaion of a retail game, no matter how low-quality you can make it.
No it's not. You clearly have no understanding of relevant laws. The FreeCraft project used no WarCraft code and they did not copy any of its graphics. The C&D letter sent to the FreeCraft team was based on claims that would be entirely untenable in court. At very worst the name would get changed as a compromise, but there is nothing that says you can't clone a commercial product as long as you re-implement it yourself. The real issue is that the FreeCraft guys are just hobbyists and have no means to legally defend themselves against a mega-corporation-backed game company.

Here's a good example for you: Star/OpenOffice is nearly identical in interface design to Microsoft Office. In fact, I've switched the programs on people and many are unable to tell the difference. Does that make OpenOffice illegal? Hell no. But you won't see Microsoft trying to sue Sun because Sun has the means to legally defend themselves against bogus claims, unlike these poor FreeCraft guys.

I think it would be great if blizzard made a linux version of the game, but if they don't, that doesn't make it legal for someone else to.
FreeCraft was NOT a "linux version of WarCraft". It was a entirely different beast, re-created from the ground up.

What we need are good lawyers willing to work pro-Bono to protect Free Software projects from bogus lawsuits by established proprietary software companies. There needs to be someone to turn to when this nonsense arises.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[mdwh2]

It is illegal to freely provide such a close imitaion of a retail game, no matter how low-quality you can make it.

Really? Can you provide any evidence for this - because I'm sure this is not the case. Admittedly I haven't played the games so I don't know how close they are, but the games market is full of clones (from space invader clones to FPS clones). The only possible issue here is trademark infringement (consider Civilization versus Call To Power - similar games, and the only possible dispute was over the trademark "Civilization", which was settled, I believe on the basis that neither Microprose nor Activision owned the trademark, since Avalon Hill had earlier produced a board game with the same name).

As long as trademarks aren't infringed, and artwork isn't taken, there shouldn't be a problem. The only other possible issues are patents. I'm not aware that "game dynamics" can be patented or copyrighted.

As for the Word analogy, what about someone else who writes a word processor, but implements features that Word had? Are you saying that would be illegal, even if the features weren't patented, and they didn't infringe on trademarks?

Re:Bnet issues

[TalMaximus]

You are coming from a point of view which you truly believe in. I am coming from a rather point of view based in FACT. If you want someone to speak about FACT:

FACT, I got WC3 the day it came out.I registered on Battle.net the day it came out with an alias and a junk email account which I use to register at websites. (Which, by the way, is a highly recommend course of action these days if you read many spam prevention tips, so it's not like that particular tactic is farfetched or unheard of.)
FACT I have played WC3 on battle.net to this day without problems or bugs that have degraded my gameplay experience or forced me to put the game on the shelf.
FACT The cost of WC3 is comparable to that of Neverwinter Nights, or Everquest, which charge you a montly fee to play online, while Battle.net charges you know such fee.
FACT Neither me nor the other people I know who HAVE gone through this experience, have the problems you are describing. So this isn't just a statement of belief on my part but it is also a statement of FACT.

Re:Hmm. Seems reasonable.

[Daniel Phillips]

In many ways, it seems like a reasonable thing for Blizzard to do -- they're protecting their investments and working (in their eyes) to do what is best for their company, their employees, private investors, etc

They are trying to assert ownership of the word "craft", which is a detestable thing to do.

Re:Shadowsource movement? Re: make them all martyr

[ihatesco]

Not totally related to what I was saying but worth a reply :)

Absolutely!

I used to buy DVDs like a trooper, I would select them carefully and mull over them so that I can have a collection of stuff I would like watch a few times since the things are so expensive. And somehow even with that I discovered that I never really watch them more then once. Ever the optimist, I wanted LOTR. It was 50 bucks Canadian. I thought that was a bit pushing it. I mean how greedy you can get. I could stand 25-30 range, but 50? Where does it gonna end?

This is a different thing: what you experienced is the collector syndrome that overcomes us all over at one point in our lives.

When he bought his new CD player back in 1985, my father used to buy a lot of pop music. Then he was into the Laserdisc Fad in 1987 in and now he is into DVDs (he rents a lot of them, or sometimes his friends bring a rented DVD to watch it with us).

I used to buy a lot of magic:tg cards once and manga books recently. Eventually I got tired of magic and of mangas. Some pal of mine recommended a P2P network. Ha! Now I watched impressive number of movies and all I can say is that MPAA will never see me again. I find that I delete a DVD rip after watching. They are not worth keeping. None of this crap is worth more then $1 to me. The only thing I regret is that I was a sucker for such a long time and spend over a grand on that crap. In retrospect, the only reason I did it was in a dellusion of being able to save on repeated rentals of those DVDs. Never happened. I feel now like the whole movie/music thing is some brainwash operation designed to milk me out of outrageous amounts of my hard earned money. I am free now. If the P2P nets ever stop... I had my fill already. I will bever spend money on that shit again.

Well, let me ask you a thing, can I? ;) You now are free from your compulsion of giving the money to an MPAA company, yet you still want to watch a lot of MPAA company movies. Why don't you go to a theatre instead with friends and watch a movie one time?

You don't strain your pc (even your pc has a cost in *DSL, maintenance and electricity billing), you don't strain your eyes with bad quality screeners, you don't strain your patience finding the real release of movie X (yeah, I know of the *reactor sites, but still they are not complete), and you can enjoy the movie with one of the best (yet affordable) video and audio quality.

Then, in my opinion you are free to do what you want to do, but you are punishing the real movie makers (which are not the companies, but the actors, actresses, and technical staff behind the movie)... If you go to the movies, you are not punishing the movie crew and still you are saying "50$ for DVD stinks".

By the way: I still like DVDs (and Laserdiscs) because sometimes you buy some good movies that aren't going to be re-aired or re-distributed :(, at least somewhere :(

I WANT LABYRINTH! DAMNIT!

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[TalMaximus]

Just because a company is defending its intellectual property doesn't always mean it is being cynical, greedy, or petty. Granted, it is usually a safe assumption. But considering the almost identical similarities between FreeCraft and WC2, Blizzard's actions are understandable. Doesn't necessarily make them a greedy corporation.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Qender]

"OKay, let me try again. So it should be illegal for someone to write software that can read, modify, and write Microsoft Word formatted documents then?"

No, and that's totally different. Lots of companies make chairs, anyone can make a chair, no one owns the right to the idea of a chair. But only one company has the right to make star wars trading cards. No other company can legally make star wars trading cards, even if they take the pictures off.

Word processors are generic, games are not. While they have similarites, those similarites are referred to as a genre. FreeCraft's similarities extend beyond genre in that aside from graphics, in that it is nearly indescernable from the the original.

"It seems to me that all FreeCraft does is promote the sale of more copies of WC2. It expands the WC2 market into the Linux and Macintosh world. How terrible."

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Freecraft is horrible, It sounds pretty cool to me. Problem is, blizzard has every right to make them stop. As it is essentially the same game as the one they sell. If people download freecraft, they have a free copy of warcraft II, minus the graphics, this may not look like promoting the sale or expanding the market to blizzard

So does Blizzard have some sort of patent on a game involving the building of structures and training of units for battle purposes in a game like setting? The FreeCraft project is writing code with clean room techniques. They are looking at how WC2 works from a user's perspective, and trying to implement it in their own code.

"Blizzard have a copyright on WarCraft, not a patent on the concept of a RTS game. Virtually every RTS game out there has the same model as WarCraft does, so why doesn't Blizzard go take out Command & Conquor or any of the others?"

No, blizzard does not have a patent on the RTS genre. It's just that freecraft is a little more specific than the genre. FreeCraft has peons and farms, it has the same units, it has the same buildings, it is an identical game. It may not be downloadable with the original graphics, but it's the same game.

And just for reference, command and conquer was made by westwood. Westwood made dune 2 which came previous to warcraft, so if anyone where going to sue for the genre it would be westwood.

No comparison

[NDPTAL85]

It pretty much shows how out of touch with reality most Slashdot posters are when they compare video game industry professionals with people who commit cold blooded murder.

In case you did not notice, your joke was not funny.

Re:No comparison

[cheesybagel]

He shed light on your fallacy and you are disturbed. Fancy that.

you forgot "low quality"

[Anonymous Coward]

just a low quality knock-off free version of unix with an unimaginative name

Just rename the project to "BluckFizzard"

[Sagarian]

and march onward

Tiger Sosa's SpikeCraft

[CrazyJim0]

I bet no one will sue me then.

freedom of speech

[dh003i]

Tough shit. Freedom of speech is more important than "Blizzard's right to make money".

Your take on IP laws is completely backward.

All IP -- trademark, patent, copyright, trade-secret -- is there for the benefit of the public, the consumers.

And trademark should not in any way apply to general words like "craft", no matter what the context. They can have rights over "WarCraft" etc, but not over *craft. You don't get to say "all of the * are mine, because I have created this naming scheme".

It's no-one's fault but Blizzard's that they used a common word to describe their product. If they had made up a new word (like Orwell made up "newspeak"), then they could trademark that word specifically, but craft is an every-day word, which very naturally describes what these type of games are about.

Giving Blizzard the rights to *Craft is absurd, because trademark does NOT apply to generalized phrases or words. It's just as outrageous as MS' trademark on Windows (which is why their "trademark" is pretty much void, along with that of UNIX).

Re:freedom of speech

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Agreed. Once again, I am reminded of my favorite Heinlein quote:

"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit." -- Robert A. Heinlein

Re:freedom of speech

[Boing]

Your take on IP laws is completely backward ... All IP -- trademark, patent, copyright, trade-secret -- is there for the benefit of the public, the consumers.

Clarify to me, if you don't mind, how any of those protections directly benefit the consumers. All other considerations aside, wouldn't it be "best" for consumers if all the software they wanted was free? All the music? If they could make a soft drink, label it "Coca-Cola", and resell it to people who think it's the well-known and well-reputed version? Suddenly, consumers would have a great deal more money, as they wouldn't have to spend it on DVDs; they'd just (legally) download all the movies they wanted to see for only the price of bandwidth.

You are correct that IP protections are there to benefit the public, but not for the decidedly one-sided "consumers" alone. Blizzard can afford to make and sell software for a living because it's illegal for people to take their software and redistribute it for free. If they didn't have that guarantee, they would not exist; the people who came up with the creative and innovative designs and behaviors in Star/Warcraft would not have been able to financially support the representation of those ideas. We would all have been worse off for that loss. Consumers benefit, not because they are granted free reign over the intellectual creations of others, but because others are able to create and share those ideas in the first place.

It's no-one's fault but Blizzard's that they used a common word [*craft] to describe their product.

Is your implication that the name "FreeCraft" was chosen on its own merits, simply because "Craft" seems relevant to the game's genre? That's incredibly naive. At the time FreeCraft was created, I would bet there was not a single person familiar with the RTS genre that was not aware of Warcraft. I cannot imagine that the project was named such for any other reason than to indicate the similarity between it and Blizzard's products, especially since it has been also designed as a way to interoperate with Warcraft tilesets (but not those of any other company's games, AFAIK). And you cannot claim that the fact that "craft" is a common word applies. Is Pizza Hut's trademark void as well? Both of those are common words. What about the National Broadcasting Corporation? General Electric [does it get more general than that]? All of those examples use common words relevant to their industry. It doesn't mean their trademark is invalid.

This is a troll!

[Anonymous Coward]

or someone making very consistent errors.
freecraft was a warcraft clone, no startcraft clone.
And I do not believe the graphics were ripped, they were much to ugly. You could however play with the original graphics IF you owned them.

d.

Re:This is a troll!

[_xeno_]

You're right. It was a WarCraft clone. When I looked at it originally, there were map graphics stolen directly from StarCraft. It would appear this has changed. (They are now stolen from WarCraft.)

Anyway, check out this screenshot. Compare with this one. First shot is FreeCraft. (Dead giveaways are the red blobby thing from the catapult and StarCraft style health bars.) Second shot is of WarCraft II. Look slightly similar? (Especially the building in the lower left corner?)

So, yeah, I got the details wrong (I still think the copy I downloaded was early enough to be using a Marine artwork in place of a Footsoldier artwork). But they do indeed steal - directly - the graphics set from WarCraft II and are basically trying to "recreate" that game. They should have expected what they got.

Re:This is a troll!

[Anonymous Coward]

Freecraft does not include any Warcraft graphics. It can use the graphics from Warcraft, if you have bought the game and have the disc. Either that, or you can use the work from the Freecraft Media Project (FCMP).

That picture uses graphics from the original game. There is no way to download those graphics from the Freecraft site, and I doubt there ever has been. The FCMP graphics, which are free, are nothing like the ones in that screenshot. They are _far_ uglier, and some of them, so far, only have placeholder graphics.

Re:This is a troll!

[_xeno_]

OK, I'll assume that FreeCraft does not and has never distributed Blizzard graphics. (Even though I'm positive I downloaded a copy that did. I'll have to go through my backups at some time to see if I still have it, since I deleted the game some time ago.)

You state that it can only use WarCraft II graphics if available. This basically means that FreeCraft is, as far as I can tell, a direct ripoff of WarCraft II. It has the same units. It has the same buildings. It has the same tilesets. It has the same gameplay. (Apparently, some versions also add new resources?)

It still is a fairly blatant rip-off of WarCraft II. (Along with the afore-mentioned "StarCraft" style health bars.) This sounds like Blizzard has a very good reason to send a Cease and Desist. I never was very impressed with FreeCraft or FreeCiv since both of them seem to basically be rehashing what's already been done before. I'd be far more interested in seeing an open source game push new ground. Rehashing Blizzard games isn't new ground.

Re:This is a troll!

[Anonymous Coward]

Directly copying a $10 bargain bin game might be a lame waste of time, but it's not illegal. (See Lotus v Borland, Apple v Microsoft, etc)

Re:This is a troll!

[TekPolitik]

Anyway, check out this screenshot. Compare with this one.

Not sure your comparison is meaningful - FreeCraft can use *Craft graphics if you have them on your system (such as by having bought the game). The screenshots you showed were probably created that way. On the other hand, FreeCraft also has its own graphics that are not copied. Those graphics reflect perhaps the ideas of the original(which is not protected), without the expression (which is).

It's not a cease and desist 'order'!

[Stephen Samuel]

It's a cease and desist request. This is very different than a court order that has legal force behind it. Personally, I think that freecraft is clearly different than either warcraft and starcraft. This is like the Xerox case where they went against somebody that they claimed had a similar name... the judge said that just because Xerox was well known, didn't mean that they had the rights to control the existence of an 'x' at either end of a name.

Especially given that 'free' (along with 'gnu') is a well known prefix for open-source type products I think that it would be very hard to seriously argue that Freecraft was a serious trademark violation -- but if they just want to get completely out of the realm, they can change the name to something like 'freecrap' or 'freewar' and all should be well. With names like that they could probably get any lawsuit tossed on a preliminary application.

As for producing software that allows you to (privately) (re)use graphics that are on a CD that you purchased, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Ahh, the DMCA doing the rounds again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shamelessly pulled from nehe.gamedev.net

TRONSTER RE: ZELDATronster had the following to say:
Well guys, it's finally happened.

The OSZ project has to be taken down because the ISDA has invoked the DMCA to remove this project. Kind of funny... we were a threat to Nintendo. =) I'm a little pissed, but knew that this could happen.

What next? The game engine and editor are still top notch. I had thoughts of generalizing the game engine... and after this happened, I think I'm going to just to that. This should provide a nifty piece of middleware to anyone wanting to make a tile-based, 2-D, video game.

This is most likely going to be the last e-mail to the whole distribution list. I'm glad we got a chance to partipate together on this project, the e-mails, ICQs, text files attempting to explaining a concept I had bouncing in my head...etc...

Thanks for your interest, participation, and to Jeff (NeHe) who started this project two years ago. Of all the side coding projects I've done over the years this was the most fun.

www.tronster.com

End Of line.

Another RTS Game

[Anonymous Coward]

If anoyone is interested, there is another Open-source RTS game in development. http://keewie.sourceforge.net/

Thats not true.

[HanzoSan]

Theres some free ones, the 4th coming, diablo2, and a few of them allow you to run the server yourself.

Re:Thats not true.

[OneEyedApe]

Last I looked, Diablo 2 was not an MMORPG. Yes, Diablo 2 is an RPG that you can play online with other people, but it does not approach the scale of Everquest, Asheron's Call, etc.

Re:Thats not true.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Diablo 2 is an RPG

*cough* *cough* *splutter*

Yes, I love role-playing in Diablo 2. I like to be an evil character who has decided to wipe out the prime evils... hey, wait a minute...

Re:Shadowsource movement? Re: make them all martyr

[cheesybagel]

You cannot see every movie you want in a theather. Only new releases or re-releases.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Qender]

Blizzard is not complaining about marketshare infringment. Warcraft II is not a pencil. I understand capitalist economics. A pencil has no patents on it, warcraft II is considered intellectual property, in due time it will become as generic as a pencil, but for a while blizzard will own the rights to it, and any other game that just so happens to be identical to it.

"The FreeCraft project used no WarCraft code and they did not copy any of its graphics"

Yeah, graphics are the only things they didn't copy. The code is meant to reflect the functionality of the warcraft II code.

"FreeCraft was NOT a "linux version of WarCraft". It was a entirely different beast, re-created from the ground up."

Re-created... Identically. ...

I am aware of openoffice. I use it (crashes less than ms office). yes, it is very similar to MS office. And microsoft could have legal grounds to sue them. I don't think openoffice uses things that are exclusive to microsoft, office tools are common sense, some things are features that are the most efficient way to do something. It's hard to argue that the most efficient way to make an RTS is "orcs vs humans".

If you write and publish a book. Am I allowed to rephrase it sentence by sentence, so that the sentences have the same meanings, and give away for free?

Re:Bnet issues

[Renli]

"That's like Radio Shack asking for your name and address when you come in to buy a fuse for your god damn CB radio. And look at RadioShack now... You might notice they DONT ASK anymore. There's a reason behind that."

Two days ago Radioshack asked for my name and such. I just gave him a fake one. *shrug*

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Qender]

The truth is, it's not a single thing called game dynamics:

When people try to prove in court that someone stole an idea for a movie, they must prove in court a certain number of identical points. If we were comparing FreeCraft to warcraft II, every unit name, every game mechanism, the research tree items and heirarchy, we would have an astounding number of similarites. Coupled with the fact that we have very few differences(come on, someone name one!). I would say that it could be quite easily proven that the games are pretty much the same.

I still think the word processor analogy is stupid. Word processors are a lot more simple than games are.

Re:Bnet issues

[HanzoSan]

We arent? what about the price we paid when they purchased the game?

Also if Blizzard isnt making any money hosting these networks they can let us host them ourselves.

Another *Cr*ft Game...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, not using a *Craft for a game project might have kept it under the radar a while longer.

WarCraft
StarCraft
FreeCraft

I wonder when they sue LauraCroft for being too similar..

Latest cvs...

[T0t0r0_fan]

Oh damn, and I haven't even checked out the cvs for the last few months :(...At least, I have the older version lying around that I can still play.

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[HanzoSan]

Maybe if you pay more money or convince others to vote on that series they'll port it.

More uhoh

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh better,

How about;

LEGALCRAFT

GREEDCRAFT

LAWYERCRAFT

BABYBLOODCRAFT
Hmmm, sound promising already. The legal dept. is getting all wet about it.

Re:Bnet issues a box of Ball Bearings vs WC3

[GnuPengwyn]

If you hate the game so much, why didn't you take it back to the store,
Not an option with software. Try taking an Open Software box back to Costco.

give it to a friend, or sell it off on eBay instead of whining about how evil they are for making a game you didn't like and forcing you to give out optional personal info.

Selling it on eBay, COSTS me money. (Do they even allow software on eBay Still?) Besides, I already told you, come and get it. I am in Sacramento. I would be happy to give it to you, and I don't even consider you a friend. ;o) (there be something subliminal in that statement eh?)

I see you've looped back and are now re-iterating what we've already discussed. The spin-a-topic-satanic-troll technique is quite effective usually, but I won't put up with it from you right now. So put down the "HOW-TO steal a mail list tutorial" and give the "HOW-TO win a flame war.doc" a rest.
The point is Blizzard has lost all future sales with me, They've lost word of mouth with me, I won't recommend them ever, and to the contrary, I will point out the little nasty details about how they do business. This kind of review, is never wrong, because it is honest, and that always has a powerful effect on folks decision to use a product or not. I simply state fact. You may lable that fact as, "whiny" all that you want.
Considering, I do quite a bit of consulting, and I come in contact with quite a few people, when folks ask my personal opinion on the matter I will be the judge, jury, or executioner of a potential Blizzard sale. Normally I wouldn't judge anything, but the bad side is too HOT to ignore.
Surely you can see that this will have an effect. Say if 20 folks asked my opinion, and decided not to waste 50 bucks. that would be 20*50 = $1000.00 in lost sales right there. If they have 20 friends that have 20 friends..

So, If you don't see the humor in a 50 dollar box of ball bearings being more fun than a Blizzard game, then I can only assume you must somehow work either directly or as damage control PR for blizzard, maybe even vivendi, or *AA. Otherwise why else would you use such tactics to attack my character. (continously now I might add) Surely your not just a gamer, a gamer is not going to come from the same angle as you have. The only reason your attacking my character is to attempt to show your own point of view in a more positive light, so that you can persuade everyone who might be reading that yours is the just opinion. (e.g. My attitude is more positive than his, so I must be correct.) However, the thing you are missing is that although you may be showing a more positive attitude than I am, you are using your power of persuasion for negative ends, and direct manipulation (Social Engineering) and your going to find that even if you get away with it this time, it is eventually going to bite you in the ass, when you have become the master of spin, attack and you continually or constantly treat folks like crap.
Always remember to treat folks with respect, for one day you might need them. (even I have shown you respect, in that I have offered to GIVE you the whole WC3 box if you would like it.) In that respect, I would only look at RadioShack, have they turned themselves around from their, "We need to have a name and address to buy a battery or a fuse?" Yes, they have. Can People change? Yes, they can. Can Blizzard Change? Yes.

And if they change their ways to something more consumer friendly, would I be willing to change my opinion? Yes, of Course I would. But from what I currently see, that isn't going to happen. They have picked their path, and they are going down it. Damned be all.
Meanwhile, you need to remember, I basically got burned. (The Disk Sits in the Box, collecting dust) So of course my attitude is negative, and my feedback will be appropriate for the situation. After all, I worked to pay the original $50.00 bucks. I might add, that I am not the only one with several negative opi

I can see it now...

[PetoskeyGuy]

http://SlashSpot.org/

News for clueless technically illiterate people. Something your parents might go to.

Common Posts.

Why no MS Bob for XP?
I clicked OK, Why didn't it work?
A Purple Monkey is in my Computer!
12:00 How to program DVD Player?
My Keyboard has blank ANY key

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[k_187]

If you do not, there's a rather low-quality substitute that is entirely free for anyone to use.

And this is the problem. if it was just an engine to play WC2, then the name would be the only problem. It'd be like scummVM. the fact that they basically re-implimented WC2 and made their own graphics to go with it is where the confusion came in.

because you don't need a legit WC2 CD to play, defeats the interoperability arguement. and creates the confusion that Blizzard is trying to stop.

Looks like they deserved it!

[zapp]

Usually I'm against the corporation fighting for its property, because usually I think it's unfounded.

However, just look at the damn screenshot given in the article. It looks *exactly* like wc2. It even has "Strongholds" and orcs and the farms, barracks, etc all look the same.

Come on people. This is like me taking a famous book (that still sells, some) and rewriting it exactly word for word - except character names (which would be Similar), then then giving it away.

heh

[j0nb0y]

Last time I played freecraft, it played almost exactly like WCII. And the graphics were extremely similar. I seem to even remember an option to use WCII's graphics if you had the cd. The game was a complete clone of WCII.

If you remake someone's game under a slightly different name, you shoudn't be too surpised when they complain. Frankly, I'm surprised Blizzard didn't complain earlier. I just wish people would spend time making *original* open source games rather than cloning commercial games.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Ogerman]

Yeah, graphics are the only things they didn't copy. The code is meant to reflect the functionality of the warcraft II code.

Just because the code reflects the functionality of the original code doesn't make it the original code. It's not a copyright violation. It's not a patent or trade secret issue. Functionality of a product does not constitute a trademark. So what else could you possibly call it?

Re-created... Identically.

Not identically. Similarly. There's a big difference when it comes to the law.

If you write and publish a book. Am I allowed to rephrase it sentence by sentence, so that the sentences have the same meanings, and give away for free?

No, but you can write your own book to tell the precise same story with the same events, same characters, etc. It might be regarded as a cheap knock-off, but there's nothing illegal about it. What the FreeCraft guys did was NOT a line by line copying of WarCraft code. They wrote their own code from scratch.

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[StarTux]

apart from the fact that D2 sucks, they do make good games now and then.

However, there have been better...Total Annihilation for one.

Afraid of the Competition?

[Jaysyn]

Blizzard hasn't put out a good game since Broodwar. Are they scared people might figure out that all the bells & whistles are just that?

Jaysyn

Valve was smart...

[Idolminds]

Guess we know why Worldcraft was changed to Hammer recently....

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Piquan]

warcraft II is considered intellectual property,

Don't use the term "intellectual property" when you're making specific arguments. See GNU's page on why. Specifically, talk about copyrights, patents, or trademarks; those three things are all that will hold up in a court.

WarCraft II is a lot of things. In one sense, it's the set of rules that define the gameplay. In this sense, FreeCraft is the same as WarCraft. But this set of rules is not copyrightable. When Xerox invented the mouse, they made a rule that when the mouse moves towards the back of the desk, the cursor goes up. But that rule is not copyrightable. Some may feel that it is patentable, but nobody is asserting there are patents on WarCraft II's code that FreeCraft violated.

I said WC2 is many things. Besides being a set of rules, it's also the code that implements those rules. That is copyrightable. Are you asserting that FreeCraft copied the WC2 code?

Also, WC2 is the code, coupled with maps, graphics, music, manual, box, etc. I'm not sure if maps are copyrightable. (Written renderings of maps are, but I don't know about the maps in the abstract sense.) Graphics and music are copyrightable. The OP talked about the copied graphics, but that was FC reading legitimately-purchased WC2 graphics. The manual, box art, and a lot of the etc. is copyrightable, but nobody is claiming that was copied.

Yeah, graphics are the only things they didn't copy.

They also didn't copy the CODE. The code is copyrightable. The graphics are copyrightable. The music is copyrightable. The manual is copyrightable. The idea of the game, the look-and-feel, isn't.

In 1981, a little company called Sierra On-Line (a much different company in those days) wrote a game called Jawbreaker. Atari said that it captured the "magic of Pac-Man", and was therefore a violation of their copyright. Read about it. Then read about later similar suits. Learn.

Re-created... Identically. ...

Not textually identically (the code is different), but functionally identically. Like Linux copying Unix's functionality, AMD copying Intel's functionality, Amdahl and later Compaq copying IBM's functionality.

the difference? Victor got lawyers

[waspleg]

and from what i've read thus far these guys have already given up the ghost..

welcome to america, where the only right you have left is to litigate...

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[damiam]

By the time any such Linux gaming company would release a game, DoomIII etc. would be released, and that would be the market they're competing in. Quake2 is a decent engine, but I don't believe there's a large market of Linux gamers willing to pay for a Quake2-based game in 2005 (which is how long it'd take, at least).

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[Synic]

Well. If you plan on raising the $5-7 million to start up a single game project, by all means do so (the average amount for developing a quality title these days).

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[EllisDees]

>It is illegal to freely provide such a close imitaion of a retail game, no matter how low-quality you can make it.

No, it is not. You cannot copyright look and feel.

It's a shame but freeCraft was in the wrong here.

[Performer Guy]

Look, they didn't just call themselves freecraft, they explicitly tried to copy warcraft while making a generic engine. This was an undisguised goal, they SAID this was their objective and have for years. When are people going to learn you just can't legally copy someone else's game wholesale like this, it doesn't matter how much of a fan you are.

As for only corporate interests being able to fight Blizzard off, corporate interests would NEVER have done this. Sure they may have similar games and concepts, but they have very different names, and they have very different content and even a few original ideas of their own.

Make your own engine, make your own name come up with your own scenarios/world/content. They didn't do at least two of these.

There's no need to kill freecraft. Simply ditch the current content and change the name, then come up with your own units etc, and no this doesn't just mean Blizzard's units with your bitmap. All this falling on your own sword is overly dramatic, it ain't Blizzards fault that you decided to copy their game.

Good reason to pirate

[FLoWCTRL]

I don't buy these "they're just defending their IP" arguments -- the FreeCraft project is clearly no threat to this goliath software company that is technically years ahead of the hobby project. Besides, even if there is some potential of the free version catching up, Blizzard could have asked them to change the name and not try to mimick the graphics, etc., rather than forcing them to shut down completely. They're just being bullies.

Since they're shutting down free alternatives and being general assholes, people should have no qualms about pirating their commercial software. What goes around...

Cash in?

[Yogurtu]

I was with you(well, almost) up to that point. I think of FreeCraft as a homage, as a "let's see if we can do something THIS cool". What are they going to "cash" in, anyway? It's not that the game was for sale, was it. I do wish Blizzard would have warned them, and earlier; they would have more to show for their efforts, and maybe direct them to something less trademark-endangering.

Juan

Look out George, there's a Blizzard(tm) coming!

[Cid Highwind]

Freecraft should have seen this coming! What else could they possibly expect from the company that thinks they own the word "Diablo"?

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[Performer Guy]

MOST freeware projects produce nothing of any value, especially those in the games genre. There are many exceptions, but everyone and their dog tries to write a game and most produce some real rubbish, or nothing at all. I don't donate to people who are experienced game developers, I do *purchase* their products and I have *donated* to some projects where I liked the *software produced*, but I'm just not into throwing money away. If I'm paying for something I'd rather everyone paid their fair share, there's a way to do this, it's called buying a commercial product.

We're frogetting one thing here, freecraft has been going for years, and it's still crap. Sorry, it just is, it looks worse than an unfinished early 1980s game. Moreover it is a straight attempt to copy someone else's game. You're NOT ALLOWED TO DO THAT. Don't you get it? You can't copy games, you have to write one based on your own ideas & content. Nobody can do this and a commercial developer would never have copied Blizzards game so blatantly because they know they'd have been sued.

Instead of flaming Blizzard you should be saying "Oh yea, we/they shouldn't have done that, what a waste of time, next time we'll write our OWN GAME". By all means write an RTS, any RTS, just DON'T copy one.

Yes but how do you get it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can view the project using ViewCVS, but when I try to download it via pserver I get:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ freecraft login
(Logging in to anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net)
CVS password:
cvs [login aborted]: recv() from server cvs.sourceforge.net: Connection reset by peer

Looks like it's stored but not downloadable. Or am I doing something wrong? My TCP port 2401 is open and I can download via pserver from other repositories...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[Omestes]

Um... I'm sure Bliz has done a lot of shitty things, I really don't know of any of them, that *I* consider unjustified. (Yes, I agree with them about bnetd, and this freecraft thing) I am not very alienated. Um, Blizzard treats their customers like kings, sure they might alienate the lunatic fringe, but who cares? 90% of players didn't use Bnetd, or don't really care about freecraft, when for $11 they can get a REAL TRIED-AND-TRUE game, and not some bored programmers mastabatory plaything. Being that it is open-source I'm also pretty sure that it has that "b" affixed to the end, which most users will associate with "buggy".

Why would I be alienated if YOU had a problem with War3? Most people had no problems at all, and like the game. I've installed it on 4 boxes with massivly varying system specs, (800mhz-2.4ghz, 256-512ram, voodoo3-ATI7800 Win98, WinME, XP)and never had a problem, even on the most tweaked of boxes. Most people don't see this "bloat", they just see a solid RTS. And most games do cost $50.00, how is not getting a deal at cosco Blizzard's fault? I just bought a bike for $99, that cost $200 at cosco, not the bike manufacturers fault.

The only thing that pisses me off if Ghost, releaseing it only on Xbox/GameCube... that alienates me as the rare-lunatic-fringe-console-hater.

In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard sent a cease and desist letter to the nethack people for ripping off blizzards game designs:-)

I wish

[black mariah]

I wish that I'd get a C&D from Blizzard, just so I could tell them to blow me. I'm single, stupid enough to defend myself, and have way too much time on my hands. See you in court, where I'll promptly shove my foot up your ass. Hugs and kisses.

anyone remember the 'AutoShack' stores?

[Baric]

They were sued by Radio Shack in the late Eighties and changed their name to 'AutoZone' I agree, though, about smelling chicken.

Update to project status

[mandreiana]

FreeCraft will be renamed ( only candidate now is 'Project Inferno' ), original Warcraft II graphics support will be dropped, two new races will be added.

Join #freecraft on irc.freenode.net if you want to help with organization.

Disposable Income?

[BanditAngel]

You do realize that you could put that money IN TO investments or savings? Or is there some weird new economic system that kicks in when you get that sort of paycheck?

Re:Disposable Income?

[NDPTAL85]

I already HAVE put money into investments and savings. Can I please actually enjoy something before I retire however? The purpose of saving and investing is not to save and invest EVERYTHING, just enough.

difference between FreeCraft and OpenOffice?

[mandreiana]

To all who agree with Blizzard: I think you are right a little, but still why not try to replicate what you see if you don't steal any code/graphics? Your replica might be worse or better. What if the first automobile company tried to shut down any other initiave to make automobiles?

What about OpenOffice vs. MS Office? Their names are similar, they look a lot the same, Open Office can read/write MS Office files. Should Open Office be required to change names, UI and support for MS Office files?

The death of closed source

[Anonymous Coward]

In my opinion: Open Source will never die. Open Source is freedom. Remember, bad publicity is still publicity. More and more people are raising an eyebrow towards open source and are willing to jump in and learn how to program. I don't think you'll see too many more generations pass from this day on that will continue to put up with closed source and the monsters who profit from their closed source schemes when people can sit down and make better programs themselves and enjoy their time making it through communicating with the open source community.

The lesson here is to stop buying programs from companies and people who make a living off of their closed source programs. Switch to open source! It's easy and it's fun. It may take a little learning but doesn't anything that is rewarding? Once the money stops coming in, the closed source monsters cannot continue to make these money making programs. Schools, governments, and entire countries are switching to open source. The wheel is in motion and the people behind the closed source Oz machine turning the crank behind the curtain know open source is a threat. It's only a matter of time before closed source is a thing of the past. It starts with each one of us. Alone we think we can't make a difference, but if we all make the decision to stop funding these companies who profit from closed source programs, it's over. Together we will win.
^ ^ /All in my opinion/

What about FreeCraft the game?

[SHEENmaster]

FreeCraft is a game on its own, that is compatible with Warcraft levels and graphic files. This is much more like Microsoft shutting down OS X because it(Samba really) can communicate with Windows.

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

" free Battle.net."

Problem is, Blizzard can decide to stop supporting any game through battlenet whenever they want, shutting of people's ability to play a game they PAID FOR in multiplayer mode. That's not acceptable. THe bnetd guys tried to provide a "fallback", a way that people could continue using what they legally paid for, despite the wishes of those who would like to force them to stop. (so as to encourage them to buy the latest-greatest, I might add).

How would you react if you were a diehard Monopoly player, and Milton Bradley had the power to remotely destroy your monopoly set whenever they chose so as to force you to purchase a new one?

And in a short press statement...

[SmackCrackandPot]

In a short press statement, Blizzard also announced that they had sent a cease and desist order to all American airlines, requesting that they no longer refer to their vehicles as "Aircraft", but recommended that they use the term "fossil fuel powered heavier than air flying machine" instead.

Re:Bnet issues

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

"Blizzard is one of those companies that I feel I can trust since they have consistently produced the best games in the genres"

How does creating a good game and being ethically trustworthy correlate? I think they've proven through this action that they are NOT trustworthy.

" (IMHO, yours may differ), have innovated, and have provided high quality, always on, high bandwidth BattleNet servers."

Perhaps the BattleNet servers are "reliable" now. When I was playing Diablo, they sure as hell weren't. Providing a mechanism that allows them to shut off customer's ability to play in multiplayer mode at will hardly endears them to me.Perhaps if they had provided it as a centralized service and not shut down an alternative (bnetd) I'd be more generous here. As it stands though, they rank ethically right by Martha Stewart in my book.

OT, Frozen 0wn

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhat OT here...

Blizzard listened to Frozen 0wn beta testers because it is, quite simply put, pandering to the bnet demographic. That's the whole reason they changed the game over. WC3 classic is a superior game in just about every way, but TFT appeases the gamers who find these gameplay parts fun:

• Lost Temple, possibly the worst map in all of WC3:RoC. It has pathetically easy creeps, which drop an inordinable amoutn of high level items, making solo creeping actually profitable. It also has a basically free expansion, a free shop, and so forth. It's also a rush map, because of its general small size. To say that it has any sort of strategy in it is laughable - it's all about knowing the maps and all the tricks that can be abused on it.
  
• Simple, obvious gameplay. Everything in TFT is basically hitting people over the head with a hammer. 200% damage, making units extremely good in one or two roles but completely worthless otherwise. Making it so that if you see the enemy doing something you can counter it *EASILY*, rather than having to plan ahead of time to deal with it. (I'm sorry, but if you LET your opponent do something like teching to tier 3 unopposed, you deserve to lose, unlike what the average bnetters think)
  
• Smaller maps, faster gameplay, less of a squad-tactics feel. The higher food cap, lower build times, lower unit costs all around make it so that it basically *IS* rushcraft. Because of the separation of 'teching' into being wood-required, it means that there is functionally no reason *NOT* to pump out a hojillion units.
  
• Worthless defenses. Making towers un-fortified is just retarded. If I spend resources to fortify my position instead of teching/building units/etc, I should be rewarded for it. But no, they decrease the power of defenses a dozen times over, and player STILL whine that they're too tough. This ought to tell you something about the average intelligence of a bnetter.
  
• Game design by bad UI - in other words, requiring 'leet gosu micro!', because your units are too stupid to do the obvious thing. (Like ranged units will no longer default to attacking air, which is bloody retarded) This appeases the Starcraft fanboys, who think skill is related to click rate. (Tillerman actually bitched and moaned when CUSTOMIZABLE KEYBINDS were added. Why Blizzard pampers this moron I have no clue.)
  
• *Forcing* a certain gameplay style (in this case, mixing, which was always more effective than massing in WC3:RoC, but required more effort/work to make good) by way of most of the above, actually making the game more repetitive and simpler in every respect, but faster nonetheless.
  

I could go on and on. It's not to say that RoC is faultless, but honestly, TFT is garbage for rush-minded idiots. It adds no REAL strategical value, it REDUCES the existing tactical value. WC3 was not a true RTS, and this was one of its strong points.

And given all this, I'm inclined to believe they ignored the WC3 beta testers because they were retards who wouldn't know a good, solid, in-depth game if it bit them on the ass.

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Very well said, sir. That's a point that I don't think I made clearly in any of the posts I've made here.

Legalities aside, what Blizzard has done, here and in the bnetd case is ETHICALLY wrong. Neither project was doing them any damage. In the case of people commenting that FreeCraft looked a lot like Warcraft II... Thats because it had the capability of using Warcraft II art files. Legally reverse-engineered, and requiring a Warcraft II CD to install. I haven't seen the fcmp graphics yet, but I plan to play with them over the weekend.

I think I've stated my position regarding bnetd sufficiently in other posts.

Again, well said, sir.

Prior Art

[Anonymous Coward]

WitchCraft has older rights, anyway!

WHAT!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I will never by a f*cking blizzard game ever again!

I have bougt several + several expansion packs over the years, and i bet they will loose money on this stupid cease and desist.

No more blizzard, lets boycott them all!!!

Re:WHAT!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm doing this since Diablo II already, and back then I was convincing friends to do so too, with some success.

Well I guess it's time to ruin their image some more.

If you are fighting free software, you are fighting us. If you are fighting us, only the idiots within us will continue to support you. .... and sadly that's hell of a lot people.

When will people realize that _they_ control the market?

I don't hate Blizzard - I hate YOU FUCKING IDIOTS WHO DON'T CARE AND ARE NOT INTERESTED IN GETTING A FUCKING CLUE. JERKS!

Sorry, I'm a little drunk.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

"It is illegal to freely provide such a close imitaion of a retail game"

No. It isn't.

Why hasn't that post been modded down to troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, it's called free software, not freeware. Go to http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html to learn the difference. You're right about one thing: freeware is rubbish. But free software is not.

Second, FreeCraft is NOT an attempt to copy a game. If the FreeCraft developers wanted a copy of Warcraft they would have bought a copy. That's not the point. FreeCraft is an attempt to make an equivalent game that is free software.

It's people like you who are trying (and failing miserably) to ruin the GNU operating system (specifically GNU/Linux). If you still don't understand why we create these programs, check out www.fsf.org.

Re:Why hasn't that post been modded down to troll?

[Performer Guy]

Your disagreement does not make my post troll. This project WAS an attempt to copy a game, they've stated this explicitly. Don't get revisionist now they've been asked to stop.

Just rename?!

[node159]

The weights been thrown again...

No-one here seems to have a clue.

[Anonymous Coward]

No-one here seems to have a clue what they are talking about. The whole conversation is ridiculous without the following small bit of information:
Freecraft was not originally intended as a "Clone" of Warcraft as a way to play Warcraft on systems that Blizzard does not support. The whole idea behind it to begin with is that you had to own a Warcraft CD and that game would use the graphics and sounds from that and use its own engine. Basically, it was a way to avoid having to own windows to play Warcraft. Since it was up to the end user to use their own Warcraft files, it was well towards the lighter side of fair use gray area. It was not a piracy tool. Copying a friends warcraft data to use in Freecraft was no easier than copying the game to use in Windows. Of course, a lot of people wanted to move away from the Warcraft graphics altogether to make a separate game with similar gameplay. So, they started the Freecraft Media project.

Any argument that top down RTS games are somehow owned by Blizzard is ridiculous. The worst things that anyone could legitimately say is that the game hovered around copyright infringment using the users Warcraft game data (interoperability is supposed to be part of fair use, of course) and that the name could infringe on Blizzards Trademarks.

The copyright issue is tricky. The creators of Freecraft did not personally violate Blizzards copyrights. They did intend for the end users to do so, but only if you believe that this is not a case of fair use. I personally do think it is fair use, but I am not a judge and, as some one who has at least some grasp of computers would never be allowed near the jury box in a trial having anything to do with computers.

As for the trademark issue, it's a joke. Or, to be more accurate, it should be. The trademarks for Warcraft and Starcraft are very weak. To start with, both are already words in the English language. Let's start with starcraft. It means a craft for travelling among the stars. A spaceship. There are spacecraft in Starcraft, but that is not actually what the name of the game is trying to get across. So, they seem to be trying to create a new definition for an existing word and trademark that. Doing that exercises at least a little originality. For Warcraft, however, blizzard is taking a existing, very old word which literally means "the practice of warfare" and is using it as the name of a game which is about the practice of warfare. They took a descriptive english word which they have absolutely no claim on inventing and used it as the name of their product which is perfectly described by the standard meaning of the word. It's like coming along now, in 2003, creating a frozen dairy product and calling it Ice Cream and trademarking the name. In any sensible world, it should be an incredibly weak trademark. It should be possible to call another computer game about warfare warcraft as long as it is dissimilar enough from Blizzards game. A lot of shoulds. Of course, in reality, it comes down to whose lawyer is bigger and people who believe in justice and fairness get to crawl into a dark hole and weep until they die.

Re:Bnet issues

[zeno_2]

Neverwinter Nights doesn't charge you any monthly fee to play online..

This is lame

[Tim Sweeney]

Given that Blizzard is using the trademarks "StarCraft" and "WarCraft" in this very specific market (realtime computer strategy games), their claim that "FreeCraft" infringes on their copyright is reasonable and very likely winnable in court.

So, no problem, just rename FreeCraft to a unique name that clearly isn't derivative of Blizzard's product. And don't be mad that they asked you to do this, because they have the right and obligation to protect their copyrights.

On the other hand, unless you've physically ripped code or content out of StarCraft or WarCraft and put it in your game, any claim that your game is "too similar" to theirs seems absurd and almost certainly has no basis in copyright or trademark law. If you ignore them on that issue, then they are almost certain to go away.

And if they don't go away nicely, the resulting outrage over their persecution of the open source community would almost certainly force them to go away ashamedly.

But if you just cave in, and you fail to stand up for your rights when presented with this sort of threat, then you are certain to lose your rights.

If a person asks you to get out of his seat, you move. If a bully asks you to give up YOUR seat, you fight.

FreeCraft Source

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get the latest tarball here http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cvstarballs/freecraft-c vsroot.tar.gz

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[Penguin Follower]

Have you seen Tenebrae?

True, it is based off of the quake source, but they have added to the engine some of the abilities found in Doom 3 as far as eye candy goes (not the physics stuff).

An exerpt from the page:
"Tenebrae is a modification of the quake source that adds stencil shadows and per pixel lights to quake. Stencil shadows allow for realistic shadow effects on every object in the game world. Per pixel lighting allows you to have fine surface details correctly lit. These are essentially the same algorithms as used by the new Doom game."

Anyway, turning on all the eyecandy with tenebrae brings my P4 1.7Ghz / 512MB Ram / Geforce 3 to it's knees just as the (although ATI optimized) Doom 3 alpha leak. Tenebrae is in no way short on eye candy. I was amazed at things like looking to a pool of water and seeing my quake character staring back at me... and yet i could see down into the water at the same time! And the lights dancing on the walls reflected off the water was cool, too. Of course, to experience all this coolness, you need the water vis'ed maps, and grab all the redone textures so the engine can really do some work for ya ;) Bad ass I tell ya... I just need a faster card to enjoy it.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Qender wrote:

No other company can legally make star wars trading cards, even if they take the pictures off.

Um, if they make Star Wars trading cards without the pictures, aren't they making blank cards? So aren't you saying that it is illegal for anyone except for Lucsfilm licensees to sell blank cards? Oh, you mean blank cards with a Star Wars logo? Well Duh! Is that really your whole point? That it is unethical because the name of one game is Warcraft and the other is Freecraft? That's ridiculous. Warcraft is an english Word meaning the practice of warfare. Warcraft, the game, is a game about the practice of warfare. Do you have any idea what is supposed to happen to trademarks when they become generics? How about if they are generic to begin with? If that is not your argument, what is your argument?

Re:Bnet issues

[mabinogi]

All of Blizzard's current games are also excellent single player games, that are worth the cover price without the multiplayer....

Diablo II was 3 CDs worth....

Of course they're making money...but they're hardly ripping us off...

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[Reservoir Penguin]

How is it MORAL to go after a few guys whow anted to play something that feels like a 10 year old games? It's not like they were going to sell it. Maybe you think whoeve owns the Civilizations series trademark should go after FreeCiv too?

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[TrancePhreak]

[BLOCKQUOTE] Or none, as the FreeCraft engine can use the original WC2 graphics if you own a legal copy of WC2. It seems to me that all FreeCraft does is promote the sale of more copies of WC2. It expands the WC2 market into the Linux and Macintosh world. How terrible. [/BLOCKQUOTE] This is where you are wrong. A legal copy of WC2 does not seem to be required, any copy of WC2 will do. Even your neighbors. This is what bothers Blizzard.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[TekPolitik]

I don't work for blizzard. I'm a 20 year old calarts student who lives in los angeles... It is illegal to freely provide such a close imitaion of a retail game, no matter how low-quality you can make it.

I suggest you shut up before you embarrass yourself further. As your area is arts of some description, I futher suggest you leave the legal analysis to those of us who have studied law, because you're wrong. It is quite plain that it's perfectly legal to rip off the style, look and feel of a game.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[TrancePhreak]

Which is why Apple was allowed to make websites take down Windows Themes that had the look & feel of Aqua.... Please try again.

Re:Bnet issues a box of Ball Bearings vs WC3

[Anonymous Coward]

If you hate Warcraft 3 so much, can I have your CD-key? war3cdkey2@hotmail.com

Mirror

[vandan]

What a load of bullshit!

I'm currently downloading the game engine and artwork (sound & graphics).

They will soon be available at: game engine and artwork.

This is especially fucked since Blizzard refuse to offer a Linux version of Warcraft. They don't want the market themselves, but don't want anyone else to have it either.

Anyway, go easy on my mirror. Broadband is fucking expensive here in Australia. Ask our local monopoly, Telstra, about it...

Whoosh!

[Rev. Null]

The point of my (admittedly absurd) analogy is that unethical actions should not be justified by an argument that those actions are profitable (or serve to protect a business model). But perhaps I am a radical for thinking that the desire for money is the greatest human value.

Should have previewed

[Rev. Null]

But perhaps I am a radical for thinking that the desire for money is the greatest human value.

Should be "is not the greatest human value".

Maybe I should have just omitted that sentence anyway. It's rather pissy.

I take it back -- mostly

[kangasloth]

Oy, and to think: I almost mis-spelled hypocrisy too. :)

His post was not the definition of hypocrisy: it merely evinced it. He implied that he found fault with their actions, but then promised to buy their products anyway. I find the latter inconsistent with the former. Is that so controversial?

I think I see my error now. Looking back, all he really said was that he puts a higher priority on fun then on âoepoliticsâ. That didn't make any sense to me. I should have known from his characterization of this misdeed as politics, that he didn't really mind Blizzard's actions.

I stand corrected.

Re:I take it back -- mostly

[WIAKywbfatw]

I think that you'll find that your personal definition of hypocrisy is flawed.

By your definition, anyone who opposes any stance taken by any organisation should boycott it immediately, because anything less would be hypocritical.

So all Democrats should leave the US right now, because living under a Republican President and a Republican Congress when you don't agree with their politics and/or actions is hypocrisy?

See how easy it is to blow a hole through your argument?

Re:I take it back -- mostly

[kangasloth]

Boycott's are not the only reasonable response to poor behavior, just the one appropriate in this case. We're not talking about a basic necessity, or even a rare commodity. It's just a game, as he said, just fun.

He might have said, "I love this game, so I'll buy it, but I'll give twice as much to the EFF to make up for it". That would have been consistent with the expressed sentiment.

As I said in the post you responded to, he is not being hypocritical. (it just smells like it) All he did was show that he didn't mind blizzards actions much. My priorities are different, so I didn't see that right away.

LOL

[Kjella]

I'm so glad I don't have mod points so I have to choose between +1, Informative and +1, Funny...

Kjella

So true, so true ...

[beer_maker]

What I would give for some mod points - I bow in humble appreciation, reallocate.

Who's next on the hit parade?

[Anonymous Coward]

Snowcraft, perhaps?

in related news....

[tachi_]

war3x tft is released by the scene... get them at your usual places.. =P

2003-06-22 Warcraft III: Frozen Throne *BW CLONE* (c) Blizzard 36x15 MB CYCLONE
2003-06-22 Warcraft III: Frozen Throne (c) Blizzard 37x15 MB DEVIANCE

Now includes v1.18

[leonbrooks]

Pulled that from Debian (who will soon have to drop it, I'm sure), now sussing out a Mandrake SRPM in case it includes extras.

OGRE based game wins 500,000 Baht

[Daengbo]

There was just a game based on the Ogre engine produced in Thailand that won 500,000 baht in a competition by Liberta Computer in their quest to find more games for their Linux computers. They now sell their own branded Linux and Office with all their computers, with MSWindows as an additional option. It is part of the glacial move toward Linux as the country tries to control illigal software.

Re:It's a shame but freeCraft was in the wrong her

[megabyte405]

If I remember correctly, Freecraft was just a remake of the engine, still requiring the original game files (kinda like ScummVM) Sure, change the name, but everything else should be fine. Do car engine makers attack one another when they use the same kind of gasoline?

opensource game development

[Anonymous Coward]

How about an open, and publicly developed MMO-RPG? ... but wait. Can we use something to host the game from multiple servers distributed accross the 'net? Not one server that would cost way too much to keep running reliably, but a peer network of sorts.

Or has networking tech' developed to this point yet?

After all it worked for an operating system, worked on by many people cooperating accross the 'net. So can't it work for game development too?

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[Unordained]

maybe you don't remember this from the '25 worst moments in computer gaming', posted on slashdot a few days ago ... but the US courts have upheld that it doesn't take much look & feel difference to make games different enough to not be violating each others' copyright turf. why do you think we got so many street-fighter-esque games? same idea, often same rules, slightly different characters ... and in this case, does freecraft copy the data, or just let you use any data you like? i hadn't really cared to look into it ...

it's not about whether or not it's legal. it most likely is, despite blizzard's attempts to state otherwise. (change the name slightly, and i'm sorry, but everyone and their mom has made RTS's on these themes, with their own sucky isometric pre-drawn sprites.)

it's about innovation -- it's pointless, except for personal edification, to rebuild these same games over and over again. i don't even understand why companies bother with so many FPS' -- no amount of upgraded visuals is going to make it -that- much more interesting. (have to admit, i appreciated red faction's geo-mod.) i want new ideas, new kinds of games -- not new settings for the exact same thing.

Off: WC3?

[TheAvatar666]

Can u guys stop using the name of the great Wing Commander 3 for such a lame game as Warcraft3? Use War3 instead of WC3... Yes.. Mod me troll... :p

Re:It's a shame but freeCraft was in the wrong her

[Anonymous Coward]

Or using the same kind of engine for that matter. As the saying goes, if car makers were like software companies, we wouldn't even be able to lift up the hood.

you know nothing.

[Anonymous Coward]

you are just horribly ignorant. its perfectly legal (as in tested in court) to make perfect clones of existing programs as long as your dont use their actual IP.

Re:you know nothing.

[_xeno_]

I think you'll find that it's slightly different when you're dealing with copyright than with patents. While you're right that Compaq could get away with cloning the PC BIOS, I doubt you could get away with writing a Mario clone by simply naming the main character something else and having different graphics. If the gameplay is identical, you'll likely be infringing.

This is almost the same thing as taking a book, translating it into a different language, and posting it online. I highly doubt that even though every single word is different a court would buy that such a work did not infringe on the original copyright. This is basically the same thing - taking a game, and "translating" it by producing new code and new graphics that are supposed to mimic the original.

There are thousands of Tetris clones out there - if they infringed on the Tetris copyright then it stands to reason that this infringes too, as it makes no effort to make a new game just copy an old one.

Besides, we can also go to the "trademark" angle where FreeCraft is attempting to create a game similar to WarCraft. I think a reasonable person might confuse the two based on the names and on some of the screenshots that exist.

Basically: I think there are plenty of legal reasons why FreeCraft will lose if they decide to fight this one. They should just cease and desist and go start a new and original RTS with new features that no one has seen before instead of rehashing WarCraft II.

Re:you know nothing.

[juhaz]

I think you'll find that it's slightly different when you're dealing with copyright than with patents. While you're right that Compaq could get away with cloning the PC BIOS, I doubt you could get away with writing a Mario clone by simply naming the main character something else and having different graphics.

Yeah. Bit like Blizzard did not get away with writing a Dune II clone by simply naming it something else (WarCraft) and having different graphics... oh wait. They did. That they are now going after someone elses ass from doing the same thing they did back in 1994 makes it even more pathetic.

This is almost the same thing as taking a book, translating it into a different language, and posting it online.

It's not, and you know it. There is no other content to the book than the fully accessible text, seeing none of the code for a program and creating another implementation merely by observing how it plays and looks is quite a different thing.

Trademark angle may hold, but that would only require them to change the name. Game does not contain one line of Blizzard's code, thus it can not be a copyright violation, whatever you think, game mechanics and look and feel might perhaps be patented but have not, there's no case here other than name.

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[Priyadi]

They don't allow 3rd party battle.net server (think bnetd). It is useless to use the official battle.net server since they are too laggy from here. So, no matter how much I spend, I still can't use battle.net. I think this applies to every place where no decent Internet connection available.

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[Performer Guy]

How is it moral to copy someone's work instead of doing your own?

You can't rip off other peoples games. Tough luck, Blizzard is not in the wrong here.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Fizzlewhiff]

I understand your point but let me ask this. First of all I haven't played a Blizzard game in years so I am not sure what kind of anti-copying methods they currently employ. But just to make my argument lets say they use CD keys. Could a Linux user who has FreeCraft play the FreeCraft version of the game and get around Blizzard's CD key? If so I could see this bothering Blizzard somewhat.

This is the second time that Blizzard has done something to tick off their fanbase. But I still see people buying their games and raving about them. First bnetd and now this. How much do folks have to take before they decide they are tired of supporting a company? Just to be fair, how many times will someone tread so closely to Blizzard's IP and be shocked when they flex their legal muscle?

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[Performer Guy]

It's about whether Blizzard has rights to the Warcraft franchise they created. These people were trying to copy it, they copied everything, units, theme, layout, buildings, tech tree, the LOT, and made no secret of their attempt to copy Blizzard's game. Blizzard do innovate, despite the nonsense opined by you and others, Warcraft 3 is very different from it's predecessors. It is a very different game.

Re:It's a shame but freeCraft was in the wrong her

[Performer Guy]

The freecraft project included the warcraft theme. Like I said they ditched the name and the warcraft derived content they'd have no issue with Blizzard. Sure come up with some variation on the theme that would do, but a blatant rip-off ain't going to give them a leg to stand on.

Offtopic: your sig

[Dissonant]

Are you boycotting apostrophes, as well?

Well they didn't break that copyright either.

[Tomble]

Freecraft didn't bundle the artwork from Warcraft; they did make a program to extract it from a legitimate copy, but that was only a stopgap measure.

They were working on making new graphics for everything (just like they were working on making it a broadly generic RTS engine), and had indeed got new (not necessarily good) graphics for most things IMO, by the time they were shut down (I haven't actually checked the progress for a few months, I've been doing other things- but that was how it was last time I saw)

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[crosbie]

The Digital Art Auction would provide an alternative funding mechanism.

How convenient/ironic!

[leonbrooks]

One of the projects listed as using OGRE is FreeCraft3D.

Link to tar of latest CVS here

[leonbrooks]

Click here to download 35 megabytes of FreeCraft in a tarfile: burymeindata

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[grumbel]

In 1981, a little company called Sierra On-Line (a much different company in those days) wrote a game called Jawbreaker. Atari said that it captured the "magic of Pac-Man", and was therefore a violation of their copyright. Read about it. Then read about later similar suits. Learn.

As far as I remember Nintendo managed it in a similar situation to close down "Gina Sisters", which was basically "Mario Bros." clone with different graphics and different levels, but beside that pretty similar in look and gameplay. They didn't even ran on the same machine, Mario was for Nintendo consoles, while Giana was for C64s.

Interfaces aren't completly copyrightable, but it seems to depend on the specific case and on the people involved.

I don't like what Blizzard did, but I can understand them. After all FreeCraft is a Warcraft2 ripoff, pixel-by-pixel, its not a game that happens to just be based on the same ideas and it isn't a generic RTS engine either at the moment.

Re:Bnet issues

[HanzoSan]

World of Warcraft?

Diablo2 was not made under Universal.

Illegal eyeballing?

[Felinoid]

A few days ago I was explaining to my mother how 'eyeballing' was perficly legal.
Eyeballing is the process of copying a program by rewriting it. Now you do have to be conserned about patents preticularly 'look and feel' patents buy ouside that and with out stealing copywriten elements (code, art, music) you can clone the functionility of a web browser, email client, word processer or even a game.
Or can you....
The *Craft complant is really pushing it. To be a complete game you need to buy the game CD for the art and maps or your stuck with the download sized free game.
It means Linux users can buy the product too and Bungee need not pay a dime to support Linux in any way.
Unless a 'look and feel' patent was slipped in it should be perficly legal to eyeball it.
Should Bungee care? Dosen't hurt them helps Linux a tad only Microsoft would care.
Didn't Bungee say they can do as they wish?
Looks like Microsoft has quite a bit of say in what Bungee dose.
"We ownz you" litterally.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Qender]

I find your suggestion to be rude and unhelpful.

Shut up? Surely someone involved in legal politics should understand that debate is a healthy way to determine legality, rather than placing blind trust in someone who studied the law. Blizzard told freecraft to shut up.

My area? I'm a human, same as everyone else. And I'm intelligent enough to know more than one subject. Art is just more fun.

I don't think I'm wrong, you think I'm wrong. Next time you think I'm wrong, try to make a point instead of complaining about me and how wrong I am... Stupid law students.

As I've said before, freecraft is more than look and feel. It's the exact same game. Same units, Same health, Same research tree, same spells, same build order. It's the same game. And I would say it's more than fair that someone who goes to an art school be allowed to argue that.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Qender]

Yes it is.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Qender]

Yes you can. What about the coke-a-cola bottle.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Qender]

They did copy the code. It's not the same code on the bit by bit level. It uses different means to perform the same task. The code in freecraft, from the user's point of view, is the same. Yes, I can see how you can say the output doesn't make the code, and that because the code is different, it is a different program. But since it is no secret that they were imitating the warcraft II code, it should be quite clear that this is in essence, no different than a hacked version of warcraft II. If someone hacked every piece of code in warcraft II till it was completly different, yet it performed the same function, it would still be illegal.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Qender]

There's text on the cards.

I was talking about the cards that you play a game with:

http://images.google.com/images?q=star+wars+card +g ame

like magic cards. You cant rewrite every magic card on paper without the illustrations and then sell it. Maybe you could, but wizards of the coast could still send you a Cease and Desist, and it would be more than fair for them to do so.

Zinf

[ronfar]

This is buried where nobody will ever see it:

Zinf

Zinf is a recursive algorith for the project that was formerly called FreeAmp. What does Zinf mean? Zinf is not FreeA*p

Come to think of it, it seems to me there was another recursive algorithm like that... but I can't seem to remember what it is... (Sorry RMS, I'm just being cute...)

Well, *inf could be *inf is not freecr*ft

Re:Zinf

[ronfar]

algorith=acronym... it's too early in the morning

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the Coke-a-cola bottle? Obviously someone is going to get in trouble if they start selling a soft drink named Coke-a-Cola ;).

As for the Coca Cola bottle, please try to be at least a little informed before you spout off. You probably can't even name the types of so called "intellectual property" that would protect the design of the Coca Cola bottle. Two things: Trademark, which I personally think is pushing the definition of trademark a bit too far, but stupid or blind people might assume that same shaped bottle=same product, so there you go. The other is design patents, which I think are also a little abusive of the system.

Blizzard has no patents on RTS games and they never tried to represent themselves as being Blizzard or being affiliated or authorized in any way by Blizzard.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Anonymous Coward]

But you've argued in a another post (by asserting that someone who wanted to play Warcraft but not buy a CD could just download freecraft and get the same experience) that the artwork and sounds in Warcraft add no value. So how does going to an art school qualify you to have an opinion if you say that artwork (or at least the artwork in this particular case) has no value?

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Qender]

My going to an art school does not qualify or disqualify anything. I merely mentioned it because someone assumed I was from blizzard, so I told them who I was. I've never worked for a computer game company.

I never said the artwork has no value, I think the sounds and the imagery are a big part of warcraf II. I just think that warcraft II remains warcraft II even with sounds and images replaced.

Playing freecraft is nearly the same experience, just not as good. Same game though.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Qender]

And you don't think freecraft resembles a blizzard product in any way? never mind the fact that it's identical to warcraft II, the images are a bit different... sometimes.

If coke-a-cola can trademark the shape of the bottle. I think that blizzard could easily show that another RTS game with not only identical gameplay, but also an identical list of units and structures, was infringing on their copyrights.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Qender]

This is not another game with the same story, events, and characters, this is the same game. They may have written their own code, but the code produces the same end result as blizzard's code.

"identically. Similarly. There's a big difference when it comes to the law."

The law is made up of people, any court shown the two games would decide that they were the same. There are too few differences between them to call freecraft an original work. Hell there were too few differences to even give the thing a whole new name.

Obligitory PA Link

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

"Diabolicious!"

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[TekPolitik]

I find your suggestion to be rude and unhelpful.

Of course it's rude, but that's because I find your contributions to be ignorant and unhelpful. Your stuff is so wrong that it really doesn't merit more than the response that it's just plain wrong. It's wrong in the same way that the belief of the Flat Earth Society is wrong.

As I've said before, freecraft is more than look and feel. It's the exact same game. Same units, Same health, Same research tree, same spells, same build order. It's the same game.

That is not the part that's protected by copyright. This is what you don't get - you don't know what copyright protects. You've got people surrounding you who do know and telling you you're wrong, but you continue to blather on about these irrelevant considerations and saying they point to illegality. They don't - they're utterly irrelevant.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[EllisDees]

It's called a trademark. Since the free game is not called Warcraft, you have no point.

If I could formulate a cola that had the exact same ingredients as Coca-Cola, there isn't a damn thing they could do to stop me from selling it.

sigh

[dh003i]

There is a varying degree of protection provided for trademarks. The most general "trademarks" (like UNIX and Windows, which are no so generic that they are completely void as trademarks) get the least protection. The most original ones get the most.

Combining two generic ordinary words can produce something that is trademarkable. You could not be able to trademark General, nor Electric if you wanted to call your electric company that. General Electric, as a combination, is however trademarkable. It does not receive protection as strong as something created from entirely original/novel words, but it does receive some significant trademark protection.

The issue here is that the courts have effectively granted Blizzard trademark rights over a generic term -- Craft -- in their business. The next logical step -- and a slippery slope -- would be to give them trademark over the word War in regards to games of a similar nature.

This is very disturbing to me. Even more disturbing is how FOSS projects like Phoenix and Stampede have been forced to change their names and logos.

Re:sigh

[Boing]

You neglected to touch on the crux of my point, which was that, in my opinion, the FreeCraft name was chosen solely because it follows the Warcraft/Starcraft naming heuristic... thereby indicating that it is a product meant to be a substitute for those games. In that context, the level to which the word "craft" is a general term is irrelevant.

I understand your point about the combination of words being the key factor, not the individual words. But there is validity in the idea that similarities to the trademarked expression are still infringing.

The law does not always agree with me. The Victor's Secret/Victoria's Secret case seems relevant. However, the deciding factor in that case was that there was no damage to the "famous" trademark. I think that the existence of FreeCraft, on the other hand, does damage the famous trademark. First, because it could decrease sales of War/Starcraft. Second, because if anyone believes that Freecraft is affiliated with War/Starcraft (which I believe to be possible, though you may disagree), then the perceived quality of the series as a whole could be diminished.

The Freecraft people should be allowed to continue their project; I don't believe that Blizzard has a right to prevent competition within the genre, and precedent has established that directly copying game interfaces is not a violation of IP rights. But the usage of the *craft pattern, for the purpose of identification with Blizzard's products, in a software project that is in direct competition to those products, is wrong.

And please, if you respond to this, tell me whether you actually think the FreeCraft name was chosen because the word "craft" is relevant to the genre, or if it was chosen in order to connect the project with Warcraft and Starcraft.

If you want to fight back ... pirate it.

[Anonymous Coward]

eaiest thing to do is to steal more copies of there games. It's sad to say (whether it's moral is your problem) but theft is one of the eaiest ways to get back at a company if you feel shafted and powerless (and powerless is generally anyone that doesn't own the top 10 company's in the world).

Also ... look at MAME & all those Sega/NES/SNES games. There is some great entertainment there .... but 20yrs from now ... 50 .. say 100yrs ... will they be around ?(not the way company's "share" software today).

Piracy is a great game's immotality.

Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!?

[Ogerman]

The law is made up of people, any court shown the two games would decide that they were the same. There are too few differences between them to call freecraft an original work. Hell there were too few differences to even give the thing a whole new name.

There's no law that says you can't replicate the functionality and design of an existing product as long as you don't copy it directly or infringe on registered trademarks. Freecraft did neither. So your stupid argument falls flat from the start. And by the way, FreeCraft, if you'd ever actually tried it, does NOT look the same. All the graphics are original and the gameplay is modifiable if you choose.

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[BollocksToThis]

Why, exactly, does the purpose of supporting a game/company need to be to hurt and kill another?

Damn it, you're right!

I'm going to make an all-new RTS, the goal of which is to conquer the world via reproduction. Naturally, it'll be called FuckCraft, in honor of Blizzard's litigous nature - they sure won't be claiming anyone is mistaking it for their game.

Hmm, penis upgrades, religious protestors, inbreeding and disease risks (AIDS epidemic! Condom production up, but reproduction halved!)... I think I'm on to a winner here.

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[BollocksToThis]

Hey, I misread the text I quoted! Another victory for skim-reading.

Hovercraft?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was every chance of confusion. I'm sorry to see hovercraft go, but it really was a stupid name. FreeCiv is fine because the Civilization people don't have a consistent naming pattern along the lines of WarCiv, StarCiv, etc. If you walked up to some random gamer kid and said "Hovercraft" he'd be thinking of a new Blizzard game, maybe sligtly put off by the prefix being "Hover", but not much.

Try my new website!

[Ath]

It's called slashpoint.

Somebody take up the flag?

[phorm]

Instead of everybody bitching and whining about the failure of the project, why not take up the flag? You can still find the code out there, and since it's OS one of the nice things is that anyone can take up the reins on a dying project before it hits the great void.

If you think that Blizzard isn't justified in any way, you could even continue with the "freecraft" name. If you think the developer wasn't 100% correct in tailing on the warcraft name, but that the project still has meritt, then just pick it up as a new name (with credit to the original form).

Open Source a dead end, duh

[Anonymous Coward]

If it isn't innovative, it most likely is copying the IP and/or rights of legitimate businesses and vendors. Get over it. Thank god SCO is carryig the banner of legitimate business, and god bless Blizzard for ridding the market place of another crappy clone made by code monekys in their basement... a monitor tan is not sexy.

Re:Shadowsource movement? Re: make them all martyr

[mink]

Please chose a newsgroup that has not the taint of hipcrime. That would kill the project for sure.

Re:Bnet issues

[Anonymous Coward]

FACT The cost of WC3 is comparable to that of Neverwinter Nights, or Everquest, which charge you a montly fee to play online, while Battle.net charges you know such fee.

There are no monthly fees associated with Neverwinter Nights.

Re:Bnet issues

[TalMaximus]

My mistake. I humbly apologize. Hopefully that doesn't detract too much from the point I was trying to make.

WC2

[eWarz]

mwahaha... Witchcraft. Byte me blizzard. My lawyers are a helluva lot bigger then yours. Wanna fight?

They plan for a pay service...as far as I know

[sindarin2001]

I was reading some of the release notes on WOW and they mentioned using a montly fee service...but who knows how things will actually pan out in the end

"There are 2 things in the world I hate.

[sindarin2001]

those who cannot tolerate other cultures and the damn dirty Dutch!" -Austin Powers Father I didn't say it...don't blame me

Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game

[Bernie Fsckinner]

They didn't copy Blizzard's work. They did do their own work.

Re:What is a Tram?

[Bernie Fsckinner]

In the US, they are generally called streetcars or trolleys

Re:Freecraft graphics

[Bernie Fsckinner]

They let you import the Warcraft graphics, or use the Freecraft graphics which look nothing like Warcraft's graphics

Re:Game engine similarity

[Bernie Fsckinner]

The scripting system is completely different.
The default set of scripts was getting *close* to the gameplay of WC2 but it wasn't there yet.
You're close with your comment about the new engine, though.

Re:A game like Warcraft

[Bernie Fsckinner]

No! Freecraft is a game engine with a set of scripts that makes it a game like Warcraft. The game play is close but not identical.

Re:Imitations of Warcraft

[Bernie Fsckinner]

More like Ford sending a cease and desist letter to the junkyard for building custom cars using some Ford parts.