For all of you aspiring map makers

I’ve already posted this, but I think it deserves its own thread. The world editor’s EULA has been changed.

  • The intellectual property of your maps belongs to Blizzard, not you, and they are not required to compensate you in any way if they use it
  • Copyrighted material is not allowed in any custom maps (which means a multitude of older maps, such as Anime Fight, DBZ Tribute and Pimp My Mario, are now banned)
  • Any content which is deemed inappropriate by Blizzard can be removed at their discretion (which is probably why the shiny new report button is a thing)

In short, the custom game scene has a lot of new limitations and a lot of older maps are going to be killed off. I’d say take your ideas and go elsewhere.

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All I can say is good luck. If it really bans those maps like SCII does, I assume people will just patch revert and use private servers.

And i’m pretty sure the IP thing will never hold up in court.

And if any company decides to pick up one of these maps for themselves, they’ll probably take Blizzard to court if they try, given nobody let them claim so much as the Dota name.

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Jesus… that’s actually very sad…

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blizzard is dead

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After losing DOTA like they did, the SC2 changes and now this was to be expected.
Definitely look elsewhere to make custom content. At least companies like Bethesda and Valve still respect the time and effort people put forth in to creating content in their games, Blizz just wants you to make the next DOTA for them and have the full rights to it right out of the gate when it catches on without having to do anything.

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wow that’s pretty messed up.

I was hoping the modding community would come in and fix, or redo some of the stuff from the campaign, but now…that’s terrible. What is Blizzard thinking?

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One of the most creative gaming communities destroyed by new policies

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No one really owns anything they mod on any game. It’s the original devs assets lol.

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Was kinda seeing this coming when they lost the DotA trademark

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Be thankful it ain’t payed mods.

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map makers shouldn’t bother with the game its a complete mess and insult to the original blizz developers

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Actually, DOTA disproves that and Blizzard have been asshurt about it for more than ten years.

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Oh they’ll figure out a way to monetize the game somehow, this is Activision we’re talking about here.

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And funny enough, they tried to make HOTS play nothing like DOTA.

And the MOBA craze has long since died.

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Yes I am aware it used to be that way. I was meaning on any game in the last 10 years. Mostly all of them have modified their EULA’s including Bethesda and Valve.

Yeah, and the point is that it’s a bad policy and has resulted in stagnant custom scenes for multiple games. I have had countless hours of enjoyment thanks to people making fun maps on this game and Blizzard just took a gigantic steaming dump on that.

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Oh I agree it sucks, but it’s not just Blizzard was all I was saying. Greed gets all companies in the end and there’s nothing we can do about it. Times change. I still plan to make maps as I do it for fun. Others will as well.

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Can you remake Warcraft 1 and 2?

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That’s fair enough. The future is dark and there isn’t going to be another golden age for this game.

I’m not a lawyer but one thing you could do that satisfies the blizzard EULA is to develop the map, open source it and attach an open source license to it, similar to the APACHE 2.0 license.

That will meet blizzard’s requirement of them getting the Intellectual Property while you still maintain yours.

Here’s an example:

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