In the midst of all the crying and complaining about Warcraft III: Reforged from the community, much of which I think is over-the-top, one thing stuck out to me regarding Blizzard’s choices in editing their terms to make sure they don’t repeat the “mistakes” of the past.
It’s come to my knowledge that the terms and conditions of Warcraft III: Reforged (which obviously I didn’t read) make sure that they own all of the maps created by the community in custom games. If you’re familiar with the story of DOTA and the MOBA genre in general, you’ll know that it was spawned as a custom Warcraft III game that blew up into an entire e-sport and new genre the likes of which millions of people have taken part in. Not just DOTA 2, which most closely resembles the archetypes of the hero set forth in WCIII, but other contenders like League of Legends, SMITE, and many, many more.
It seems like not only have they released what the community deems to be a lackluster game, which puts it nicely compared to what you might read in the WCIII subreddit, but they’re also discouraging their once beautiful community from innovating and creating new games with their platform.
It’s not even just MOBAs, either. Some would say that the entire Tower Defense genre was also created by someone in the WCIII community.
Would anyone from Blizzard ever come up with these ideas if they didn’t come from creators in their community? It’s safe to say they come up with the bare minimum once games are launched, judging by the complaints and frequency of patches since the launch of Reforged. So that’d be a no.
Creators beware… the once empowering creators of WCIII and many other classics, who enabled new creators and aspiring designers to follow their hearts and create, now own every damn thing you make within their map editor.
Are they really hurting that badly from the fact that DOTA was the one that got away? Considering it might exist in the first place today if not for their creators, an argument could be made that they haven’t missed anything. But then again, I’m sure they have plenty of well-crafted PR statements arguing why this was in the best interest of not only themselves but the community at large. I wouldn’t know...
Not cool Blizzard,... not cool.
