FreeCraft Cease and Desisted by Blizzard 808
mandreiana writes "As of June 20th, FreeCraft is shut down. The development team received a cease and desist order due to the name 'FreeCraft' causing possible confusion with the names StarCraft and WarCraft, and also some of the ideas within the engine were too similar to WarCraft 2. There will be no more updates to this game, and it is no longer available for download." Way to go, Blizzard, now the only competitors to worry about are the ones who can afford lawyers and actually hold competing market share. Of course, not using a *Craft for a game project might have kept it under the radar a while longer.
Way to go, make them all martyrs. (Score:2, Insightful)
This is an RIAA/MPAA thing. FreeCraft will live on, they cant stop it just like Unix owners cant stop Linux.
I see it like this, this gives FreeCraft more publicity, the codes already out, so go ahead and make martyrs of them. Go ahead Universal or whichever french company owns them
sue them, lock the developers up, please, do us
Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game, (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps if you spent some of this money buying or donating to Freecraft not only would we have better games, we'd have free games. Free games would hurt Vivendi Universal and Blizzard more than anything else. Free Games that are good would kill them.
We need to set up a way to support development of games, perhaps a transgaming style game development company, where people subscribe, vote on the type of game they want and its features, and then the coders code it out.
They'd only have to charge 5$ a month,
Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game (Score:3, Insightful)
There are? I can think of CrystalSpace, and Quake II as the only decent open-source FPS engines (and none of them is that good, compared to the likes of DoomIII, HL2, Halo2, etc), and Freecraft was the only decent RTS engine. Is there some secret 31337 open-source engine repository I'm missing out on?
Theres ALOT more than just those two. (Score:5, Informative)
Theres dozens, theres a few that are pretty good, no they arent as good as Doom3(until ID releases the source) or Turbines engine, but they dont have to be, they just have to be good enough to make PS2 quality games.
Most of these games would look better than anything on the PS2. There is an open source game repository but are you willing to donate money to make these games good? Or will you complain about quality when you dont pay?
Well here are some engines.
Genesis3d [genesis3d.com]
Nooface [nooface.net]
WorldForge [worldforge.org]
Reality FactoryM [t-online.de]
Ogre [sourceforge.net]
Obsidian [zog.net.au]
More at LinuxGames [linuxgames.com]
Re:Theres ALOT more than just those two. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Theres ALOT more than just those two. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Theres ALOT more than just those two. (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference between open-source projects and closed source projects like this is that the self-destruct process is just as public as the code is.
Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game (Score:3, Informative)
There are? I can think of CrystalSpace, and Quake II as the only decent open-source FPS engines (and none of them is that good, compared to the likes of DoomIII, HL2, Halo2, etc), and Freecraft was the only decent RTS engine. Is there some secret 31337 open-source engine repository I'm missing out on?
Yes, there is Neoengine [sourceforge.net]. It's decent, check it out.
Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game (Score:3, Insightful)
Eg. I use SDL for the windowing wrapper, OpenSceneGraph for the scene graph engine, PUI for the GUI... there are loads of such libraries.
The reason I do this - none of the game engines have all the pieces I want, or have them fully implemented. By mixing and matching libraries I can take the best, or more appropriate ones for me.
Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game (Score:5, Informative)
Why, exactly, does the purpose of supporting a game/company need to be to hurt and kill another?
Even if you hate them personally, or they (or their parent company, more likely) do nasty things sometimes, admit it- Blizzard makes kickass games that LOTS of people love. Starcraft is 5 years old, and yet there's still around 10,000 people playing it on Battle.net at any given time.
Imagine what could be done? But we first need a way to fund enough games to get millions of people interested. The best way to make these greedy companies pay is to setup a whole open source PC game movement, on a large scale, and let the gamers fund it.
Imagine what could be done? But we first need a way to fund enough games to get millions of people interested. The best way to make these greedy companies pay is to setup a whole open source PC game movement, on a large scale, and let the gamers fund it.
Starcraft Battle Chest: $20
Diablo II: $20 each for the main game and expansion.
Warcraft II: $11.99
Battle.net: Completely free.
Yep, they're sure being greedy alright.
It makes no sense for us to use the outdated old business model for open source products. Its proven that it doesnt work, the transgaming model is proven to work.
So you're saying that games without monthly fees are outdated? Thanks, but no thanks. I have enough monthly fees to pay already.
Re:I dont hate Blizzard (Score:3, Interesting)
Why do I have the sneaky feeling that this code reuse on a large scale would also result in about 2000 games that are all pretty much the same, each being just a slightly different version of the same game, going by the personal vision of each lead developer?
Now I'm not saying that the current commercial model is at all successful in making original games (practically everything is either an FPS, an RTS, or a graphical mud - though there's the odd exception),
Re:Couldn't be more wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
He's not saying that the engine is the hard part, or the most important part (the amount of quality games for the Half-Life engine shows that a shitty engine can produce quality games) its just that its a buttload of work that is being reinvented over and over.
That being said - l
Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game (Score:3, Insightful)
What exactly makes WC3 bloated? Even with the expansion beta installed the whole thing only takes up ~750mb. Which is about the average a game takes up. And I have never, not even once, had WC3 crash on me, not even during 3 months of beta testing the expansion. I have installed the game on numerous machines and never had a problem. The game works under wine for fucks sake, and has since wine version 2.
And as far as accounts go, they get deleted after 90 days of ina
Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple. FreeCraft offers/offered a version of WarCraft II that plays, sounds, looks, and feels exactly like Blizzard's version. Like it or not, they should have asked for and gotten explicit permission before porting it in the manner they did.
Sorry, but just because you hate the fac
Re:Bnet issues (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bnet issues (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly.
A friend of mine works for Blizzard, and once got to see the rows of cabinets for B.Net-West. Between servers, network gear, and bandwidth, they have millions of dollars tied up in the system -- and it's all free of charge to those who have purchased their games. In addition, they still pay a fair amount of attention to older games, periodically releasing patches with some of them containing gameplay enhancements, as w
Re:If you dont plan to buy any other Blizzard game (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't rip off other peoples games. Tough luck, Blizzard is not in the wrong here.
Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs. (Score:3, Informative)
In the case you mention, they were not trying to stop pirates, they were obtaining names and email addresses for the purpose of supporting their Starcraft customers who were having issues connecting to Battle.net.
Nor did they stop because they were "criticized", they stopped because they lost a lawsuit over it.
Relevant link. [cdmag.com]
In more recent years, to better judge the hardware capabilities of their customer base, they've started an opt-in pro
First FreeCraft, next... (Score:4, Interesting)
I know every time I see one of these these lumbering down the road I get confused and think maybe its a roving Blizzard expo, or promotional thing for the next installment of the tired ol' RTS genre.
I wish Blizzard et al would go after Starcraft RV too to protect me and all the other mindless drone comsumers from the risk of confusing two obviously different products with each other... what about Mastercraft [mastercraftboats.com] boats, Chris*Craft [chriscraftboats.com] boats, etc? Blizzard sure has a lot of work to do, I'm glad they are looking out for us easily confused consumers.
On a serious note, I think I'll stop buying Blizzard products all together. My entertainment dollars will go to a company with less intellectual property fascists on staff.
Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs. (Score:4, Informative)
Bnetd was a promising Battle.net clone server with additional capabilities that Battle.net did not provide. In the last moment of bnetd development, bnetd developers were implementing their *own* protocol which will enable multiple bnetd servers to communicate to each other. As a former Bnetd Free server administrator, I was anticipating for this feature but it just had to die out.
What Blizzard did with Bnetd project was simple. They just *threatened* to sue the main developers. Actually, they did not sue anybody. But the threat was enough for the developers to give up their projects because they were not legal experts, nor did they have enough money to hire lawyers.
Did they do anything wrong? Absolutely not. Blizzard would have lost the case if both parties had gone to the court.
In fact, Blizzard could have participated in the Bnetd project and run their second-tier Battle.net servers with bnetd. That's the good thing with opern source. However, Blizzard just killed the project, thrasing all the efforts and achievements with it.
I am afraid the same thing will happen to the FreeCraft project. I haven't played it, but I am sure FreeCraft has something different or even enhanced from the original WarCraft. Does Blizzard have the right to kill these features too? I don't think so. If Blizzard wants its copyright respected, it must honor other's.
The 1000 year history of networked gaming ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Use chess as an inspiration
And "saving" a game and playing it back is cool too
Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs. (Score:3, Insightful)
craft for traveling through a medium", with the medium specified in the first part of the word, such as "watercraft", "spacecraft", etc.
Second point, it looks fairly
Re:Way to go, make them all martyrs. (Score:3, Insightful)
Oops. You're wrong.
What do they expect? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What do they expect? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, why hasn't FreeCiv been sued out of existence then? Seems to me that there was some precedent to a game calling itself 'FreeSomething' and it being OK.
There was no chance of trademark confusion here.
Re:What do they expect? (Score:2)
Re:What do they expect? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What do they expect? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just look at the look-a-like perfume industry for a clue about that.
Of course you are correct in that as open source lawyer-less group, they should have known better. but it really wouldnt matter, blizzard or any RTS company could try to shut them down for any reason. Thats why we have the FSF, etc. to try and protect our free
Re:What do they expect? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What do they expect? (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, right. Try this and call us back (if your prison allows outside calls): download Mandrake and write an auto-running script that boots off a cd-rom and installs the whole KDE system. Then box it and call it "Windows" and sell it for 20 dollars or so.
Obviously, you'll never hear any complaints from Microsoft about this. For good measure, release a boxed set of OpenOffice and call it "Office for Windows" (meaning your previous boxed set
I'm wondering (Score:2)
I have no idea myself, but I have the feeling this wasn't the first game in it's genre.
Re:I'm wondering (Score:3, Interesting)
"Others steal toilet paper from their work place, others steal ideas from popular games. Toilet paper thiefs go to Hell [gamesdomain.com], idea thiefs to sales charts, especially if they are as good as Blizzard with Warcraft"
Obviously, the game before Warcraft was Dune II from Westwood.
name change? (Score:5, Interesting)
Blizzard doesn't hold the rights to the whole RTS genre, if that was the case then C&C and AoE and lots of others would be in trouble..
Re:name change? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:name change? (Score:4, Insightful)
It was trying to be an exact clone of warcraft. You could even play it with the WarCraft graphics.
It you replaced the graphics with the WarCraft ones it was the same game.
I can understand why Blizzard or Vivendi would be upset.
Anyhow it just shows how unimaginative FreeCraft was.
Re:name change? (Score:3, Informative)
VAGUELY similiar? It looked like they sawed it down and copied it exactly. Sorry, but even if they wrote their own code and did their own artwork, it still looked exactly like WC2. I dont think any other industry allows people to create a fake lookalike product, so let them go make fake purses or something.
The look-and-feel lawsuits were lost by the agressors over a decade ago. It is quite clear that you can duplicate functionality from the ground up, as long as you copy neither code nor images.
Does
Re:name change? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is bad, but.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is bad, but.. (Score:2)
Re:This is bad, but.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Another project that frankly I'm surprised has made it this far is FreeVo - obviously a name in the same thought process as FreeCraft. I fully expected TiVo to crack down on them too.
I'm still unclear however. Was the main problem the name? It sounds like it, and if so, it was just a move to protect their trademark. If you don't defend your trademark (and those that may dilute your trademark) you lose it, so this Blizzard and their parent companies had to do this.
What isn't clear is why they didn't just change the name like Blizzard et al wanted and go on with life. Everyone is making it sound like Blizzard shut this project down, when it just looks like they wanted the name changed and the FreeCraft shut the project down all by themselves.
Re:This is bad, but.. (Score:3, Insightful)
You can continue coming up with similar examples. Taking the above further, if I open a burger joint and my name is Bob McDonald I s
New name suggestion: (Score:4, Funny)
~~~
RIAA/MPAA vs Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)
Vivendi Universal is the owner of Blizzard. Vivendi Universal hates the free software movement, why? Because its assosiated with the Mp3/FileSharing movement.
I think people need to consider certsain media companies to be a threat to open source, and a threat to our personal fair use rights, Vivendi Universal is one of these companies.
Microsoft takes alot of heat, but I think even more heat should be given to companies like Vivendi Universal who sue anyone and everyone who is a threat to their monopoly power and business.
They sue file sharing companies who create new ways of distributing music, they sue open source companies who create new ways to play games, they will sue you and I if we use these networks, even if they dont know why we are using them.
Its not about piracy anymore, its about competition, if they cant own all the code, and all the distribution companies, they sue.
Um . . . (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry if this is a stupid question--but which one of these was the open source game, and which were the Blizzard games? I can't ever keep them straight.
Not obvious at all (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not obvious at all (Score:5, Funny)
That will get you trouble with the dutch division of Apple. Wether deliberate or not, you just managed to do a nice and flawless translation of Apple products from their english names to their dutch equivalents. :P
just a little update! (Score:5, Interesting)
the advantage you have that Blizzard doesn't have is that you can move faster than they can, and you're not as tied down to a name/branding.
fly like a butterfly....
.
Re:just a little update! (Score:4, Informative)
C'mon, people, you can find a lawyer very [lawyers.com] easily [findlaw.com]. Most offer a low price for the initial consultation. It is in your best interest to talk to one before you take any action, so that you understand the consequence and any repercussions that will arise from your decision. Even capitulation may have dire consequences [kansascity.com].
I talked to laywer regarding an IP issue a while back and it only cost me $20 for a 1/2 hour (it would've cost $200 for the next hour---it would have been worth it---but I didn't need that long).
OpenSource proggies developed under P2P? (Score:2)
Still available... (Score:5, Funny)
Yep, here it comes. I'll cease and desist downloading this right now, of course...
For non-Gentoo users (Score:2)
Private mirror here (.au) (Score:5, Informative)
what bullshit (Score:2, Funny)
This is fucking bullshit.
Hmm. Seems reasonable. (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't completely agree with the actions taken by either side, mind you.
First, the Freecraft project probably shouldn't have tried to so closely mimic Starcraft in name and graphics. Surely, the developers MUST have realized that something like this was bound to happen, especially given Blizzard
Play with fire, get burned (Score:2)
You guys making FreeCraft should have flown a bit more under the radar. Blizzard developed the brand, let them have it and create something of your own. Spending time in court over something like this seems counterproductive, if your goal is just to get good f
Why not just change it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why didn't the project team just:
1) Change the name of the project, removing the source of the confusion with the Blizzard titles
then
2) Remove anything which looked like it might directly infringe on Blizzard's IP (I'm guessing there's things like similar artwork here, since gameplay mechanics cannot be copyrighted).
This would leave the cease-and-desist without a legal leg to stand on, as the grounds it had been sent under were no longer valid. After all, plenty of people out there clone other games, it looks like these guys just cloned *Craft a bit too closely and have annoyed someone with a lawyer...
uhoh (Score:5, Funny)
BarCraft - Can you restore the broken supply line of ale for the underaged teens lurking in the carpark outside?
DartCraft - The expansion pack for BarCraft. It's RTS darts, with uh... resources and stuff.
ParCraft - Play 18 holes of golf while repelling invading loons in golf buggies.
FarCraft - Like a regular RTS, but it'll take 3 and a half days to cross the map.
RarCraft - You have to play with all game data (gfx, sound, etc) still in compressed form.
LoreCraft - Get the Law School upgrade on your Fortress to produce a phalanx of patent-happy lawyers.
BoreCraft - The only unit is a peasant. Buy the expansion for female peasants!
Re:uhoh (Score:4, Funny)
LaraCraft - Twice the fun, twice the action, twice the legal troubles.
Re:uhoh (Score:4, Funny)
SlashCraft - you link websites on here and watch them blow up.
SCOCraft - you try to sue a Dark Templar and die.
The Craft - a movie with Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell who are witches'n'stuff.
C-Raft - Strom Thurmond, Ross Perot and a pig are put on a Raft in the middle of the pacific, with a live satellite feed present. (Slightly more amusing than C-Span)
DalCraft - you try and retry to connect to IRC servers while they are being DDoSed by the RIAA
Oh PLEASE (Score:5, Insightful)
I have ZERO sympathy for these people. It takes about 30 seconds to realize that maybe the name + genre was a bad idea. But hey we get folks starting projects all the time based on TV shows without permission. Then they come and cry months into the dev cycle when they get a C&D.
Coyboy Neal & Co, how would you feel if YOU were Blizzard and someone was trying to ride on the coattails of the brand you worked your ass off to build?
C+D? (Score:4, Funny)
Sad. (Score:4, Interesting)
OTOH, I always thought it would have made more sense to build it as a generic engine, with at least one totally original theme, than a 100% clone of Warcraft mechanics. (In fairness, I think the plan was to move in that direction eventually).
But like a lot of these, probably 70% of the code was written by one guy, I think, so if they've chased him off the project is toast.
Will You All Remember This? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Will You All Remember This? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Will You All Remember This? (Score:3, Insightful)
hyÂpocÂriÂsy ( P )
n. pl. hyÂpocÂriÂsies
1. The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.
2. An act or instance of such falseness.
The guy professed that he keeps his political views and personal fun seperate. This means that while he doesn't support Blizzard, he holds no bias towards things that he finds fun because of said company's actions. Theref
I take it back -- mostly (Score:3, Interesting)
Oy, and to think: I almost mis-spelled hypocrisy too. :)
His post was not the definition of hypocrisy: it merely evinced it. He implied that he found fault with their actions, but then promised to buy their products anyway. I find the latter inconsistent with the former. Is that so controversial?
I think I see my error now. Looking back, all he really said was that he puts a higher priority on fun then on âoepoliticsâ. That didn't make any sense to me. I should have known from his char
Re:Will You All Remember This? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll be one of the first ones in line to buy their next game.
Then you will be one of the fools responsible for our complete loss of digital rights.
It is hedonistic, short sighted fools who put their own immediate gratification over their own medium and long term interests, and worse, over the interest of their community at large, that are responsible for this sort of behavior not only working, but being richly rewarded.
Keeping your "personal fun and politics separate" when the two clearly collide like this, is remeniscent of the demise of the Tram manufacturers in America. If you are a student of history, you'll recall that they kept their quarterly profits firmly separate from their long term survival. They sold every tram they built for a number of years to the automobile companies, who were willing to pay more for the trains than were the cities. But the cities needed the trams to keep their mass transit systems running. The tram manufacturers ended up surprised when the automobile industries stopped ordering and scrapping their product (go figure) leaving none of the cities with no tram systems, and the tram manufacturers with no customers.
Go ahead and put your immediate need for gratification ahead of your interest in having access to free software and software freedom, and enjoy the fruits of that shortsighted decision just as the trams companies of America enjoyed thei fruits of their decision to sell their product to their competitors for scrap metal and leave their customers in the lurch did, when they went out of business completely less than a decade later.
Just as we have no trams as a result of the tram manufacturers incredibly shortsighted decision, if enough people like you take this approach, we will have likewise little or no have no free software.
Victor's Secret (Score:5, Interesting)
Too big for their britches... (Score:5, Insightful)
Me and my friends, who have bought every game Blizzard has produced (all the way back to Blackthorne/Lost Vikings), use PVPGN [pvpgn.com]. Why? Because its nice to host your own servers, to have your own games, to not have to worry about who is on there, to have total control. It's a nice thing to have, and to play around with.
Of course blizzard shut it down, because you don't need an "official" key to use it. The honor system has become suprisingly worthless nowadays.
Galactic Civilizations [galciv.com] decided to (*gasp*) TRUST their customers and not put SafeDisc or any other type of copy protection on the install discs. A lot of people have problems with these types of anti-piracy methods and generally it just hurts your end user, not that pirates who can get around it with various cracks/hacks/or cd copying programs. Its this kind of trust who now, unfortunately, seems to the be the odd man out. id software did the same thing with Quake3. It was either the first or second patch that took out the cd check, because it annoyed the user more than it actually helped anti-piracy.
I think the worst part is that Blizzard now requires you to buy a "gaming site license" for any gaming venue in which you charge a fee to enter, even if every user has their own, official, bought and paid for copy. This is just sad. You don't see Valve having a fit over Counter Strike players and their LAN habits, yet Blizzard needs more and more cash for reasons that just don't make sense.
Here's the irony: Blizzard is owned by an asshole, very profit-driven company (Vivendi International, AFAIK). The developers have generally been very cool, and sometimes even listen to the community at large (they ignored War3 beta testers, but seemed to actually listen when I participated in the Frozen Throne beta). Even though they might be great people who make some really nice games, this is like PR hell. Give the gamers something great, then stab them in the back once you have their money.
They can't cry "we're just a small developer!" anymore. Not with millions upon millions of sales, and huge development houses around the country.
I say screw this "Don't blame Blizzard, they've got a bad parent company." No, if the Blizzard heads really wanted to dig their feet into the dirt and stand their ground, they would. If they got fired, and worked the press releases well enough, they would start another gaming company and all those brilliant minds would go there, instead of suffering through this idiocy in the name of cash.
Sigh. Dare to dream, folks.
Freecraft is a ripoff. (Score:3, Insightful)
Make up your own damn game. Don't remake someone else's.
Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!? (Score:3, Insightful)
The purpose of the FreeCraft project is to create an open source WC2 implementation that can be played on any platform. If you own a legal copy of WC2, you can use the datafiles from the CD for artwork, music, and so forth. If you do not, there's a rather low-quality substitute that is entirely free for anyone to use. This project is great because you might own WC2, but you may not be running Windows
Re:Freecraft is a ripoff. INSIGHTFUL!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Word processor = RTS
Anyone disagree?
It's illegal to make microsoft word if you are not microsoft, you can still make word processors. Now, word processors are usually very similar, so yeah, it might look like every word processor is an imitation of the others. But games have a lot more variation than word processors do. It seems as though freecraft has identical game dynamics to warcraft II, the only difference being the graphics.
Some versions of simcity have exchangable tilese
Netcraft? (Score:4, Funny)
Obviously, netcraft is Blizzard's next hit, wherein the few remaining human loyalists valiantly defend their networks from the hordes of Zerg viruses. Those survey folks are just confusing people.
What, no mention of Bnetd? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's why I'm STILL not buying Blizzard anything.
BTW, does no one get the cocaine reference in 'Blizzard"?
That was the origin of 'Blizzard of Ozz', the insiration for their name.
Buncha damn powderheads.
Do your own marketing ... (Score:5, Insightful)
This wasn't supposed to be the ideal of Open Source -- it's not to make mediocre and blatant copies of commerical products, complete with a "punny" name like FreeCraft, FreeCiv, Lindows or ...
We're supposed to be making better, faster, original stuff. Either just plain better (compare the GNU Unix tools against the Solaris versions) or new and better, leading edge stuff like emacs (which was amazing when it came out; although I prefer Vim :-), perl, tcl, python, ...
And, damn it, pick a name that doesn't attempt to ride the coat tails of the commercial version so you get free marketing name association. If you're too lazy to market it yourself than you deserve to be ceased and desisted.
Or you could be a little fucking original (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, now only the people with original ideas will be able to compete! What a crock of shit!
Seriously, will OSS ever produce an original idea, or will it all be about copycat-ism?
Coming soon... (Score:3, Funny)
Build a cheesy empire with Velveeta! Sail into battle with ChipsAhoy! Or tear down your opponent's battlements with an oreo trebuchet!
Play as one of four exciting new races: Macaroni&Cheese eaters, The Salad Dressing-ites, StoveTop Stuffers, or People of the Jell-o!
WarKraft
who's up for doing the box-art?
It's such a pity... (Score:3, Insightful)
And Look Who Is Next! (Score:5, Funny)
When a coven leader was asked how they planned to respond to the threat, she replied "We are split between a rare disease and swarms of insects, though a natural disaster at Blizzard headquarters is not out of the question. Oh, the lawyers won't be a problem, they work for for the same guy (putting hands to each side of her head to make a symbol of horns ) we do."
In other news, Blizzard's CEO mysteriously hired a n exorcist to make a house call. More details at 11.
If looks a LOT more than trademark... (Score:3, Insightful)
If this is a correct screenshot here [happypenguin.org], it looks like a hell-of-a-boatload of copyright infringement, as the artwork looks to be directly taken from Warcraft 2, which is a BIG no-no.
This is a large company protecting its copyrights, not just trademarks.
Download Full Source Code Here (Score:4, Informative)
http://http.us.debian.org/debian/pool/mai
Its all bullshit anyways (Score:3, Interesting)
Its all bullshit, there probably is no fucking letter. Any other project would have debated this and they would have posted the letter as well, i personally watched them just quit without discussion and fucking everyone else who was working on the project.
Change the name? (Score:3, Insightful)
After all, the "ideas within the engine were too similar to WarCraft 2" argument doesn't stand on its own; almost every RTS released since WarCraft 2 contain similar design ideas...
It's a shame but freeCraft was in the wrong here. (Score:3, Insightful)
As for only corporate interests being able to fight Blizzard off, corporate interests would NEVER have done this. Sure they may have similar games and concepts, but they have very different names, and they have very different content and even a few original ideas of their own.
Make your own engine, make your own name come up with your own scenarios/world/content. They didn't do at least two of these.
There's no need to kill freecraft. Simply ditch the current content and change the name, then come up with your own units etc, and no this doesn't just mean Blizzard's units with your bitmap. All this falling on your own sword is overly dramatic, it ain't Blizzards fault that you decided to copy their game.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
And in a short press statement... (Score:4, Funny)
This is lame (Score:3, Insightful)
So, no problem, just rename FreeCraft to a unique name that clearly isn't derivative of Blizzard's product. And don't be mad that they asked you to do this, because they have the right and obligation to protect their copyrights.
On the other hand, unless you've physically ripped code or content out of StarCraft or WarCraft and put it in your game, any claim that your game is "too similar" to theirs seems absurd and almost certainly has no basis in copyright or trademark law. If you ignore them on that issue, then they are almost certain to go away.
And if they don't go away nicely, the resulting outrage over their persecution of the open source community would almost certainly force them to go away ashamedly.
But if you just cave in, and you fail to stand up for your rights when presented with this sort of threat, then you are certain to lose your rights.
If a person asks you to get out of his seat, you move. If a bully asks you to give up YOUR seat, you fight.
Re:Give it a rest, Taco (Score:2)
violate a company's copyright.
So, you're saying that someone stole blizzard's code and put it into FreeCraft? Maybe you mean Trademark, but then again, FreeCraft isn't the name of any of Blizzard's games. Or maybe you mean patent? Are there even patents on games now? I don't see a "business process" going on when I blow up someone's base.
Re:Um... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Read Slashdot!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Its called "dilution" when the infringing title is similar. There was a famous case where FedEx sued a NY State coffee shop called FederalExpresso for trademark dilution. I think they won, (That was a far-fetched case, obviously).
IANAL, but I think the law requires them to do this. I doub
Slashdot is not important! (Score:4, Insightful)
Take me for example. I'm a Blizzard customer and a Slashdot user. But I hardly ever agree with the Slashdot groupthink. I see nothing wrong with Blizzard's actions today and will remain a customer for years to come.
Why?
Because I like GOOD video games and Blizzard makes em. I don't want to have to wait 2 to 3 years for an open source half-assed equivalent to come out. Some of the very BEST open source games look like something that was first introduced 5 years ago. And before anyone goes off on a rant about how GOOD games don't always need the best graphics well I agree. But that doesn't mean I also want to be a second-class citizen on the video gaming front.
For the love of GAWD can't you pedantic nerdy geeks keep politics out of ONE realm of your lives? Folks just want to play games not stand on idealogical grounds for or against something. Whatever happened to just appreciating good work without an alterior motive?
Re:Slashdot is not important! (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't actually have an opinion on the Freecraft issue, but if you can keep it out of just one aspect of your life, then it's not a principle.
Re:"Plays Warcraft 2" (Score:5, Interesting)
Also this game adds a lot of features beyond WarCraft II. There are a few additions to the actual game, like the ability to pump out critters from farms, but they have also dropped the original warcraft II network system(that involved using ipx and then kali to emulate tcp/ip) and gone straight to tcp/ip. The game also allows more people for network play, from the original 8 to now 16 and the map size has gone from 256x256 up to a possible 2048x2048.
We tried for quite a while to get WarCraft II working on bootable dos cds so that we could run our operating systems of choice and then boot up a cd to play warcraft, but dos netcard drivers suck. This is the only way we could easily set up WarCraft II for network play, and yes we own many copys of WarCraft II and the expansions.
It's sad to see Blizzard attacking such a good program. I hope that the people behind freecraft just put their foot down, don't rename the damn thing and just keep doing what they do well and contribute more code to the project. If worse does come to worse though they could just rename the game and actually get some usable artwork. Either way, when Blizzard shutdown bnetd i said I would never buy another Blizzard product, and I haven't...now I'm to the point where I just want to take MY WarCraft II cd, make an iso, and put it up on kazaa or gnutella....which I think I'll go do.
Re:"Plays Warcraft 2" (Score:3, Informative)
"While I think this is a bit of a shame, you have actually answered your own question. For a twenty-player LAN game, you need exactly one WC2 CD to get the media from, which is 19 less than Blizzard implied in the license."
You could play a game with 1 cd before, not with 19 people at once, but that is only because the game didn't support that many. They even made it so you could install "friend" version os the game. Same with starcraft. However, Blizzard is