

Blizzard’s take on the MOBA genre went through multiple iterations, starting as Blizzard DOTA for StarCraft 2. It spawned a genre, called MOBA, or multiplayer online battle arena, which is now a staple of esports, with such hits as Riot’s League of Legends and Blizzard’s own Heroes of the Storm.

#Games like warcraft 3 but free mod#
“Blizzard wants to be sure that it’s getting as many rights to the content in custom games as possible,” said Womack in an email interview.īlizzard’s determination to lock down its legal rights has its historical roots in the modded game known as DOTA, or Defense of the Ancients, a mod built on Warcraft 3’s World Editor and released in 2003.Ī group of modders took the original real-time strategy game, stripped out its resource-gathering and building mechanics, leaving an exciting combat game. She specializes in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, most especially as it impacts usage in video games, as well as “the intricacies of the video game industry … with matters related to copyright, trademarks, brand protection, and more,” according to her online bio. Caroline Womack is an associate at Morrison Rothman, a Los Angeles-based law firm that specializes in the field of digital entertainment, intellectual property, and brand protection, with a particular focus on video games. We asked a lawyer with experience of video game law to take a look at the changes and additions in the terms of service, and what they might mean for video game modders.

But the company added some distinctive new restrictions, giving it almost total control over custom games. The company’s freshly painted legalese is much the same as it has been for years, in that it insists that modded versions of its games cannot be sold by third parties, but only released freely to the public. Earlier this year, alongside the release of Warcraft 3 Reforged, Blizzard changed the language used in its custom games policy for its community of modders that is, the people who use the company’s games to create their own spinoff games.
