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+20 Manpower Per Turn

World of Starcraft Controversy Has Happy Ending

by Jamie Frevele | 4:02 pm, January 22nd, 2011

This week, we reported on a StarCraft II mod creator who faced copyright infringement charges by Activision-Blizzard, when the game maker took down a video of his mod after providing him the tools to create said mod. The StarCraft II community immediately cried foul, coming to the support of Ryan Winzen, a college student who used the official StarCraft Editor to create “World of StarCraft,” a mod that tried to emulate a StarCraft MMO. But now, not only has Blizzard withdrawn its complaint, it’s extended a congratulatory hand to Winzen and invited him to Blizzard headquarters to meet its own developers. How did things suddenly become so cool?

Almost immediately after his mod was pulled and the incident was garnering buzz on gaming sites, Winzen was offered a job by Riot Games, the makers of League of Legends, a game that itself owes much to the modding community that arose around Blizzard’s Warcraft III. While Winzen doesn’t seem completely committed to quitting college to take the job, he seems humbled nonetheless, saying he “doesn’t even have a resume typed up.” But now, after amicable conversations with an Activision lawyer, the mod will continue to be made (with a simple name-chage to StarCraft Universe) in collaboration with another MMO-mod creator, mille25. Winzen will also get an expenses-paid trip to the Blizzard campus in Santa Monica, where he will meet the developers behind StarCraft II.

It seems that, in the end, the issue was with the alleged use of tools outside the StarCraft realm, making it a more full-scale MMO. Since that wasn’t the case, Ryan Winzen is now the most popular wronged-then-rewarded modder in the StarCraft community.

(Kotaku)

  • Anonymous

    I would tell them to ‘F’ off, post his story on every ‘modder’ blog and tell people to boycott Star Craft II. Then maybe these ‘gaming exectutives’ will think twice before slandering a gamer!!

  • Dj

    As much as you’d like that, it would never happen.

  • Ikkle_zasha

    Isn’t it funny how quickly blizzard act when they find something that pisses off their fan-base?

    I think the last one was the introduction of real-ID, making the folks on the blizzard forums use their own real names to post. To be fair, from an anti-trolling point of view this was a genius idea… except, nobody wanted to post anything. Queue LOT’s of angry fans on boards, and a hasty retreat from el-bliz.

    I just wonder why they didn’t see this one coming…

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-Coyle/100000633451350 Michael Coyle

    Yeah man never ever gonna happen, to loyal of a fan base, which i happen to be a part of…


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