[QUESTION] Legal Problems with Blizzard

[gorq]

All team of Reign of Ysera are worried bout Blizzard. We have seen their legal and copyright polities.

Is it ilegal to open to public a custom expansion? Blizz sais that yes, it is. But they say too that they like custom maps. Are they talking bout WoW or Warcraft?

Do u think opening RoY to public will angry Blizzard? We have been reported to them but we have not received any e-mail from.

If anyone can help us or post his experiences we'll be gratefull.

[zax]

It is illegal and Blizzard will probably take legal actions against this project as they did against many other parties providing private servers to the public. The problem is you don't own any right du publish the data you use. Event if you create 100% custom models and textures, it's still Blizzards engine and code.

But nobody can tell if Blizzard will be angered by your project. There are also many private servers existing without any harm by the company.

Usually projects are just shut down. Never heard of a case where ppl had to pay money to Blizzard or went to jail or something.

But they say too that they like custom maps. Are they talking bout WoW or Warcraft?

I'm pretty sure they are talking about Starcraft, Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 here due to the fact that they provide custom map editors and custom map publishing mechanisms for these games. I wonder where you took this interview from

[gorq]

here it is: http://us.blizzard.com/es-mx/company/about/legal-faq.html (spanish version)

Can I do a total conversion of your games?

    Yes. We've seen some very polished and fun conversions for our games, and have no problems with total conversions so long as they are for personal use and do not infringe our End User License Agreement included in our games, nor the rights of any other parties including copyrights, trademarks or other rights.

Does Blizzard Entertainment® allow or support other Battle.net® like or emulation servers? Can I host one of these rogue servers?

    No. Except as set forth in the next paragraph, Blizzard Entertainment® does not support or condone network play of its games anywhere but Battle.net®. Specifically, you may not host or provide matchmaking services for any of our games or emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Blizzard Entertainment® in the network feature of its games, through protocol emulation, tunneling, modifying or adding components to the game(s), use of a utility program or any other techniques now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose including, but not limited to network play over the Internet, network play utilizing commercial or non-commercial gaming networks or as part of content aggregation networks without the prior written consent of Blizzard Entertainment®.

Thanx Zax; we will continue for the moment. When i receive (if receive) an email from them we will close it. lol

Learning UDK for the future ^^

[Eluo]

http://www.wow.com/2010/08/14/private-s ... 8-million/
Hrm...
Just don't make the fault of trying to make money with it. Scape did. They gained some millions from it.

[Jack]

...and lost them again through the lawsuit

But seriously, I don't get the copyright infringement thing with the public servers.
Actually the server program isn't written by Blizzard, it's just trying to get close to the original. And the client is free to download on the internet and no content was used to create new content...where's the copyright infringement??