So, apparently somebody is making and charging a premium for playing cards using WoW characters.
Even worse, Wowhead is promoting them. Many comments explaining how they were violating copyright and ripping off Blizzard were deleted by Wowhead mods.
Link for reference:
Your thoughts on this?
I know hating Blizzard is the in thing right now, but their art team has done a lot of amazing work over the years and for someone to steal their original designs so blatantly seems wrong. They didn’t even try to make the characters look different.
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Yeah, seems like clear-cut infringement to me. The only way I can see this flying is if this was going on in China where copyright law is the Wild West.
It’s wrong and why wowhead does it is obvious they always been trashy. Member all them posts forever about wowhead tons here some true some not.
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Wowhead is trash, stop going there unless it’s for the database.
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Blizz doesn’t own the copyrights to images to gnomes, dragons, dwarves, elves, paladins, etc… . Blizz very clearly took images from the public domain for use in wow just as the artist did. I think the ace of clubs (clearly a tauren) and the made of spades (marin) are the only images that may, arguably, overstep.
You didn’t bother looking at the images did you? Every single card is based on specific characters in WoW.
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I love the look of these cards, but I do agree that this is more than likely a copyright infraction.
I would like to see Bliz reach out and officially endorse this pack of cards and allow them to be purchased through the Bliz shop.
Did you see these two:
I don’t think undead troll witch doctor demi-god of death with bony fingertips is just a random public domain thing, nor is undead light raised noble lady. They even refer to them as “life” and “death” directly.
Good thing you’re here to set the community straight on this tragedy… can’t expect a massive, publicly traded entity like Activision Blizzard to look after this … this could cost them … hundreds of dollars… amirite?
I heard worgens have awesome tails on them cards.
A generic female character and a generic monster-with-tusks. Blizz doesn’t own those images. Blizz isn’t the originator of those concepts. Yes, all the face cards are similar to WoW characters but all those characters are also similar to public domain images that predate wow by hundreds of years.
This is a bit like Apple trying to sue Microsoft over Windows stealing the “look and feel” of the mac os only for it to come out that Apple stole the look and feel from Xerox.
Luckily we have an abundance of Lawers well versed in Corporate , Civil Rights, Criminal, Entertainment , Intellectual Property, Labor, Tax Law right here in GD to sort this out.
Cheeky reply, but some things are obvious if you’ve taken even a 100 level course on this stuff.
Intent matters, and we literally have video evidence of the creator admitting the designs were “inspired” by World of Warcraft.Not a great place to be at that point - you’re not supposed to say the quiet thing out loud if you’re infringing on design.
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Bro, those are obviously WoW characters. You can’t claim that every fictional character that has been made is in the public domain because “humans exist”.
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Looks absolutely fire! I don’t play cards at all but if I did I’d totally grab these.
I’m anti copyright law unless it’s blatant plagiarism with no work done on someone’s part or it hurts the brand. Since it’s neither and these cards had to be worked on and weren’t just printed out I’m cool with it. There are much much more lucrative things as an artist. Anyways it’s blizzard’s decision to take action or not, people who are strict on copyright law are lame and I’m 100% fine with wowhead deleting debbie downer comments.
I’ve been working on some WoW inspired action figures, and I’ve been worried I might be hit with a cease and desist. Now I feel a lot better about going ahead with them.
And this is exactly why companies send out C&Ds even for stuff that seems harmless. If they don’t defend their IP then people take that as an invitation.
I am pretty sure that Blizzard has their lawyers looking at the issue. Though since the character depictions are unique to the artist and they encourage fan art, they may let it slide. The “profit” issue will be a sticky thorn though.