When the World of StarCraft mod by Ryan Winzen starting spreading across the gaming blogs, quite a few people were worried that Blizzard would take issue with it. While that did technically happen, it may not be what you think. Here’s a snippet from Blizzard’s official statement.
“With the name so closely resembling that of World of Warcraft, we wanted to discuss the title of the mod with the developer, and as part of our routine procedure, we contacted YouTube to request the video be removed while that discussion took place.”
“It was never our intention to stop development on the mod or discourage the community from expressing their creativity through the StarCraft II editor.” So, the name was the issue, not the content.
Interestingly enough, Blizzard has offered to have Winzen come to the company campus to talk with the StarCraft II team. And, according to The Escapist, League of Legends developer Riot Games wants him to apply for a position at the studio.
World of StarCraft Modder Gets a Job Offer [The Escapist]
Full statement:
“Earlier this week, a player-made StarCraft II mod called World of StarCraft and described as a “StarCraft MMO” was featured on a number of prominent gaming news sites, catching the attention of gamers as well as our own. With the name so closely resembling that of World of Warcraft, we wanted to discuss the title of the mod with the developer, and as part of our routine procedure, we contacted YouTube to request the video be removed while that discussion took place. We were also curious about the project and wanted to discuss with the developer what the mod entailed.
It was never our intention to stop development on the mod or discourage the community from expressing their creativity through the StarCraft II editor. As always, we actively encourage development of custom maps and mods for StarCraft II, as we’ve done with our strategy games in the past. That’s why we release an editor with our RTS games, and why we feature top player-created content in the custom game search. It’s also why we held a contest to spotlight the best community-crafted StarCraft II mods at last year’s BlizzCon, and why we’ll continue to improve Battle.net to better showcase player-created content.
Like many players in the community, we’re looking forward to seeing the continued development of this mod, and as part of our ongoing discussion, we’ve extended an offer to the developer to visit the Blizzard campus and meet with the StarCraft II development team. As always, we appreciate all of the efforts of the talented and enthusiastic mod-making community, and we look forward to seeing and playing what they create using the StarCraft II editor in the future.”
