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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.
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..
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.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
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....
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Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
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.
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!
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?
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?
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.
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.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
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.
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.
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.
I can't afford a sig!