It looks like someone found a copy of Blizzard's copyrighted source code, returned it to Blizzard, and got a reward. Why are people upset about this? It seems like the right thing to do to my mind. If someone found a copy of my own source laying in the street I'd be very happy if they returned it instead of releasing it on the net.
We could of had enthusiastic fans see the inner workings of such a beloved game and tons of articles around the technical details, but instead we protected the intellectual property rights of a billion dollar corporation. Strictly by law, it was "the right thing to do", but it was a real missed historic opportunity.
I'll agree it's an unfortunate thing that Blizzard hasn't released the code. Personally I'd love to get at Diablo 1's code too. Maybe they will one day, but that right is theirs even though they are a huge corporation. Copyright law doesn't care about that detail. This thread has a lot of people wanting the guy to go vigilante, which I just can't get behind.
When, in 20 years, we're hearing that this disc got lost again sometime in the bankruptcy chain of Activision Blizzard, we'll see whether corporate archiving or vigilante illegal archiving is more effective.
Is there any risk that the compiled binaries, on millions of computers and available for free and legal download from Blizzard, will disappear in 20 years?
No. But the source is useful for other purposes than compiling , especially with original comments.
For rarer games, and those shipped on DRMed/copy protected media, it's certainly possible to get into a situation at risk of losing all known copies of the binaries!
I'm not going to berate the guy for doing what he thought was right, but reading this news doesn't exactly give me a warm fuzzy feeling. Just mixed feelings.
It seems that you think that following the law is the right thing to do. That's an understandable point of view. But there's also something called civil disobedience. Sometimes the will of the commons should trump law. Is this one of those cases? Frankly, I don't know or care. But I think if you don't try to understand what you call the "vigilante" point of view, you're doing yourself a disservice.
How is it civil disobedience, if private citizen violates right of another private citizen (or in this case corporation)?
civil disobedience in my mind is when private citizen stand's up to what he perceives as unjust system or law. And I can't see what unjust you see here in this case.
The way I see it is simple a lost property returned to an owner, and reward for person who found it
As much as I would love to see blizzard's code, it is their intellectual property.
This is nothing similar to wikileaks. Wikileaks publishes information that should have been public because it is of public interest and relates to the public yet it is not available to the public.
I like your point. Were I the guy I'd have tried to push an agreement that they'd publish the source of their games once they had been discontinued for over 20 years or something like that.
Carmack released the Quake1 and QuakeWorld sources, and I think also q2 and q3 eventually too.
StarCraft is ancient and the source is of no commercial value to them any longer. They don't benefit from its secrecy, but we do benefit from its release.
Then again, this is the company that sued open source developers who re-implemented a server (bnetd) for one of their proprietary protocols. It was that day I resolved to never give them money again.
> StarCraft is ancient and the source is of no commercial value to them any longer. They don't benefit from its secrecy, but we do benefit from its release.
They are doing a remaster right now. It would be reasonable to assume that it has at least some of the original code in it. I also suspect that Blizzard has used the same code base and modified it little by little over time.
It's not like you found the source to the latest Halo game or something.
This is like finding the source to the original Halo game, of little to no commercial value but of immense cultural value.
Where possible these artefacts are archived so they will be around long after the companies have folded.
Unfortunately it's just not possible most of the time as companies end up taking their software to the grave.
Which makes this all the more depressing. This was an incredibly rare opportunity to archive something of cultural significance to millions of people, completely wasted because it fell into the hands of someone not equipped to deal with the situation properly or contact someone that does.
But in this case, that's Blizzard's right. They own it whether you like it or not. Just because something is important doesn't mean they should lose property rights to it.
Abandonware is a thing and I remember there being some legal headway made recently in that respect, but Starcraft isn't abandoned. They just released a compatibility patch and made it free to download.
There's absolutely no chance in hell the dude saying he sent a copy to archive.org would have stopped those reddit threads from foaming at the mouth. People want the code, not the archive.
Blizzard does not lose their rights to it when somebody uploads the source code publically. If someone decides to use theor source code that they did not obtain a license for, blizzard can always sue.
Reading and learning from said source code is, and should not ever be illegal.
It's Blizzard's right, but only insofar as that happens to be what copyright terms say right now. Also, something having intrinsic value to society at large outside of the ability of a private entity to benefit from ownership is, quite literally, the reason why people should lose property rights to copyrighted works at some point.
It's their right now, but in "life + 70 years" it could have been an incredibly valuable cultural heritage in the hands of the public. Now the game will die when Blizzard chooses to stop adapting the game to new platforms.
Blizzard probably doesn't own all the source to SC1, they could have licensed code from other companies that they can't release even if they wanted to.
Intellectual Property isn't property, and publishing things does not deprive anyone of their property rights. It's a kludgy hack set up by Congress to prop
up industry.
Registering and getting copyright should depend on providing a no-strings-attached source format to a universal archival organisation. If you intend to sell your product or defend your copyrights you would have to have it registered and archived first. Should you stop selling the product the archive would be opened since you obviously aren't making money off the product anymore.
This would effectively limit copyright to the products' natural lifecycle and prevent hoarding the bits "just because I can", thanks to copyright imbalance.
Correct: the right to distribute a game with that branding and those mechanics is valuable if you have the means (such as any copy of the source) to do so.
The source by itself is hardly (monetarily) valuable, pretty much to anybody. Blizzard clearly still has other copies, and anybody else wouldn't be able to do much of anything commercially with the code.
It's quite possible somebody has even already reverse engineered much of it, rendering it even less valuable by itself, even to copy-cats.
The code doesn't have commercial value because it contains no secrets that would allow you to implement a competitor to Starcraft HD/Remastered.
The code doesn't give you the legal permission to distribute and brand a game Starcraft.
The reality is the code has no commercial value, the brand on the other hand may as well be a license to print money.
No. They're using the same gameplay code as the original Starcraft:
Q: How did you go about replicating all the unexpected “bugs” that made BW micro
so special? Did you simply reuse code from the original game, or did you find a
solution to replicate the nuances of BW’s gameplay?
A: StarCraft: Remastered is able to achieve this effect as it uses all the same
gameplay code as Brood War. This means that Dragoons and Goliaths are still a
bit derpy in how they react to movement commands. The Reaver’s shot doesn’t
always find a target. Mutas stack.
The fact is that the gameplay is identical enough that old replays from 1.16
will play and work just fine under StarCraft: Remastered.
This was an incredibly rare opportunity to archive something of cultural significance to millions of people
It's a bit like losing Leonardo Da Vinci's paint recipes - it's a loss, but it's not a big loss. The important thing about his art is the art itself. The same is true of Starcraft.
This is a game that defined a cultural generation in South Korea, established e-sports singlehandedly and in many ways made the RTS genre what it is today.
It should be archived. Even if it can never be released due to copyright or other legal nonsense it shouldn't be left to a commercial entity to ensure it survives.
Starcraft influenced the culture and politics of an entire nation and became a national sport. It pioneered "e-sports". It's a piece of history, and this disc is standalone a piece of history as well.
I think I know right from wrong, but I would still have absolutely no idea what to do if that disc landed on my doorstep.
Edit: I cannot believe this is such a controversial thing to say. Shame on the people who think this is an easy decision to make, put yourself in someone else's shoes for a while.
But it's still owned by Blizzard. It doesn't matter how important it was, they still own it. I am 100% sure the guy did the right thing in returning it, not only legally but morally as well. If Blizzard were to MIT license it that'd be amazing but they're the only ones with the power to do so, no matter who finds a copy in a box.
It's not owned by Blizzard anymore, it is a major piece of human culture and should be treated as such.
To poorly translate Victor Hugo : "The principle is twofold, let us not forget it. The book, as a book, belongs to the author, but as thought, it belongs - the word is not too vast - to the human race. All intelligences are entitled to it. If one of the two rights, the right of the writer and the right of the human mind, should be sacrificed, it would certainly be the right of the writer, for the public interest is our sole preoccupation, and All, I declare, must pass before us."
It's unclear whether it's a legal obligation given that the disc was found, it's even less clear whether it's a moral obligation.
If you didn't know anything about Blizzard, what would you speculate? Someone elsewhere in the thread for example is speculating Blizzard would destroy the copy -- if I thought that'd be a possibility, I would personally never send it their way and you could in no world convince me it's moral to send a piece of history to its demise.
It probably isn't strictly a legal obligation to return the physical disc barring stolen property stuff, but it would definitely be illegal to redistribute copyrighted code without a license to do so. Maybe you could claim some type of fair use but it wouldn't be transformative so I can't see how.
As for morality, I apply the golden rule: if someone found the code I wrote for a groundbreaking piece of software, and I didn't want to open source it, I'd really like for them to respect my wishes and return it.
Edit: I'm unable to reply further, but to clarify I was referring to the maxim of reciprocity or "do unto others". If the positions were reversed I'd want my property returned. If I find someone's wallet I'd return it if possible, as I'd want someone to return mine.
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" is my favorite Star Trek quote, but I don't think it applies in this situation as it was intended as a motivation for a personal decision to sacrifice, not to force someone else to sacrifice. That line of thought can get pretty dark pretty fast.
If you believe in private property rights, then sure. If not, then no. Some such as Max Stirner, 19th century philosopher, would disagree with your assertion that it is a moral issue.
If somebody leaked it, it wouldn't change the ownership or the copyright itself. It would still be Blizzards code. It simply wouldn't be a secret anymore.
You seem to hold the right to property higher then anything else. It might shock you but the society has the right to disown you, if your property is needed elsewhere - for example to build a interstate.
Now everyone's free to be the gremlin sitting on the sack, but if that sack literally is a masterpiece that shaped the whole of civilization, one day people will gently hoist you aside and replace the sack beneath you with a sack of similar monetary value, to put your original sack in museum.
Sorry if that's inconceivable in a black and white worldview. And no - its not communism, that is civilization. A right to destroy art does not exist.
Or don't share your values of right and wrong. It may surprise you, but people have different opinions on this matter and it frames what they do in life.
to be more exact, many people here seem to be incapable to tell right/wrong from legal/illegal or taking the easy/hard choice.
these are all different from each other. and more importantly, orthogonal to each other.
by orthogonal I mean that given a choice, deciding whether it is right, should be done independently of whether it's legal or easier/harder. think about it. even if you had the power to change law, making something legal won't make it any more right, and vice versa.
it seems to me that this guy made his choice of returning the CD vs releasing the code on the basis that the former is legal and doing the latter (somewhat securely) is harder.
not so much on whether preserving the code, in light of the cultural historical importance is right or wrong.
(you don't need to agree with me, but I'd love to hear a solid argument why the latter would be wrong, that doesn't conflate right/wrong with legal/illegal)
and even then, it's not entirely indefensible to base your actions just on what's legal or easiest. ethics is hard and especially the law provides a nice shortcut if you don't like to think for yourself too much. Just, don't go pat yourself on the back for doing the right thing. You don't get to do that. He does get a ticket and goodies from Blizzard, though. Sweet. Shouldn't taste bitter at all, at least for a while.
Releasing the code isn't wrong because it's illegal. It's wrong because it's violating Blizzard's rights. They own that code, they created it and they have the right to control its distribution. Just because Starcraft is a culturally significant game doesn't mean it's ok to violate Blizzard's rights.
The argument in favor of releasing the source code just seems to me to be a dressed-up version of "but I really waaaaaant to!". Wanting something doesn't make it right.
> Releasing the code isn't wrong because it's illegal. It's wrong because it's violating Blizzard's rights.
IP rights are a creation of law and not usually (even by those adhering to a view of natural property rights) not viewed as a reflection of natural rights, so you seem to be both rejecting and endorsing legality as the basis of the wrongness here.
The law doesn't grant rights. It merely protects them. And the laws weren't created in a vacuum either. Laws that protect IP rights exist because we as a society believe that IP rights are something worth protecting. Yes, the laws can become divorced from what regular citizens believe they should be; the prime example here is copyright law being extended to cover a crazy amount of time. But I've never heard anyone before express the idea that someone should lose the right to control their own source code after 20 years have passed.
Right and wrong is, roughly speaking, defined based on what is good for society as a whole, balanced against the needs of the individual. It has nothing to do with some higher or cosmic absolute truth.
Unless an owner of code decides something should run as FOOS, it's basically their own.
As far as I remember, the StarCraft game is already free (which is pretty awesome) [1]. So, maybe it's a matter of time until the source code might be free, too. However, it's up to them.
For the truly curious (which are arguing about the cultural value and so on), it is still possible to look into it using a decompiler. It is messy, but it is possible.
If something is culturally significant then it should be preserved and these two hyperlinks should easily make the case that preservation requires distribution.
You keep posting this as if it's relevant. Shit does happen, but it doesn't change the facts that Blizzard owns that code. Also, many in this thread are acting as if Starcraft itself is going to be destroyed thanks to this guy returning the code. You can download Starcraft for free from Blizzard [1] and they're releasing a remastered version soon [2]. It isn't going anywhere, so even by your own assertion there is no moral right to preserve the source, which isn't needed to enjoy the cultural artifact it creates.
People make mods for tons of games without source code. People are making up excuses and flimsy reasons to get what they want.
> Shit does happen, but it doesn't change the facts that Blizzard owns that code.
This would be relevant if we were discussing US law, but myself and others in this thread are posting replies derived from reasoning beyond Kohlberg's fourth stage of moral development, so please forgive me for saying that the significance of your point here is lost on me.
The preservation of culturally-significant works of art is considerably more important than any definition of ownership found in any law from any country in any time period that you can cite.
> It isn't going anywhere, so even by your own assertion there is no moral right to preserve the source, which isn't needed to enjoy the cultural artifact it creates.
You make an excellent point here, but I'm not convinced that there is no moral obligation to preserve the source code. Granted, it isn't the product, but I don't believe that its preservation value can be easily dismissed given that the product is well-preserved. I will have to think more on this.
Damn people are tearing this guy apart, the reddit threads are particularly brutal. It's a video game.
The finder has no obligation to risk legal trouble so that a game can be modified, played, or even preserved. I'm all for archiving these sorts of things, and agree there's probably no great reason to keep the source private.
But if I have the (likely) stolen property of a large company and they ask for its return, I'm sure as hell not going to go all cowboy to make some enthusiasts happy.
You buy a box of old documents on Ebay. It contains an original manuscript of The Fellowship of the Ring with J. R. R. Tolkien's edits and notes in the margins. Tolkien's estate demands the copy back so they can burn it. You should mail it to them because they own it, right? It's just a book, right?
No, you shouldn't. They owners shouldn't be able to destroy it for the same reason we have laws protecting monuments and historical sites. When something has historical or cultural value, the public has a right to preserve it even against the wishes of the owner.
>>They owners shouldn't be able to destroy it for the same reason we have laws protecting monuments and historical sites.
Monuments and historical sites require Acts of Congress or Executive Orders to establish. If you care so much about this game's source code, maybe you should write to your congress critter.
The boundaries of legal ownership and those of what some consider morally acceptable might be different, so I don't think it's so black and white.
On the other hand, I agree that people shouldn't be criticizing someone for not doing something illegal, especially because they are the one who would have to face the consequences of taking illegal action.
It's actually pretty simple. If you find yourself in the same situation:
1. Rip disk
2. Send to archive.org
3. Mail disk to Blizzard.
Blizzard will destroy this copy or at least make sure it never circulates again, by sending it to archive.org you have relieved yourself of the burden of releasing it.
They may or may not choose to release it but they will at least keep it archived so that if Blizzard is to be lost then history will not be lost with it.
I would replace step 3 with framing it nicely and hiding it in in a corner in my attic. A couple centuries from now it will end up in a pawn shop somewhere
Yes, and when Blizzard notice that exact same source code you have conveniently appeared on the internet a few months later from an anonymous source, I'm confident they won't inform the police and sue me to fuck.
I can't make you a legal guarantee of that, but Blizzard will not destroy the copy. It seems unlikely they'll release it any time soon given SC Remastered, but they're not idiots.
I highly doubt it's going to be removed from circulation forever. My guess is it'll be archived internally, the disc itself will end up in their campus museum, and at some point legal will sign off on releasing it to the public.
SC1 is coming up on its 20th anniversary next year, who knows what they'll do for the occasion.
Blizzard already has the source code, in fact it's actively being extended as part of a HD remaster right now.
I have no doubt they are very happy to have the original copy back, it probably means quite a lot of the original developers and I would never dream of keeping it from them had it been up to me.
I would definitely hope they keep the hard copy somewhere safe but history hasn't been kind to game source code.
Fair chance Blizzard expected he had at least made a copy. Their being so generous with gifts and inviting him to speak with him personally seems to me a desperate effort to generate even more loyalty in him, which is actually really smart. It's their best chance for very little money and effort to prevent this source code to circulate on the internet.
I feel bad for this dude. There are a lot of bitter people that are mad at him for doing what he thought was right just because they don't agree with the moral and legal situation.
Selfish for following the law and respecting the wishes of the authors of a work? Jesus, people are really performing some mental gymnastics to justify the hypothetical theft of property in this case in order to arrive at the conclusion that the finder is somehow being selfish.
Sometimes, not most of the time but sometimes, the wishes of an author are bad for the public. In a hypothetical scenario where an author wants to destroy all traces of their work, it's a bad thing to help them.
And this is about the data, and possible copyright violations, not the theft of property. Him returning the physical disk is perfectly fine. So throw out that argument.
Brahms destroyed a whole bunch of his works out of his own insecurity that they were not good enough. Brahms is now long dead but his (that were not destroyed) works live on.
If something is truly culturally significant then it should be preserved regardless of the wish(es) of its author(s) and these two hyperlinks rather easily make the case that preservation requires distribution.
How do you know it is the wishes of the authors? Blizzard didn't write the software, individual programmers (labourers) did, working as a team. Though I'd be interested to know if there's any statement from the developers of Starcraft if they did or didn't want the code shared.
Wtf? Who make a "gold disc" for source code?? Wouldn't the gold master be compiled code? And who the fuck makes a "gold source" disc that's also "professionally printed"? That implies they gave the source to somebody to have the CD made. Yeah right. Also, the game takes up most of a CD, the assets would use far more space than that.
There's so many holes in this story, it's obvious bullshit and everyone is soaking it up. 100% chance this is a lame viral marketing stunt to drum up interest in StarCraft remastered. It's clearly paid placement, and frankly a bit sensational to even be possible.
Blizzard is known for quietly paying people for product placement and bullshit stories like this. Don't be sheeple.
Edit: I did some reading and other sources actually name the person and mention he's a game collector (with pictures of some of his collection). Surprisingly, this looks to be legit.
The company I used to work for always made an archive copy of the exact source code we had compiled for each major release, so that there would never be any doubt about exactly which source code we had compiled to make each version of our game.
And who the fuck makes a "gold source" disc that's also "professionally printed"?
That disc does not look professionally printed. It looks like it was printed on one those cd-rom inkjet printers that where so popular back in the day.
Fair points, but I don't think CD-R was ever used as a serious archive format. Even back then it was known that the inks were prone to fading.
I just think the likelihood of the source being in this format is extremely low and when coupled with the timing of this article it's all but certain that this is a marketing piece.
Looking at the reddit user that found this disc... He was looking for a job at a "big name" tech employer a few months back, and he's definitely into gaming. He mentioned that blizzard told him the disc was stolen, which would be slightly more believable if returning it prompted an investigation rather than showering him with gifts.
Umm .. I don't know who pissed in your corn-flakes, but your assumption that this is bullshit because you've never seen Gold Source Masters ever being made is highly, highly specious.
I've been in the computer business since 1983. I've made gold master copies of released software in every project since that era. Its a highly common practice, and a good one, because it means that no matter what the resources and assets of the company are protected.
Also, CD's like this were easily made back in the 90's using CD label printers and gold discs designed for the purpose. It doesn't need to be a professionally produced CD like you infer; CD printers were quite common in those days.
So no, I'm sorry, your claim that its 'obvious bullshit' doesn't really ring true. What is obvious, is that you don't really have the experience with best practices of that era. Remember, this was a period of time before "Web-2.0 style source code repositories for all the things".
Archival purposes perhaps? I'd like to think that the process for Blizzard to create a CD wouldn't be too difficult.
I'm sure that Blizzard does a ton of paid placement. However, StarCraft is such a world-wide phenomenon; they don't have to do any shilling. The simple announcement of SC Remastered was picked up by every gaming news site imaginable. Hell, the new 1.18 patch & free Starcraft announcement were just as popular.
I can't find it viscerally in me to take moral issue with the guy releasing the code. I understand it belongs to Blizzard, but I just don't feel sorry for them. Not defending that, just stating a fact about the absence of an emotion in me.
That said: if you believe the guy would've been right to distribute the code, it follows that you believe the right thing for Blizzard to do is to release the code themselves. Instead of arguing morality here, one might spend one's energy articulating that argument to Blizzard instead.
Thats C++ source from v1.00 pre-expansion, an early version that is quite not the polished game that v1.07/v1.08 was, written on pre-c++98 MSVC code by inexpirienced and overworked programmers, when win95 was the mainstream OS and 128mB of ram was plenty and 3D cards were luxury products(most used motherboard graphics).
When Windows 95 was the Mainstream OS 32 MB was what most people had and 64mb was plenty. Most people used PCI or VLB 2D graphics cards. There was simply not enough memory on the board for IGU. Most PCs had not even got USB by that point.
I would never want to go up against blizzard legal, but I have a hard time with the "trade secret" bit when the box came from eBay. The guy didn't sign a contract with blizzard.
I have cds with intellectual property on them. It's not like he's copying it all willy nilly. No different than finding a manual of procedures for some random organization.
The only "real" risk seems to be possessing stolen property (maybe, could have been a gift or souvenir). But stolen 20 years ago and never reported.
I can't understand how keeping the disk is particularly bad. But good for them for giving it back. I think it belongs in a museum, but back home at blizzard is ok too.
> I would never want to go up against blizzard legal, but I have a hard time with the "trade secret" bit when the box came from eBay. The guy didn't sign a contract with blizzard.
From what he wrote, I don't think they said he was under legal obligation to return it to them. I think they said why they wanted him to, they asked nicely, and they thanked him afterward. Seems perfectly appropriate to me.
Corporations have a bad track record at preserving stuff like this. Celluloid movies are a great example. And blizzard already lost this one once. But, yeah, this is ok.
That's the beauty of the legal system. The point is not that you are not breaking any laws. It's the process will exhaust you and force you to sign a deal or something. You always lose in this case.
At that point that would be really stupid of him, since now they know who he is.
Instead creating posts and teasing other people (for karma?) he should just leak it. People are saying that it would be wrong etc. For goodness sake this thing is older than half of people on HN. Everything there is outdated and piracy-wise is not much worth.
Instead, preserving it to study and learn things about game development at that time would be far more valuable for the common good.
> Instead, preserving it to study and learn things about game development at that time would be far more valuable for the common good.
Given the game recently went free to play and many people still play it, its not surprising blizzard are not releasing the source. If the game had been dead for 5-10 years, then sure, they should probably release the source. Its still going strong and shows no signs of stopping in the next 5-10 years, especially now due to the remaster.
There are plenty of other games out there to learn from using the source, if that's your goal.
> For goodness sake this thing is older than half of people on HN.
Are you saying that half of HN are younger than 19? I would have thought the average age on HN would be somewhere around 30. I would expect the average HN person was a kid or teenager when Starcraft was released.
> For goodness sake this thing is older than half of people on HN.
> Are you saying that half of HN are younger than 19? I would have thought the average age on HN would be somewhere around 30. I would expect the average HN person was a kid or teenager when Starcraft was released.
Maybe its a metaphor? A game of 19 years old could be say of 60 or 70 human age considering how fast game iterates.
Valve basically own a significant fraction of its success to community: CS (based on modder produce) Dota2 (bought from a modder); these 2 are their big revenue sources.
While Blz seems always intended to disallow any modder involvement at all. Most Tower Defense games own their popularity to the early days of SC and warcrfatIII. And Dota is basically just a warcraft III mod.
If Blz can learn anything from Valve, it's that they can capitalize on the fan/moder based community, really easy. They just never did anything like that.
On the contrary, they always want to redo what community did to drive off their creations...
The source code shows all details of one of their most popular products. If it got out you can guarantee there will be new exploits, new ways of breaking the game, which in order to keep the game 'fun', will have to patch.
Also, don't forget they re-released Starcraft with better textures recently, so having your sources out there isn't going to improve that game.
Plus, it's their stuff, they decide what to do with it. You can ask all you want about the source code of a piece of software of 1995, but I bet you won't get it from any company just because it is part of history. I don't see the source of Windows 95 lying around on the internet either.
They did capitalize on the modder community in World of Warcraft (almost by accident, thank you Sam Lantinga! and what a success it turned out to be).
But what you need to understand about Blizzard is they are extremely conservative about the game experience. They're proud of their work and while they never consider it perfect, they want the one experience for all their players to be consistent and to have the consistent feel of Blizzard polish (which lacks with mods). They're the Apple of game design.
It's also a bit of a different question when you're talking about pre-wow and post-wow Blizzard. Pre-wow it's also a matter of "it's hard". Nowadays it's easier, and their philosophy is I believe slowly changing.
> On the contrary, they always want to redo what community did to drive off their creations...
While they've missed a few here and there, their development strategy has served to make them approximately a hojillion dollars.
As a fan (I built tower defense, RPG, and Diplomacy maps as a kid--MAN do I miss Diplomacy maps, those were great), I kinda wish they would return to encouraging that stuff and push it to the fore. But I get why they don't.
Inspired by and vaguely similar to. Widgets (usually those gray domes) would be placed on a map that may or may not look like, say, Europe, and you'd have N players whose goal was to possess (own structures by) as many of them as they could manage. Structures were usually super expensive, and resources (or, in some versions, units themselves) were acquired only by owning those control points. No allied victories.
Once the balance was dialed in (lots of maps had nation-specific special units and stuff, which made it tough), it could create some of the most interesting, dynamic UMS games I ever played. Sometimes they'd go literally hours. Early land grabs followed by huge back-and-forths, usually only limited by the sprite limit (my own maps avoided sprite-y units like Carriers, Goliaths, and Valkyries because of it; lots of Marines and Firebats, trying to make them feel like Diplomacy "armies" that could plausibly bounce off one another).
The only games I can recall that were more fun were Last Man Standing Regicide ("Shimo-style") games in Age of Empires II.
Kinda. I remember mods which featured a World map, where units would spawn at your capital in set intervals, and you would use them to capture everyone else's cities.
>Valve basically own a significant fraction of its success to community: CS (based on modder produce) Dota2 (bought from a modder); these 2 are their big revenue sources.
I simply do not understand this. Moders created an entirely new genre and basically brought Competitive Gaming to the masses, yet Blz won't allow modding on Overwatch. I've had discussions with people who support this and their rationale basically boils down to (1) they don't want to fracture the userbase and (2) they love the design and don't want to upset it. Both are ill founded. The userbase is in the millions and mods would get ppl like me to play again. Also, any graphical mods can simply run on my local machine, exactly like DotA2.
The game engine itself is superb and possibly hanfles/plays better than any other FPS with maybe Destiny being the only competition.
There is no doubt modders would create a superior gaming experience. Learn from Bethesda
I'm not so sure. Skin sales are the entire business model of Dota2 and LoL - the difference is who develops the skins. Valve has shown they rarely want to be involved in dlc and skin creation, they've always been community first in that sense.
An RTS or an RPG lends itself to modding tools better than an FPS in general.
See, I think there's a huge difference between Activision Blizzard games and either Valve or Bethesda games. Sure, Valve and Bethesda have probably contributed more gaming experiences to the world across their many games and their liberal policy towards modding. There are only a few Blizzard games, but they're better and they make much more money. It's a tightly controlled experience, but the quality control means Blizzard fans will at least try almost every Blizzard game at some point. Can't say the same for Bethesda. Valve has fewer games, but the experiences are not as different as say, Hearthstone and Overwatch.
I've played a ton of AAA multiplayer games over the years. Hearthstone is hands down the worst one that I've given a fair chance to (>20-30 hours of playtime). To say that it's better than Counter-Strike (which many regard as the epitome of competetive FPS gaming and has stood the test of time in that role for almost as long as Starcraft has done the same for RTS) is an absolute joke.
To compare a turn based CCG to a competitive FPS is an absolute joke.
To generalize your dislike of a CCG, one of Blizzard's multiple games, into an argument against GP is a joke.
Whether modders would make as positive an impact in HS as they did in Valve games is very unclear, and I say that as the author of a Hearthstone simulator and founder of a community and company heavily involved in Hearthstone modding, reverse engineering and third party tooling.
Methinks you're a Blizzard fanboy.Diablo 3 was a critical and personal dissapointment. Starcraft 2 and Heroes of the Storm aren't exactly in my list of top PC games either. And they make more money?
I haven't seen exact figures, but you are severly underestimating how much cheddar people drop on stuff like Team Fortress 2 items.
As for the diversity in types of games, you're suffering from recency bias. Until basically a couple of years ago, Blizzard only made point and click type games/RTS-like controls (Star/Warcraft, Diablo). WoW had the same feel as W3, just with a different camera position and WASD movement. Portal (a unique puzzler), Left 4 Dead(unqiue co-op, multiplayer experience, progenitor to Destiny), DotA2(an entirely new genre/RTS evo), and Half-Life(FPS) are at least as diverse as Overwatch(FPS), HotS (yawn, bad design philosophy to leveling up as a team. just like some of us are 10x devs, some are 10x MOBA players), Hearthstone(card game), and WoW.
Their quality control is excellent, I will concur. They rank up there with Nintendo for having extremely polished games with few if any bugs...none gamebreaking that I remember. But the reality is a tightly controlled xperience is just less satisfying and has far less replayability.
The crowd is just going to make a better game, period, because they can suit a variety of gamer's preferences. I barely scratched the surface of any campaign in Starcraft 2, didn't like vanilla multiplayer, but played the shit out of the modded custom games.
Look at a game like CounterStrike. I remember getting into that game 18 years ago!!! and it's still one of the most popular esports, twitch channels, is even on cable TV, and still makes boatloads of money.
I really don't care much for PvP FPS experiences, which is why Overwatch, while a fantastic game that actually gets me to play PvP, is unsatisfying. I much prefer co-op games and I really liked the horde mode, but they make it seasonal...so I haven't touched it in months.
What's really infuriating is that I enjoy modding and creating new game modes and OVerwatch's game/gunplay is so sublime that I have tons of ideas. One of the low hanging fruits is adding a MOBA mode with creeps, stat-based leveling and items. Another one is creating maps with more open spaces. or a co-op puzzle mode where you must use certain team configs to solve challenges. There's so many possibilities and with the core engine being so buttery smooth, I see no reason why modders couldn't make the game relevant for 10+ years
Again, I am mystified as to their strategy. Did they resent the creation of DotA, say to themselves never again, and decide to completely abstain in creating modder tools? I'm being hyperbolic a bit...they're entering uncharted territory by making a competitive FPS and want to tread carefully. As I researched, I read they are soon releasing modding tools. Looks like I might be playing overwatch again soon!
I like their games. I like Valve and Bethesda games too.
> I haven't seen exact figures, but you are severly underestimating how much cheddar people drop on stuff like Team Fortress 2 items.
I don't have exact figures either, but whatever people spend on hats cannot possibly approach what people have spent on WoW subscriptions...
According to Wikipedia, Valve's total equity is $2.5 billion while Activision Blizzard's is $8.068 billion. Obviously, one produces many more games, but I still have a hard time picturing something like TF2 coming close to the amount of revenue that WoW or Hearthstone generates.
> WoW had the same feel as W3, just with a different camera position and WASD movement.
I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that WoW and WC3 are similar games. One is an RTS and the other is an MMORPG. When I called Valve/Bethesda games are similar, I was talking about how Valve games all feel like thin skins over the Source of Gamebryo engines. It feels like you could walk out of the facility in Portal into City 17.
> Look at a game like CounterStrike. I remember getting into that game 18 years ago!!! and it's still one of the most popular esports, twitch channels, is even on cable TV, and still makes boatloads of money.
Counter Strike is a great game. I've been playing it all my life, since 1.6. But you know how much money I've spent on Counter Strike over the years? Probably much less than I've spent on Overwatch loot boxes plus the game, and that game only came out last year.
> HotS (yawn, bad design philosophy to leveling up as a team
As someone who is a 1x MOBA player, I like HOTS. I find the way that experience is combined makes games a little bit more competitive but also less toxic (No all chat helps too :)).
> I really don't care much for PvP FPS experiences, which is why Overwatch, while a fantastic game that actually gets me to play PvP, is unsatisfying. I much prefer co-op games and I really liked the horde mode, but they make it seasonal...so I haven't touched it in months.
They have a story-mode coop now, Overwatch Origins. I'm not interested in it, so I haven't played, but it sounds like it might be up your alley.
> Did they resent the creation of DotA, say to themselves never again, and decide to completely abstain in creating modder tools?
Yes, I do think they regretted not capturing the value created by Dota.
I don't think Blizzard games are perfect, I just think their strategy is obvious. Blizzard is going to approach modding with the same care and caution that Nintendo approaches mobile games.
No, actually, if they want their product back, they are obligated to pay however much is necessary to do so. They have no leverage other than that. They're spending a very tiny amount of money to repress something that would become quite popular without them.
That's actually probably completely wrong. Just because the guy got it off of eBay doesn't mean it's not actually property of Blizzard. That's like saying that just because you bought a stolen phone from some guy in an alley, the rightful owner can't demand it back.
That's a bad comparison. A stolen phone is 1) Likely reported stolen. 2) A finite resource. This is a printed CD-R that Blizzard likely didn't know existed.
It really doesn't matter. If they go to the police and say "we believe that to be stolen property, he's refusing to give it back", they're going to come and this whole argument will be rather specious.
Many are blaming him for not releasing the source code anonymously.
Do you really think he had the knowledge to do that safely?
He would have already done that if he could. It's really simple, don't play with fire if you don't know how to handle it.
What has happened to the pirate spirit that used to exist in this country? That was found booty, nothing more, nothing less. What a shame. Guess I'd better send back to Microsoft that copy of "Chicago" I got from the U. of Florida servers back in the day.
Come on guys... Had any of you made Starcraft, you'd be very happy to have the disc back. Blizzard's behaved ok I believe in flying the guy to blizzcon and giving him the perks he got.
While it's interesting to have the code, there's probably nothing really amazing about it. However, the game is still being played, so releasing the source code may help people cheat.
If something is culturally significant then it should be preserved and these two hyperlinks should easily make the case that preservation requires distribution.
I think we are mixing two terms here: Intelectual Property and Trade Secrets.
The code doesn't seem protected by intellectual property but it's a trade secret. Just like Mona Lisa was intellectual property of Leonardo, but the way he created the different paint colours was his trade secret.
A trade secret don't necessarily have to be protected by law, the moment it gets out, then people are free to use it as they see fit. That's what I think about this source code: it got out somehow (even if the way it got out was illegal or not), but the moment it comes to public it becomes general knowledge.
Giving back the source code is like burying an ancient Egyptian mummy you just found. Of course the Pharaohs would protest you taking away the mummy but who cares? It is about preserving culture and making its intricate details visible to everyone.
Not like that at all. The source is Blizzard's intellectual property, doesn't matter where you found it (not to mention you're overestimating the cultural value of the source files).
If culture is to be preserved I'm sure some of the original developers would make so. On the other hand, we could definitely do with shorter IP rights like 20-30 years, so that devs could legally release it within their lifetimes.