Blizzard Pretends IP Made It Kill Fan Server
from the stop-lying dept
Blizzard, maker of World of Warcraft, has a long and dubious history when it comes to trying to twist intellectual property laws and requirements to be whatever they want it to be at the time. These instances have mostly revolved around using copyright in an attempt to stop people who use cheat-bots to play the company's games, as well as those who make the bots. The actual tactics Blizzard uses in those cases, which chiefly revolve around twisting copyright into knots as never intended, can get lost because of the hatred most players have for those who game the gaming system.
But it's a different story when it comes to Nostalrius, which was the name for fan-servers offering up a "vanilla" version of World of Warcraft to gamers who wanted to play the game without any of the expansion packs that Blizzard has released. Serving thousands of individual gamers, Blizzard decided the fan-server was a threat to its business and used trademark law to threaten those running it into shutting the whole thing down. Smart or not, Blizzard was within its rights to do this. Its explanation as to why, however, is absolutely dripping with bullshit and needs to be called out.
We'll start with the now common refrain the company offered as to why it shut down the server, responding to public backlash for having done so.
Why not just let Nostalrius continue the way it was? The honest answer is, failure to protect against intellectual property infringement would damage Blizzard’s rights. This applies to anything that uses WoW’s IP, including unofficial servers. And while we’ve looked into the possibility – there is not a clear legal path to protect Blizzard’s IP and grant an operating license to a pirate server.It's difficult to see how this could possibly be true. Policing the trademark is indeed a requirement within trademark laws generally, but policing doesn't offer a dichotomy between choosing to give up the mark or shutting the fan server down. There are other avenues that could have been explored, such as granting an inexpensive license to Nostalrius, which would allow them to continue as an official arm of Blizzard's IP. That satisfies the requirement and doesn't result in pissing off thousands of Blizzard fans. Keep in mind that Blizzard itself does not offer a similar vanilla version of WoW such as this. Working with the folks behind Nostalrius, it could have claimed to have done so through a third party. Problem solved. Why is it that those that use intellectual property so heavily, assets which are often designed to spur creativity, are the least creative when it comes to how to enforce that intellectual property?
As for why Blizzard doesn't just offer up a similar service for gamers? Well:
We explored options for developing classic servers and none could be executed without great difficulty. If we could push a button and all of this would be created, we would. However, there are tremendous operational challenges to integrating classic servers, not to mention the ongoing support of multiple live versions for every aspect of WoW.So, Blizzard, a rather large company, couldn't figure out how to accomplish what a single fan server did? Please. And even if that were indeed true, why again not simply utilize what Nostalrius had already built and license it so that it was kosher? Why instead bring the legal hammer down and force the whole thing into shutdowns-ville?
Blizzard says they're in talks with the folks behind the fan server now that it's been shut down, but there was no reason to shut it down in the first place, aside from the misguided belief that pissing of your fans will get them to give you more money.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: fan server, licensing, nostalrius, trademark, world of warcraft
Companies: blizzard
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bullies will be bullies.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bullshit. Any good lawyer, hell, I'm not a lawyer and I could do it, could write up a simple "yes, you can run old-school WoW on your server" piece of paper.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ego
They can grant anyone a license to use their IP. That reasoning was the most terrible bit of PR bullshit lies ever spewed. They control their IP, they can tell people they can use it and it doesn't damage their control at all. They even have the paperwork to allow Chinese companies run the game, I am sure some simple modifications would have been enough to make it work for the Nostalrius team.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Ego
I would also try the Lich King expansion if I could but again, no official servers. It doesn't mean they screwed up (I think they did with Pandaria and I left at that expansion) but there are probably those that disagree with me too.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Ego
http://www.warmane.com/
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Money
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Whiners
Blizzard has millions of fans. Why would we worry about a few thousand whiners?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Whiners
Amazing how pissing off your players by constantly telling them they are too stupid to know what they find fun and that only blizzard knows what is fun, ends up with most of those players leaving and stopping the giving of revenue to blizzard
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Whiners
That's huge and a direct threat to Blizzard, or so the lawyers state...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Whiners
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Whiners
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
One of us
One of us
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
It's been done
And yet Daybreak Games (formerly Sony Online Entertainment) managed to find a way to do so.
https://www.everquest.com/news/project-1999-daybreak
"We have recently entered into a written agreement with Daybreak Game Company LLC that formally recognizes Project 1999 as a fan based, not-for-profit, classic EverQuest emulation project. The agreement establishes the guidelines that we as a project must follow, but it will allow to us continue to update the game without risk of legal repercussions."
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: It's been done
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
in other words...
They cannot even compete against the little guy.
Little guy is stealing their thought-matter, says Blizz. Lol.
Now, squashing little guys is keeping Blizz afloat.
Nothing creative about that.
Blizz, how long have you been squashing little people?
Competition and competence share the same root.
Blizzard prefers incompetence.
Screw Blizzard then.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
This Happens From Time to Time
The pserver players will have to live without their WoW fix, but I think they'll survive. (Though some just wander around in a daze.)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The more things change...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sort of right
It would be within their own best interests to simply build up classic servers on their end, there is obviously the market for it. Right on in saying that it would be comparatively easy to do so. They have the money and the manpower to make it happen.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Sort of right
First, that's what limitation of liability agreements are for. Second, lawyers have to do what their clients tell them, not the other way around.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
ads
[ link to this | view in chronology ]