Activision Blizzard Weighs in on World Of StarCraft Mod

A fan who used the built in modkit supplied with StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty has attracted attention with their World Of StarCraft mod. The mod creates an MMO style game in the same vein as Blizzard’s other blockbuster title, World of Warcraft but based on StarCraft characters.

While garnering overwhelming support from like minded StarCraft fans, they have also caught the eye of Blizzard Entertainment, the game’s developer. The name alone is enough to call in the lawyers but Activision Blizzard opted instead to contact YouTube and claim copyright infringement. The lead developer of the project, Ryan, received a notification that three of his videos showcasing a pre-alpha trailer, character selection screen and the battle system have been removed after Activision complained.

In a post made on the mod’s “official” forum by the fan turned project lead, the main issue they have is not that Blizzard may not want the project to be completed but rather the way in which they were notified. Instead of contacting him directly and request that he stop work on the mod, they chose to let YouTube do the dirty work. Ryan goes on to state, “If Blizzard/Activision doesn’t want this to happen then it won’t. This game HAS to be pumped through the veins of battle.net to work. I hope and pray that we can come to an understanding here. If they want the name changed then I’ll change it.“

I’m not holding my breath for this to ever see the light of day but it does lend itself to speculation. Is Blizzard simply trying to protect its property including the StarCraft name, the lore of the StarCraft universe or does it have a StarCraft MMO in the planning stages? Not long ago Blizzard issued a job posting looking for designers to work on the next big thing. Whatever the reason, it looks like we will have to wait and see what direction this takes.

So apparently it’s not cool to make StarCraft mods with the StarCraft modkit – or at least not if you call them ‘World of StarCraft.’ That name was just begging for trouble, let’s be honest. Duly, trouble happened, it happened fast and it happened hard. After becoming a brief internet sensation, the creator of the StarCraft 2 MMO mod we posted about yesterday woke up to a clutch of copyright infringement notices from Activision-Blizzard, via YouTube. Ouch.