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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: 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.

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