This has been common practice in Activison RTS games since Dark Reign (1997), if you read the Dark Reign Map Construction Kit TOS they own all rights.
I do not personally agree with this, but in practice, it is logical, because you are using their terrains, models, doodads etc, and this stops you selling the maps for money through a third party. They have already stated that you will be able to sell maps in the Marketplace, but this statement is just to basically stop you from selling maps via a third party.
There has been cases where they have allowed a licence third party to sell maps (about 13 years ago), and Activision would take a cut of the profits. This would be the same in principle as the marketplace, where they basically allow you to licence your maps to sell it and take a cut of profits, however, you will be dictated to as to what % you receive, the same as Apple. In fact, it appears that Blizzard after the merger with Activision is going down Apples road of becoming a pain in the ass Dictatorship to work with.
Starcraft / Warcraft / Dark Reign all thrived off user created content. The last thing they would want to do is piss off the content creators and have no new content made for the game. That being said, they have to stop people charging money for maps made with their tools, which is near impossible as any map protection would have to be written into the game, because as we know, digital files are all too easy to copy.
Over Battle.net, Blizzard has to let people play your map(s) without your consent. If you were to claim the rights to the map and wish to charge, they would be liable for disabling the map or paying you some sort of royalty for its use...
This sort of language only makes sense. They probably won't begin screwing customers, seeing as they'll want to do good business...
Over Battle.net, Blizzard has to let people play your map(s) without your consent. If you were to claim the rights to the map and wish to charge, they would be liable for disabling the map or paying you some sort of royalty for its use...
This sort of language only makes sense. They probably won't begin screwing customers, seeing as they'll want to do good business...
Claiming ownership is not a prerequisite of being able to let others use a map, just take an example from Curse, they don't claim ownership over WoW addons that you upload(and i assume the same is true for maps on this site), instead they license a right to host the material, I'm sure that Blizzard's lawyers could find something equally valid for maps.
Ownership is not a prerequisite of selling maps either. (Unless of course you intend to sell it without "permission" and without any royalties to the author)
Well it makes sense that they own our maps, seeing as we used their proprietary editor and their own art elements to create our maps.
It would be different if we had to pay for their editor and art elements, but they give them to us free of charge (in the true sense of free since they used the editor to create their campaign and maps and logically and editor like this would have been created regardless, however less polished),
So you dont think people who spend weeks and weeks, making custom models, working on scripts, should get paid for their work if they make a full out "new" game? the Map Store is a great idea for developers, its only a matter of time though to see how it really folds out (about 10 months away)
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So you dont think people who spend weeks and weeks, making custom models, working on scripts, should get paid for their work if they make a full out "new" game? the Map Store is a great idea for developers, its only a matter of time though to see how it really folds out (about 10 months away)
Blizzard employees put way more combined work hours into making the game than anyone here will spend on a map. And to the silly pen/paper and Microsoft Word analogies: Blizzard gives you premade models, textures, terrain objects, trigger framework, etc. Microsoft gives you lots of things, but it doesn't give you premade sentences or paragraphs.
But regardless, I don't really care if Blizzard technically owns what I make. I highly doubt they are going to do anything with it that I find objectionable, and I'm putting time into map making for the fun of it, not as a business venture. So I can't get too worked up about it.
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Strangely, I see several games doing this now. APB is another example.
This has been common practice in Activison RTS games since Dark Reign (1997), if you read the Dark Reign Map Construction Kit TOS they own all rights.
I do not personally agree with this, but in practice, it is logical, because you are using their terrains, models, doodads etc, and this stops you selling the maps for money through a third party. They have already stated that you will be able to sell maps in the Marketplace, but this statement is just to basically stop you from selling maps via a third party.
There has been cases where they have allowed a licence third party to sell maps (about 13 years ago), and Activision would take a cut of the profits. This would be the same in principle as the marketplace, where they basically allow you to licence your maps to sell it and take a cut of profits, however, you will be dictated to as to what % you receive, the same as Apple. In fact, it appears that Blizzard after the merger with Activision is going down Apples road of becoming a pain in the ass Dictatorship to work with.
Starcraft / Warcraft / Dark Reign all thrived off user created content. The last thing they would want to do is piss off the content creators and have no new content made for the game. That being said, they have to stop people charging money for maps made with their tools, which is near impossible as any map protection would have to be written into the game, because as we know, digital files are all too easy to copy.
Over Battle.net, Blizzard has to let people play your map(s) without your consent. If you were to claim the rights to the map and wish to charge, they would be liable for disabling the map or paying you some sort of royalty for its use...
This sort of language only makes sense. They probably won't begin screwing customers, seeing as they'll want to do good business...
Claiming ownership is not a prerequisite of being able to let others use a map, just take an example from Curse, they don't claim ownership over WoW addons that you upload(and i assume the same is true for maps on this site), instead they license a right to host the material, I'm sure that Blizzard's lawyers could find something equally valid for maps.
Ownership is not a prerequisite of selling maps either. (Unless of course you intend to sell it without "permission" and without any royalties to the author)
I don't think either party should make profit off premium maps. The notion should be removed. Just leave it like WC3.
Well it makes sense that they own our maps, seeing as we used their proprietary editor and their own art elements to create our maps.
It would be different if we had to pay for their editor and art elements, but they give them to us free of charge (in the true sense of free since they used the editor to create their campaign and maps and logically and editor like this would have been created regardless, however less polished),
@CleverFed: Go
So you dont think people who spend weeks and weeks, making custom models, working on scripts, should get paid for their work if they make a full out "new" game? the Map Store is a great idea for developers, its only a matter of time though to see how it really folds out (about 10 months away)
Blizzard employees put way more combined work hours into making the game than anyone here will spend on a map. And to the silly pen/paper and Microsoft Word analogies: Blizzard gives you premade models, textures, terrain objects, trigger framework, etc. Microsoft gives you lots of things, but it doesn't give you premade sentences or paragraphs.
But regardless, I don't really care if Blizzard technically owns what I make. I highly doubt they are going to do anything with it that I find objectionable, and I'm putting time into map making for the fun of it, not as a business venture. So I can't get too worked up about it.