Legal/Copyright Issues - A Discussion

since you guys are going so strongly towards sc:ghost, aren't you afraid of legal action by blizzard? you ARE basing this mod off a game that hasnt yet been released, and they may see that as a threat to their precious sales. flame/agree/spontaneously combust as you see fit.

Well, the FPS mod's story I'm sure in no how relates to SC:Ghosts story, and blizzard already gets copyrighted out the wazoo with jsut about everything they do. And I don't think a warcraft FPS will compare much to what they will produce in there final product. Not very good organization used but oh well.

the only thing that we COULD get into trouble for is using starcraft theme, other then that, we have our own story line, our own characters.....and plus, the only way we would get into trouble is if we were making money off of this, wich we arent....so...Really, blizz cant touch us....We arent using their art, everything is ours, and even if the warn us, we could easily change the names of the units....They cant touch us for anything else, we arent stealing thier art, we are using our own, we are not taking anything from them. Its just like this, if vice city was a free game, it would have real car names, but since they are making money, the car names are weird....So even if a car looks like a nissan skyline for example, they cant touch rock star studios, since They didnt steal anything!

i mostly posted this to give the forum community a reminder that blizzard isn't too hot about their games being modded on a level like this. now that legal concerns are in the air, every1 will be more concious about it and make sure to not produce anything that blizzard can sue for.

p.s. - whoa, i make the thread name "legal issues" and looking at it in the forums, it changes before my very eyes emote_sweat i guess ganon wanted to make the title a more appealing so this thread will be stirred up a bit :ggani:

Well put

I dont think you guys will have any copywrite issues, after all, your mod is not a starcraft mod, but rather an fps mod that has a starcraft aspect. Just be careful though and dont go into the SC: Ghost thing too deep.

actully emulation a battle.net like service is a direct violation of their rules unless given prior consent.

Watch out guys, Blizzard is very harsh with mod of their game. If it's suck too much or is better than the original game they will block you. They fear what happened with half life/counter strike. Blizz already block some mod for starcraft long ago.

Maybe they have changed their life since you can import lot of thing with the import manager. Like they surrendered.

They shutted down that mod because it was using some stuff from sc.

We aren't using anything from sc except for reference, our mp system has got nothing to do with b.net, why would they shut us down?

Well they actually have quite a bit of reason to shut us down =D. As long as we don't pipe up. First of all we Are using things from SC: Ghost, and although this may seem as a promotion for the game. It might also deter people from buying ghost and instead playing our mod (not likely since our mod can't be nearly as good as ghost but still =D ). And also, the way our multiplayer is currently built it allows players to bypass battle.net, although this is Only for playing FPSmod and it is Only set up like this for the best of reasons. Nonetheless we are in a sense setting up a warforge type of system here.

we arent using ANYTHING from sc:ghost!!! we do use references, but So does rockstar.....And using REFERENCES is not violating any kind of copyright laws.......Trust me, im into this thing allot, i did study it a bit in my own free time....

i actually think blizzard doesnt want people to mod past a certain extent... that's the impression they give anyway. they allow a lot of tiny half-assed mods without even having a second thought, but when they see heavy modding they start to freak out. if this mod happens to become more popular than the game itself (like cs to halflife), why would blizzard be afraid of that? wouldn't that put more money in thier pockets? everyone would be wanting to play this "l337 s00pur m0d" and thus people would swarm to get wc3 AND tft.

Hydralisk, if they freak out, and even TRY to sue us, we will be the ones with all the money, since winning the case will be a breeze, if they threaten us, and give us no real legal proof, then we are allowed to even sue them. And actually, they wouldnt even wanna touch us, since if this mod will be released, just as you said, more and more people will buy wc3/tft......You can look at this from many prespectives, but theres only 1 thats right, and i already mentioned it.....

thats from the blizzard legal faq page, http://www.battle.net/legalfaq.shtml i dunno. the part about that blizzard doesnt support network play outside battle.net but maybe since its not exactly warcraft like warforge.

killer, you should read what it says, i just did, and am very mad. It says that we are not allowed to play or create any other server OUT OF BATTLE net for their games!!!! And i think i know why they want that. Battlenet has a code to keep those warez out if they dont have a correct cdkey....But if we create our own server, any1 who owns a warez copy can now freely use our server and play online. Thats how battlenet wants to stop warez....another thing is, when our mod is released, people wont go out and buy the game, they will actually download it knowing that you dont need a correct cdkey to play, and therefore blizzard will be losing customers....Now i do not know how you guyz plan on doing it, but it would suck without multiplayer.....