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General: World of Starcraft: Blizzard Speaks Out
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Gamasutra is reporting that Blizzard Entertainment has issued a statement regarding the World of Starcraft mod being developed by Ryan Winzen. Winzen's mod drew scrutiny from Blizzard and its parent company, Activision, when the modder posted a 'work in progress' video on YouTube. The video was pulled when Blizzard invoked its copyright protection. Since then, Winzen has received a job offer from Riot Games and a lot of attention from the worldwide gaming audience.
"It was never our intention to stop development on the mod or discourage the community from expressing their creativity through the StarCraft II editor," Blizzard said in a statement. " As always, we actively encourage development of custom maps and mods for StarCraft II, as we’ve done with our strategy games in the past."
Blizzard went on the say that it's looking forward to seeing development of the mod continue, and that it has invited Winzen to the company's campus to meet the game's development team.
Source: Gamasutra
Comments
"As always, we actively encourage development of custom maps and mods for StarCraft II, as we’ve done with our strategy games in the past."
But if you do it, we're gonna sue the a** right out of your pants.
Please tell me when, in this entire story, Blizzard sued anyone.
Yeah.
can I +rep you?
Legal was probably following some standard practice to protect their IPs and jumped before anyone could talk about it. It's no big deal since it seems they are ok with the mod happening and even invited the guy to come visit the Devs in person.
Also, even though I do play League of Legends, I have to laugh at Riot Games trying to leech him up real fast.
A Rep system would be kind of cool here. It's important to weed out the quality posters from the trolls. As long as there wasn't a negative Rep function, because then it'd be self-defeating (i.e. "You disagree with ME? The ultimate fanbot/troll? -REP!").
Better than the star system they have now in my opinion, which is vaguely based on a number of factors I can't really figure out (though I think post count, post length, and number of reported posts/warnings from mods affect it).
I posted this in another thread - before Blizzard's latest statement, but it was barely 2 months ago when they had THEIR OWN video taken down due to copyright claims. Of course, when they figured out what happened, they put it back up. People overreacted to this whole thing, seriously.
What im seeing is blizzard geting defensie over the name which means titan their hiden mmo project is prolly starcraft related
A rep system wouldn't work either because there are so many immature posters and flamers on this site that they would rank others badly just out of spite.
But anyhow, as far as the OP article goes, it sounds like a good ending to a good mistake.
Blizzard has already stated the new MMO is an entirely new IP, hence it is most certainly not Starcraft related.
What I'm getting from all of this:
If you violate someone's copyright with enough skill, you get a job instead of getting sued.
Hmm... which video game can I go mod and get a job from?
Blizzard really stepped up to the plate on this mistake their company made. I think it says a lot that they even invited Mr. Winzen to their campus to try to make amends with him and their community.
Also, to the individual who said that they suspect that project Titan is going to based in the StarCraft universe, it's already known that it's going to be a completely new IP so it's not going to be StarCraft, WarCraft or Diablo (or The Lost Vikings I suppose lol).
Don't believe everything you read, lol. Just 'cause they...said so...doesn't mean that's how things are going to go down
Knowing Blizzy's past track record, there's always a good chance that this "Titan" mmo will turn out to be a SC mmo.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
“We have nothing to advertise for the new MMO because it's a shell of a game thus far,” said Zarhym. “We've already stated it'll be a brand new franchise, which means the lore, art, and game play are being developed entirely from scratch. It's an overwhelming process, but a process through which we excel. Our track record supports this.”
"“brand new franchise”
aka
Not WoW related.
Not Diablo related
Not Starcraft related
link to the story on Gamepro
http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/210220/blizzards-unannounced-mmo-to-be-based-on-new-franchise/
I agree. You have to look very deep within the semantics of each word these developers release. It may not be a current Blizzard IP, but it could very well be heavily inspired by one of thier IP's, or it could be a non-Blizzard IP such as Call of Duty.
Does anyone remember how pissy people go when they realized APB was going to have a subscription model, even though the devs said it wasn't "REQUIRED"?
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
a "like" option would be plenty, IMO.
Man this derailed and hijacked the thread so bad.
Yeah, I'm not sure why everyone is so quick to believe that everything these guys say is set in concrete. Sometimes I honestly think some of the members around here are posting from another planet.
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
You are having a laugh arent you?, this is just Damage limitation from Blizzard.
Lets have a look at another Blizzard game Diablo 2, been around longer than there baby Wow, but Diablo 2 is BOTTED / SCRIPTED every single day on BattleNett, But i dont see Blizzard inviting these coders to there offices.
Diablo 2 is unplayable due to hacks / scripts etc .... Blizzard doesnt care.
Prolly has somethign to do with D3 being in the oven. But yeah i agree, its bull that d2 has been reduced to the rubble i dare not call a comunity, but its somethign that happens to games that released back in the 1990's i guess haha. Anyway i watched video on youtube, it was actualy impressive.. the guy basicly replicated WoW with the mod maker.. WoS actualy looked verry verry nice considering the fact that it was just ONE guy who did it.. i was impressed
Ozmodan thats exactly what blizzard want you to think , throw you off the scent so to speak
blizzard have invested huge amounts of time into creating the starcraft and diablo IP's, are you telling me that they will completely ignore these two ip's that have a huge fanbase for an IP that has no fanbase at all?
look at the pattern blizzard releases warcraft 3, 3 years later blizzard releases wow...starcraft 2 was released in 2010 and when is the new mmo due to hit?
Good luck to the guy and his mod - I can understand Blizzards automatic reaction and I’m sure that they don't really want something (anything) that would suck revenue out of their pockets; they are a business after all. But as it's a mod not a game I can’t see a problem and it sounds like Blizzard can’t either. Once they staked their claim loudly and clearly
It's nice to see he got an invite to meet with them - he's obviously very talented and deserves an opportunity to get ahead in life and realise the rewards of making something that the community loves to play. But the only way will realise any financial rewards (not that he was trying to) is if they offer him a job - which would be good to see happen... In My Opinion even the greatest Intellectual Property can always evolve a little by adding new Ideas…
Here is an explanation of the rank system for mmorpg.com:
http://www.mmorpg.com/faq.cfm/showFaq/6/How-do-you-calculate-my-rank.html
I would take issue with:
"The quality of your posts. If you post lot of "filler" posts that only consist of a few words this will cost you rank points."
because sometimes an appropriate response is short and might not be intended as a "filler" post at all. I wonder, then, what that judgement is based on.
This guy I went to school with was working on some big module for NWN. Which is essentially building a game inside a game from the ground up. He now works for Bioware.
WTF?????
There was a World of Warcraft Mod/custom map on Warcraft 3 and they didnt do anything about it so why should they do something here? Blizzard is just stupid, they see something without reading any text and indentify it as heresy. They throw the book down on it and then apologize later. They are worse than Enron , Wall Street, and the Senate put together.
-I am here to perform logic