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World of StarCraft Mod Gets C&D From Blizzard

Posted by samzenpus on from the imitation-leads-to-litigation dept.

eldavojohn writes "If you've been following the team who created World of StarCraft (an amazing mod of StarCraft II to be more like World of Warcraft), their YouTube video of what they've done so far has already resulted in a cease and desist from Activision/Blizzard. Evidently when you are given tools to make custom mods to games you should be careful about making something too good. The author of the mod is hopeful that it's just a trademark problem with the name of his mod, but few reasons for the C&D were given." In other StarCraft news, reader glwtta recommends an article about how a Berkeley team won the world's first StarCraft AI competition with code that can beat even pro-level human players.

12 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. I miss Blizzard. by seebs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I remember back when Blizzard was an awesome company with great customer service. Well, that, and when the gamers buying their games were the "customers" they were so great to.

    That Activision merger seems to have totally killed the company we used to know. Not that this is totally surprising, mind you, but it's sad. I would guess that this was a matter of the Blizzard company officials not being paranoid enough to check the fine print in their merger deal. Either that, or they were ready to cash out.

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    1. Re:I miss Blizzard. by quanticle · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I remember back when Blizzard was an awesome company with great customer service. Well, that, and when the gamers buying their games were the "customers" they were so great to.

      What timeline were you living in? Blizzard has been known to be quite hostile to modders and independent developers for some time now. Just look at the original map editor for Starcraft. Look at what they did to bnetd. Heck, I'm surprised to no end that the makers of bwapi have been allowed to continue with the project, given that the project relies on hacking the Starcraft client via DLL injection.

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    2. Re:I miss Blizzard. by BobMcD · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I hate to break this to you, but your real name is absolutely not a secret. Not even your SSN is a secret, if you think about what 'secret' means. Both of these are a matter of public record, and are absolutely trivial to discover about you by anyone and everyone with whom you trade data bits. If you think you have 'privacy' online, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

      In short, if you're in public, expect to be in public. And it goes without saying that the internet is 'in public'.

      I know this isn't a popular idea, but I just thought I'd chime in here because you've illustrated a decently bad example of your thesis. By way of saying that Blizzard is less of the company they used to be, you're simply illustrating that they are coming to grips with the realities of the online world. It isn't the wild west any more, and Blizzard is reflecting that. You're not, but that's scarcely their fault.

      I'll sum up by offering that you could easily find better examples...

    3. Re:I miss Blizzard. by BobMcD · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Know this: They are not alone. By 'tomorrow' the whole notion of anonymity online will be gone from any and all mainstream places. You'll still be able to create unique and disposable handles on some sites, but the vast majority will be tied to, say, your Facebook account, and will proudly display your real name.

      I did not fail to comprehend what Blizzard was planning to do. You, on the other hand, have failed to realize the impact of the popularity of things like Facebook's API.

      And I'd like to pre-stipulate that Facebook may or may not win out. It could well be some other service entirely that manages your identity online. That's not relevant. SOMETHING will unify you amongst any and all main stream media sources online. Count on it.

  2. Re:When you see something like this... by Pojut · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Who do you think they are...Valve? :p

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  3. Geez, is everyone a baby? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Following the link, no copy of the C&D letter. So we have no idea WTF is going, just the incoherent ramblings of a developer who is whining about not allowed to have anything good. Apparently he e-mailed the tech support department for clarification....

    It could be as simple as the legal department scouring the web for the name "Starcraft" - not even knowing there is a tool out there to build mods.

    Bottom line, we know nothing at this point. No need to pucker up.

    1. Re:Geez, is everyone a baby? by AK+Marc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah, but you are wrong. If Disney sold a coloring book, you couldn't take that, color Mickey, and then make 10,000 prints of that and sell them as "World of Mickey" without some trademark issues, even if no copyright issues exist. And without seeing the license for the modding program, you aren't qualified to assert that you did get "permission to do whatever you please." So, have you actually read the license, or are you making up things you think best support your point without regard to the truth?

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    2. Re:Geez, is everyone a baby? by snowraver1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      He's not selling anything. Also, Blizzard itself would facilitate any transfer to other players, as designed, through battle.net. It would be like if Disney sold you a coloring book and said that anyone with a coloring book can copy their coloring (using a Disney approved photocopier) to give to their friends. But then this guy comes along with a Mickey coloring that is better than the real Mickey, so Disney is all in a huffy, and they are all like "I'm taking my photocopier and going home".

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  4. Code beating human ain't a surprise... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The problem in the RTS genre is that there's *way* too much emphasis put on micro-management. When I write *way*, I really mean **wwaayy** or something like that (jokes welcome).

    The fact that so much emphasis is put on micro-management instead of strategy leaves the door to a great many hacks/cheats and also make it easy to write AI beating even top-notch players.

    Bring us RTS where the 'S' means something. A lot of people would love it.

    Btw, I was highly ranked on Case's ladder at Warcraft II but not in the top 10. Yet my rank was due to me outsmarting my opponents using real strategies. In Warcraft III it became much harder if not impossible (besides a few cheap builds that get rendered useless by the next anti-imba-patch anyway and that anyway aren't "strategies").

    So yup, please, bring back the 'S' in RTS...

  5. Re:As for the Starcraft AI... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    True; but things like Valkyries and whatever the Zerg AoE aircraft is were introduced in Brood War as a counter. Apparently, with the APS provided by an AI interacting through an API, you can even outrun those.

    Since the competition was AI vs. AI, and the Berkeley guys cleaned up, they obviously deserve kudos; but it is arguably a weakness of Starcraft's design that such a lot of it revolves around high-speed micro. The AIs just make that more blatant.

  6. Your memory betrays you by orthancstone · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is the same company that stomped on people over Starcraft LAN tools long before Activision got in the picture.

  7. Here we go again... by kamelkev · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So apparently they already had his demo yanked off of youtube, and the above linked youtube video is just a repost - so they are taking it fairly seriously.

    I am always amazed on how little forsight is put into legal decisions like this one.

    Why don't they just hire the guy, and let him run with it. He clearly has the skillset they are looking for - he made the entire app, demo and produced a bulk of materials by himself. Sounds like he deserves at least an interview with them...