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posted by Fnord666 on Monday February 03 2020, @01:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the who-owns-what? dept.

Blizzard now claims full copyright for player-made "custom game" mods:

As influential as Warcraft III was in the real-time strategy genre, the game's most enduring legacy might be as the basis for genre-defining, fan-made custom game spin-offs like Defense of the Ancients (aka Dota) and Auto Chess in its wake. Now, Blizzard is taking steps to ensure it retains complete ownership of any such custom games that originate from its titles in the future, including those that come out of Warcraft III's recently released Reforged update.

As noted by PC Gamer, a recent update to Blizzard's Acceptable Use Policy expands the legal rights that custom-game makers automatically assign to Blizzard (new language highlighted in bold; old language available on The Internet Archive).

Custom Games are and shall remain the sole and exclusive property of Blizzard. Without limiting the foregoing, you hereby assign to Blizzard all of your rights, title, and interest in and to all Custom Games, including but not limited to any copyrights in the content of any Custom Games.

Blizzard's claim on custom-game copyrights is important because while it's hard to effectively copyright the basic concept of a game, you can copyright the original characters, art, and writing associated with the game itself. Blizzard learned this the hard way a decade ago, when Valve bought the Dota copyright from some of the modders who created it.

After Valve's rights were confirmed in a 2012 out-of-court settlement, Valve was able to turn around and create Dota 2. Blizzard, meanwhile, had to settle for creating the Dota-style Heroes of the Storm with its own characters.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @03:30PM (15 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @03:30PM (#953146)

    Remember Blizzard's whole business has been build around ripping off/cloning Game's Workshop's vast intellectual property fantasy universe for the past 25+ years. Orcs and Humans was originally intended to be pitched to GW as a computer implementation of Warhammer after all. Starcraft was a ripoff of Warhammer 40k. I'm not sure if Diablo was also a ripoff other than being a graphical roguelike.

    Now today they are going full Game's Workshop and trying to claim all fan created work is derivative work owned by them and no rights are given by their good graces, although some excellent ideals may be pilfered with their creator's attribution stripped from them and made part of the greater glory and profits of Game's Workshop^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HBlizzard!

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by ikanreed on Monday February 03 2020, @03:39PM (13 children)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 03 2020, @03:39PM (#953150) Journal

    Never before warhammer had orcs and humans fought each other in fantasy fiction.

    Anyways, while there may be some truth to that story, the exact details of it doesn't jive with the oral history collected by the Upper Memory Block Podcast which reports development histories of old DOS games. Apparently, internally, "Warcraft" was supposed to be a series of games based on non-fictional wars from ancient to modern, and the fantasy version of it was a last minute rebrand from the original Warcraft 1 which was supposed to be Rome vs barbarians.

    • (Score: 3, Touché) by Immerman on Monday February 03 2020, @04:17PM (9 children)

      by Immerman (3985) on Monday February 03 2020, @04:17PM (#953167)

      >Never before warhammer had orcs and humans fought each other in fantasy fiction.

      I didn't realize Warhammer predated Lord of the Rings...

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by ikanreed on Monday February 03 2020, @04:20PM (3 children)

        by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 03 2020, @04:20PM (#953171) Journal

        You nailed me on that totally sincere statement of mine that contained no irony or sarcasm. I definitely never thought of examples such as Lord of the Rings, which, let's be honest, is pretty obscure as far as fantasy goes.

        • (Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Monday February 03 2020, @05:59PM (2 children)

          by curunir_wolf (4772) on Monday February 03 2020, @05:59PM (#953206)

          Lord of the Rings is obscure as far as fantasy goes??

          Did you forget a sarcasm tag? Or just assume this is so bass-ackwards the sarcasm would have to be obvious?

          --
          I am a crackpot
          • (Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Monday February 03 2020, @06:37PM (1 child)

            by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 03 2020, @06:37PM (#953229) Journal

            No one would ever write obviously vacuous statements with the intent that sarcasm could be inferred.

            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 04 2020, @04:15PM

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 04 2020, @04:15PM (#953613) Journal
              He's totally got you there. New Zealand predates Blizzard by years.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @04:23PM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @04:23PM (#953174)

        Remember to include your /s tags everyone, too much shit on the net to expect people to tell which is a joke and which is serious.

        • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @05:49PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @05:49PM (#953199)

          Yeah, I mean look what happens when you forget to end with /s and people take you seriously:

          I am running for President of the United States

          -Donald Trump

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @04:00PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @04:00PM (#953596)

          Is that /s for serious or sarcasm? I think it would be more effective if serious people used a tag. After all it's only useful when you can't tell a shitty serious statement from a good sarcastic one.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 04 2020, @04:17PM (1 child)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 04 2020, @04:17PM (#953614) Journal
            It's obviously for serious. NOBODY jokes on the internet.
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @07:21PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @07:21PM (#953704)

              There's a lot of nobodies on the internet.

    • (Score: 2) by vux984 on Monday February 03 2020, @08:12PM (2 children)

      by vux984 (5045) on Monday February 03 2020, @08:12PM (#953275)

      "Never before warhammer had orcs and humans fought each other in fantasy fiction."

      To be fair those orcs were far more reminiscent of 'GW's orcs', than 'Tolkien's orcs'. And starcraft is pretty veiled Tyranids v Eldar v Space Marines; so the shoe fits.

      In any case, I don't really see a disagreement between your post and the GPs. It may not have been planned from the start as a GW ripoff; but it pretty plausibly ended up that way.

      -regards,
      Dave

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @09:35PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @09:35PM (#953299)

        As the GP poster:

        Blizzard tried to pitch their game demo to Games Workshop, having the majority of the engine complete and graphics assets reminiscent of GW's IP. GW rejected it outright since they didn't believe there was enough profit in videogames, and that any attempt would dilute their brand of physical and intellectual media.

        As a result Blizzard had to hurriedly change aspects of their game and publish what became Orcs and Humans, a mediocre fantasy themed Dune 2 a few years after command and conquer came out. It had some dedicated fans among certain nerdy groups, but it wasn't until Warcraft 2 that they fixed the majority of flaws compared to Command and Conquer, which only happened because Diablo became a cash cow in the interim.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @07:22PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @07:22PM (#953705)

          As a result Blizzard had to hurriedly change aspects of their game and publish what became Orcs and Humans, a mediocre fantasy themed Dune 2 a few years after command and conquer came out. It had some dedicated fans among certain nerdy groups, but it wasn't until Warcraft 2 that they fixed the majority of flaws compared to Command and Conquer, which only happened because Diablo became a cash cow in the interim.

          How the fuck did you come up with this timeline?

          Command and Conquer was released in September 1995, almost a year after Warcraft: Orcs and Humans was released in November 1994 and mere months prior to Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (December 1995).

          Diablo was released in January 1997, well after any of the games mentioned.

  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday February 03 2020, @09:04PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Monday February 03 2020, @09:04PM (#953291)

    My understanding is that the developers of Diablo specifically said they started making a 3D isometric rogue-like, inspired heavily by Nethack, although quite intentionally reducing the complexity of tasks like identifying items and allowing you to recover from deaths, and adding in lots of dark fantasy elements because they thought they were cool. Then one day they decided to try making it real-time rather than turn-based, and liked the results, so they went with it.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.