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Hex: Wizards of the Coast Files Suit Against Cryptozoic
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Wizards of the Coast today posted a notice of a filed lawsuit against Cryptozoic Entertainment. The suit names Cryptozoic's HEX: Shards of Fate as violating the copyright for Magic: The Gathering. "We will not permit the misappropriation of our intellectual property” said Barbara Finigan, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Hasbro.
May 14, 2014 (Renton, WA) – Today Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ: HAS), filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington against Cryptozoic Entertainment, LLC and its alter ego, Hex Entertainment, LLC (collectively, “Cryptozoic”), for willful infringement of intellectual property rights.
Cryptozoic develops and publishes the digital trading card game, Hex: Shards of Fate, a clone of the world famous tabletop collectable trading card game, Magic: The Gathering®, and its digital expressions, Magic Online® and the Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers® franchise.
“Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast vigorously protect our intellectual property. This infringement suit against Cryptozoic demonstrates that while we appreciate a robust and thriving trading card game industry, we will not permit the misappropriation of our intellectual property” said Barbara Finigan, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Hasbro. “We attempted to resolve this issue, but Cryptozoic was unwilling to settle the matter.”
The suit includes claims for copyright, patent and trade dress infringement.
Source: Kotaku.com
Comments
RIP Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan and Paul Gray.
Yeap, you don't pay WotC then they can shut down your card game.
Man- I started playing Magic waaay back in the early 1990s (or mid 90s- ) and loved it. Loved WOTC until they messed with D&D to the point they have.
That said, this is a bit silly and honestly makes me lose some of the remaining respect I had for WOTC. Sad , indeed. This lawsuit looks like it could aply to numerous CCG's but they are going after the oone that looks like i will be an online success and doesnt have Blizzards pocketbook to fight back. All this while MTGO sucks.
This is merely trying to fight proper competition and bleed their money through legal costs. Its pathetic.
I wil never buy a WOTC product again (and I am not a backer of Hex)
That's what it looks like to me also.
Hex was a Kickstarter so was in the public eye well over a year ago. It has been in various Beta stages since then. And WotC waits until it is about to go live to suddenly file this (imo, frivolous) lawsuit.
Corporate America: If you can't beat 'em with a better product, sue 'em. (Or at least tie them up with paperwork to kill them).
I hope the suit a) fails, and b) exposes some holes in their logic to the point that it invites others onto their playground.
You should look at vids of the gameplay etc.. It is basically the same game except some name change and a few twist to it.
But in the end it is the same game. Thats why they are doing this. It is there right in this case. I would be mad at the dev that actually created this. Not the other way around.
Ok, and why are they not sueing Blizzard over Hearthstone? Hearthstone is a complete MTG clone with a Warcraft skin on it.
I really am not sure where this will go. I can see so many differences in the games that I see this going not very far. What did WoTC expect? Them to shutdown the game, I am certain they cleared every legality since they also publish the WOWTCG.
Not to mention this game is pure digital with a lot of features that can not occur in a physical TCG. The only thing I can really think of other than utilizing 5 colors and resource cost (which in HEX is very different from MTG, more akin to Vs. than anything else since they utilize having a certain amount of a resource threshold to play it, but the resource pool is a set number)
There are so many differences in the game, yet similarities because frankly, all CCG's have similar content and context.
This whole conversation is getting weird ... Just plain weird
Because Blizzard has more money than they do.
Being a Magic player at one time and fan I decided to look at their vids. I see some very strong similarities that are hard to ignore. 20 health, phases are the same with no added complexity (hearthstone had class abilities like the hunters trap), hell even in the vid they had Wild Growth the is identical to the Wild Growth in the early if not 1st editions of Magic the Gathering except Cryptozoic did a +4/+4. Not to mention they used a peewee deck/build in the vid of the KS site, I had one of those with my White deck.
I saw some very strong similarities and do not blame WotC to file suite. Not to mention WotC tried to settle and Crptozoic wouldn't have that. Perhaps WotC is being very reasonable and tried to settle. Pathfinder was created as a split off from D&D with the 4th edition so I don't think the blame is entirely on WotC.
Course this is a court case now so it'll be three truths. WotC truth, Cryptozoic truth, and thee truth. Sure what will happen is a settlement in the end like so many other suite cases.
What? Hearthstone is nothing like MTG, at all. Not even close.
Can't comment on Hex though, never played it. Hope it gets resolved favorably for all parties involved.
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There are some distinct differences though, and not to mention Bizz might have accepted WotC terms which they did try with Cryptozoic but parties were unable to agree upon the terms. Whose really at fault will likely be in the eye of the beholder.
Because hearthstone and MTG are completely different....its literally apples and oranges.....while hex and mtg are REALLY similar.
Are KS people so dumb that they actually threw money at a MTG carbon copy? Why didn't they just play Magic instead?
Doubt this will go anywhere in court though, games have been copying each other for decades no reason to think things will change now. DOTA mine as well sue every MOBA because they're almost exactly the same games.
Did any of you people attacking WoTC even read the lawsuit?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/224144304/Wizards-of-the-Coast-v-Cryptozoic-Entertainment-et-al
They have a very good reason. How many card games has there been since Magic? Why haven't all those tons and tons of games not been sued? Because they didn't go out of their way to clone Magic. They actually brought entirely new game play mechanics. Hex copied Magic beat for beat. The colors, tapping, turn sequence, resolution rules, resource management, everything. All they did was change some names. It is the exact same game.
Hearthstone actually tried to do something different. Hex is a complete and total copy of Magic. They couldn't even been bothered to change things like starting life total for crying out loud.
....the lore of hex is different, their wanting to add PVE with dungeons an raids, the art work is different, yes they has same health amount an same amount colors but how resource are handle are different. IE you could play 2 red cards with one ruby threshold long you had enough resources.
i hope this fall threw as it a attempt too strong arm control a digital market that their just fishing in doing very little an collecting $$$
it not hard too look at the BETA an go yup looks the same....... guess we should sue every FPS for been a CoD clone, they all got guns......
YUP-
And TSR should have sued anyone using acronyms like HP (for Hit points) or having the attributes we commonly see across every PC RPG (Dex, con, str, etc...)
Oh- And I wonder where MTG ever came up with the ideal of using Mana as a form of magic points- Yes, Mana is Biblical (used as food) but was incorporated into gaming as Magic Points by someone who wasnt MTG.
This is a joke.
TSR should sue people using HP with the exact same earning system through leveling and stats, armor class, thaco, ect ect that is a blatant copy of their system. And your argument completely ignores the issue at hand, how a KS was created to develop a game that literally copied another's design almost per batum.
This is rather disappointing to read, as their whole selling point when they were crowdfunding was that it was an original take on an MMOTCG/RPG
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Yes they can. the code is written and made available to the public. Calling it beta and saying it might change doesn't change the fact that they copied something they shouldn't have.
1 of the 2
you never played hearthstone or...
you dont know wtf are you talking about
i played magic for 9-10 years and i play heartstone, i cant even find 1 similarity between the 2 games, well maybe that they use cards lol