Greedy Blizzard Owns Your New Game Mode Ideas Now
Blizzard has gone and shown how little they appreciate creativity unless it's being used to make them even more money. | Credit: Reuters/Mike Blake/Global Business Week Ahead
- Blizzard has made some pretty bad changes to Warcraft III’s terms of service.
- The new changes give the company ownership over any new maps and game modes made using Warcraft III.
- This change just shows how greedy and money-hungry Blizzard is.
Blizzard is a pretty greedy company these days. Activision is probably to blame for this, at least partially. They’re one of the most infamous companies in gaming after all . Whatever the reason is, Blizzard has just shown how greedy they are.
The recent remake of Warcraft III appears to be a buggy crime against gaming. Not content with ruining their own legacy, they’ve now decided to ruin their customers’ creativity.
Due to a change to the Warcraft III terms of service, it is no longer possible to invent your own game mode. At least, not using Warcraft III it isn’t.
Blizzard Owns Your Creativity
Many game modes have been invented thanks to Warcraft III. The most well known is DotA. Back in the day, DotA was just a custom game type made using Warcraft III’s world editor. Now it is its own game, with millions of players around the world.
Blizzard does not own that game. Instead, Valve does, mainly because they approached the original mod’s creator to produce a standalone sequel. Now it seems like Blizzard is completely terrified of losing out again.
According to user ‘ThunderPope’ on Blizzard’s forums, the new user agreement for Warcraft III effectively gives the company ownership over anything you make using the world editor . That means that without any permission or compensation, your original idea can be taken away and sold by Blizzard.
That’s Not the Only Change Either
It’s not just that Blizzard wants to own your ideas. They also only want you to make things that they can sell. That’s why another change is that you can no longer create maps with custom material contained in them.
Now you’re forced to create things that can be sold. Instead of being able to create any idea which pops into your head, such as Pimp My Mario, you now have to make sure that you’re not using anything another company owns.
This is beyond ridiculous. Mods and map-making communities are some of the biggest dens of creativity on the internet – at least, they used to be. It seems that if Blizzard has their way, it’ll soon become a ‘free ideas’ bucket for them to sell on later.
You can almost see Valve side-eyeing these new rules for their next big project, not like they haven’t pulled this sort of garbage themselves recently.
