WarCraft III Megathread

[McNeil]

Once again you can't spell IGNorant without IGN. Just look at the dislikes, then look at the score, and thats all you need to know:

[Kralljin]

I don't think it requires clarification, it's very openly trying to prevent another DotA situation. Based on your question it's simple: No you wouldn't breach the policy.

EULA changes are really there to prevent another DotA situation and cover their ass in case anyone makes a game with their tools and tries to profit off it or some shit.

But that "DotA situation" is explictly the scenario that people are worried about.
If you create a custom map, you should be able to take the concept to any developer as long as you rebuilt the entire map from scratch with another tool and remove any assets copyrighted by Blizzard (models, name, etc.).

Basically, what Icefrog did with Dota, is this somehow against this policy?

If obviously you want to create an entire game using Blizzard's tools then yes ofc its theirs

That was never really up for debate because that's obvious that you cannot take any Blizzard assets (or assets created with Blizzard tools) and just use them within your own "game".
The question is whether the idea behind the map is somehow owned by Blizzard.

Btw, the whole "I can't play canned bread anymore!" is bullshit too. There's been a bunch of people still playing custom games/maps with characters from other franchises and Blizzard aren't axing those maps.

I think that's the wrong statement in this situation.
Does this policy allow them to do so or are they just not enforcing it right now?
Is it just a failsafe in case someone sends Blizzard a C&D based on some custom map that's played on Battle.net?

[Eazy]

Imagine lying about it just to look cool. Even developers said they've removed it because noone was using it. Stop lying.

At least you had right about one thing... I surely looked cool with this Icon:


There weren't maybe plenty of people who were using tournaments, but there still were.

That's sad when people are defending deleting content from the game just because they didn't like/used them. It doesn't mean other people didn't like/want them.
The Warcraft community isn't just a one group that wants to play through the campaign and play Tower Defenses with HD models.

[GreenJesus]

$30 for the 40+hour campaign is a tremendous value. Considering most modern titles give us half that amount for twice the price.

Lol.. warcraft 3 was like what.. 5-10 dollars before reforged? Reforged didnt create 40+ hours of a campaign.

[Cizr]

Welp I cant play anymore. I launch the game and it says "update required". I click on download and nothing happens. I select "check for updates" in battlenet client and it says that my game is up to date. Restarting bnet didnt help either.

[puddypounce]

I read up a bit on it, while i don't think the EULA is in itself problematic (though getting specific points on which Blizzard claims ownership is rather daunting), the crux lies in the Custom Game acceptable use policy.

https://www.blizzard.com/en-us/legal...ble-use-policy

Which straight up starts with:


Granted, i'm not a lawyer, but in my opinion Blizzard should clarify this entire situation.
After all, this can be quite confusing to a lot of people, especially map creators and considering that Blizzard uses the custom map community to adversite for their product, yeah, some explanation would be beneficial.

At the end of the day, the question in the room is rather simple:
If i create a custom map and take the idea to another developer / publisher other than Blizzard, do i breach this policy or not?

Blizzard doesn't need to clarify anything and you don't need a law degree to understand this. You are signing away any indepedent copyright claim to the custom game that is built in the blizzard engine with blizzard assets. This is literally meaningless because you couldn't monetize it anyways.

You are not signing away rights to the idea, because there is no legal basis to holding copyright over an idea in the first place. No one, you or blizzard, can own an idea. So yes, you can go to another studio. Anyone can go to a studio with your idea. This is the reason why everyone and their mom could create an autochess clone even though the original game was created in the dota 2 client, with similar EULA terms.

[Tenasil]

Welp I cant play anymore. I launch the game and it says "update required". I click on download and nothing happens. I select "check for updates" in battlenet client and it says that my game is up to date. Restarting bnet didnt help either.

Yeah, same here. Blizz is on such a success roll right now!

[Cizr]

Yeah, same here. Blizz is on such a success roll right now!

Tried restarting bnet again few times and now it works and will start downloading the patch

[Khahirr]

Campaign randomly just ended in defeat during a few missions. Nobody is playing custom maps. No ladder. It's really sad. Just decided to refund it because with a tarnished legacy even if things were fixed, nobody is going to stick around long term to cultivate a resurgent custom map scene which is what kept the game active in the first place.

Overall this is one of the heaviest disappointments for me in my history of Blizzard purchases.

[FlubberPuddy]

But that "DotA situation" is explictly the scenario that people are worried about.
If you create a custom map, you should be able to take the concept to any developer as long as you rebuilt the entire map from scratch with another tool and remove any assets copyrighted by Blizzard (models, name, etc.).

Basically, what Icefrog did with Dota, is this somehow against this policy?

Icefrog didn't do exactly what you say tho, he ALSO wanted to keep using the name DotA which at the time was a very popular wc3 custom game/map. Aka he was using the popularity of one of Blizzard's custom games/map despite the idea itself being Icefrog's to promote his own game which was essentially the wc3 DotA map.

It has always been possible, and still is, to somehow make something popular using Blizzard's tools then pitch the idea to a separate publisher to get your idea made without Blizzard's tools. Just name it something different.

If you wanna see it in action then look to any Dark Souls clone, or even more recently look to Temtem which is essentially a Pokemon game, but in an online world. Even has it's own Dr (Professor) begin the game choosing 3 diff pokemon types etc etc everything just tweaked enough to not get a lawsuit from the big corporation.

The whole thing with Icefrog only occurred because of using the DotA name.

- - - Updated - - -

That was never really up for debate because that's obvious that you cannot take any Blizzard assets (or assets created with Blizzard tools) and just use them within your own "game".
The question is whether the idea behind the map is somehow owned by Blizzard.

People come up with similar or the same ideas all the time. Ideas only matter in execution. You or I might have the same idea for the next big thing in gaming but it all depends who gets their idea published/working/made first.

Example: Fortnite's popularity despite things like Pubg (and even before that an Arma3 mod) existing. Nobody can claim an idea, it's all about IP - which I already discuss above.

[RamGuy]

I suppose I might be able to enjoy this as a strictly single-player campaign game. But due to all the bugs I'm tempted to just go for the refund and get it on sale later. My biggest concern is that the bugs will never get fixed. The severe lack of improvement during the BETA, even with the game being delayed makes me sceptical about Activision Blizzard putting in the time and effort in order to polish what remain in the game.

As this project was outsourced in it's entirety what kind of agreement do Activiation Blizzard have with the developers? I doubt Blizzard themselves will put developers on polishing the game and who really knows what kind of development tools and whatnot the third-party has been using and whether they are even compatible with whatever Blizzard themselves uses in-house.

Considering the lack of development through the BETA there is nothing that points at this getting fixed anytime soon. It will take some time and even if Activition Blizzard is going to put in the time and effort that is required in order to get it polished I wouldn't expect it to be anywhere close to bug free for at least a few months.

[RoKPaNda]

So I bought this primarily for the PvP. I've played the campaign and it's fun to see it with the updated graphics, I've never had any interest in custom maps, and while I'm anxiously awaiting some kind of ranked system I'm happy with my purchase.

I suppose I might be able to enjoy this as a strictly single-player campaign game. But due to all the bugs I'm tempted to just go for the refund and get it on sale later. My biggest concern is that the bugs will never get fixed. The severe lack of improvement during the BETA, even with the game being delayed makes me sceptical about Activision Blizzard putting in the time and effort in order to polish what remain in the game.

As this project was outsourced in it's entirety what kind of agreement do Activiation Blizzard have with the developers? I doubt Blizzard themselves will put developers on polishing the game and who really knows what kind of development tools and whatnot the third-party has been using and whether they are even compatible with whatever Blizzard themselves uses in-house.

Considering the lack of development through the BETA there is nothing that points at this getting fixed anytime soon. It will take some time and even if Activition Blizzard is going to put in the time and effort that is required in order to get it polished I wouldn't expect it to be anywhere close to bug free for at least a few months.

It wasn't outsourced in its entirety, where did that come from? The a lot of the art was outsourced.

[Lord Pebbleton]

The majority seem to be playing the game and not wanting a refund because they are enjoying it. Blizzard has given people a refund option, they stated they were working on improving it. I don't see why the continual outrage over a game.

Games have just one chance to make a first impression. Such was the case with No Man's Sky and Mass Effect Andromeda, both games that got improved over time, when it was too late for the majority of players. Reforged bombed it.

[Skorpionss]

I read up a bit on it, while i don't think the EULA is in itself problematic (though getting specific points on which Blizzard claims ownership is rather daunting), the crux lies in the Custom Game acceptable use policy.

https://www.blizzard.com/en-us/legal...ble-use-policy

Which straight up starts with:


Granted, i'm not a lawyer, but in my opinion Blizzard should clarify this entire situation.
After all, this can be quite confusing to a lot of people, especially map creators and considering that Blizzard uses the custom map community to adversite for their product, yeah, some explanation would be beneficial.

At the end of the day, the question in the room is rather simple:
If i create a custom map and take the idea to another developer / publisher other than Blizzard, do i breach this policy or not?

From what i gather you can't sell the custom game itself, or have it behind a paywall on like Patreon.

[Kralljin]

Just name it something different.

And why should Blizzard hold any claim over the name over the map?
The name didn't contain any connection to the Warcraft universe (unless you want to argue that "Ancients" somehow belongs to Blizzard).
If someone who doesn't work for Blizzard came up with the name, how can Blizzard claim ownership over it?

This entire lawsuit quite frankly felt more like both Riot and Blizzard grasping at straws in order to stifle a competitor than having any actual claims.

If you wanna see it in action then look to any Dark Souls clone, or even more recently look to Temtem which is essentially a Pokemon game, but in an online world. Even has it's own Dr (Professor) begin the game choosing 3 diff pokemon types etc etc everything just tweaked enough to not get a lawsuit from the big corporation.

The major difference being that they were not custom maps under the Blizzard ToS.
Like, this discussion is about Blizzards ToS, not whether it's legal in general.

[puddypounce]

And why should Blizzard hold any claim over the name over the map?
The name didn't contain any connection to the Warcraft universe (unless you want to argue that "Ancients" somehow belongs to Blizzard).
If someone who doesn't work for Blizzard came up with the name, how can they claim ownership over it?

This entire lawsuit quite frankly felt more like both Riot and Blizzard grasping at straws in order to stifle a competitor than having any actual claims.



The major difference being that they were not custom maps under the Blizzard ToS.
Like, this discussion is about Blizzards ToS, not whether it's legal in general.

Blizzard's lawsuit against valve was more about DOTA 2 using characters like "wisp" and "windrunner" with models that looked suspiciously like blizzard's copyrighted models. That's why they renamed those two. That is a real copyright issue, they got nothing on the idea or even the name (the name would only really be protect able by registering the trademark).

[Kralljin]

Blizzard's lawsuit against valve was more about DOTA 2 using characters like "wisp" and "windrunner" with models that looked suspiciously like blizzard's copyrighted models. That's why they renamed those two. That is a real copyright issue, they got nothing on the idea or even the name (the name would only really be protect able by registering the trademark).

No, that's false.

Both Blizzard and Riot flat out claimed that DotA cannot be trademarked as it belongs to the "mod community".
While it is true that Valve changed some heroes to avoid further issues with Blizzard, the big lawsuit that was settled in 2012 was about the trademarking of the name "Dota", not hero names contained within there.

[FlubberPuddy]

And why should Blizzard hold any claim over the name over the map?
The name didn't contain any connection to the Warcraft universe (unless you want to argue that "Ancients" somehow belongs to Blizzard).
If someone who doesn't work for Blizzard came up with the name, how can Blizzard claim ownership over it?

They can't claim ownership over it, and is exactly why they lost.

This entire lawsuit quite frankly felt more like both Riot and Blizzard grasping at straws in order to stifle a competitor than having any actual claims.

That lawsuit shit was dumb on Blizzard's part but it has no bearing on what we're discussing right now. Which btw they lost it, precisely because whatever they tried to reason wasn't part of their ToS/EULA.

The major difference being that they were not custom maps under the Blizzard ToS.
Like, this discussion is about Blizzards ToS, not whether it's legal in general.

Dota 2 (under steam) didn't use any custom map under Blizzard ToS either. I feel like you don't understand the discussion you're trying to have. No one can steal an idea, that is a separate discussion from trying to involve the lawsuit with Dota 2 which was over trademarking the name "DOTA" which again was already considered a massively popular custom map in WC3.

I don't think you're understanding the contexts of what happened there with the question you're trying to ask, and you already have several answers not just from me but others answering your question: No, nobody can claim ownership of an idea.

It just appears you're trying to somehow demonize the EULA changes, with past lawsuit baggage when all it simply means is Blizzard won't go through another "trademark Dota" lawsuit again. They are covering their asses, not hoping someone makes the next "Dota" so they can swipe it for themselves.

[Kralljin]

They can't claim ownership over it, and is exactly why they lost.

Didn't stop them from trying.
So yeah, not like Blizzard didn't have a reason to change their ToS accordingly.

And let me remind you, that you above straight up said "just re name it", which means that you say that the ToS now allows Blizzard to claim ownership over the names at the very least.
Which means they wouldn't have to go through the trouble of re naming anything.
So that's already a step up from the DotA scenario, because there Blizzard couldn't claim any ownership over the name.

They are covering their asses, not hoping someone makes the next "Dota" so they can swipe it for themselves.

That's not "covering their asses".
"Covering their asses" would mean Blizzard protects itself from being sued, but in the case of DotA, they have sued others.
Two very different things.

Because what sort of claim did Blizzard have over DotA?
Nothing, what is there to "cover"?

Saying that they want "cover their asses because DotA" implies that Valve somehow loopholed their way to trademark DotA, which is blatantly false.

[George Costanza]

Waiting for a sale coz 30euro for what is basically a mod isnt worth it imo