|
On May 12 2012 06:01 [17]Purple wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2012 05:48 Logo wrote:On May 12 2012 05:43 JackDT wrote:The OP isn't claiming any legal obligation here. I know the actual reasoning is the horrible Blizz EULA allows it. However why are we as a community not saying "Hey wait a minute, you arent mapmakers, you don't make maps, why are you editing stuff that is past your level?" He's just wondering why they community doesn't call people out for doing this more. It's a fair point. I think if MLG or other orgs simply contacted the map makers and kept them in the loop, even if they eventually did make changes, it could go a long way to keeping good relations. It's an easy answer. The community at large wants better maps, it doesn't care nearly as much about who creates them. If you want to stop the behavior then you have to do it from within the map making community. If you say that the community wants better maps and not really better map makers to make the maps then the map maker will just stop making maps. They do not gain any benefit from creating their maps and if it isn't a profitable venture then they shouldn't be pursuing it.
That runs counter to quite a lot of things that you see everywhere from flash & javascript games to pretty much any custom content in any game ever. Dedicated creators will find a way, pretty much by definition.
|
You need to take it up with Blizzard - they are the regulation body in this case I guess.
To create more attributes which give you credit for maps on the loading screen and stuff and are not removable/changeable.
For example
Creation (unchangeable after release)
- GUID
- Author, Date, major version (unique over all maps with GUID, global), Organisation incl Logo
Only Author can do major Version change
Last Changes:
- Author, Date, minor version (unique over all maps with GUID, global), Organisation incl Logo
Both set of attributes would be dislayed on a loadscreen with brandign etc., however both the Creator and the last change author would be both credited equally to the public
Along those atributes other helpful ones could be implemented for search optimizing within tournament play.
Needs better implemention of the ingame search..
(this all just spit out there and not thought out to the end  )
--
One of the things that actually bother me a little so far that some tournaments just wiped out the original credit and replace with their own brandings/sponsors.
And in that way make the consumer (me!) believe that it would be their own intellectual property.
Kind of misuse it for marketing purposes and remove the authors credit entirely.
When infact there is enough space for both or the authors could be asked to make a special edition for them tournaments.
This only becomes a bigger issue though, whenever organizations go ahead and try to make money or create fame off of others work. Then you as a avid contributor to a cause feel cheated by them. Imo rightly so.
Sad world really.
|
I can definatley see where you're coming from, but as one person said above you are the map maker, not the map owner. Nothing you can do.
|
On May 12 2012 05:40 Zombo Joe wrote:
EULA don't mean anything and never stand up in a court.
You have to buy the game to read it, and there is no way to disagree with it, as you will never get a refund for it.
So people who keep saying "the EULA says" stop being complete tools. Maps are the intellectual property of their makers, this has always been the case and always will be, no EULA can say otherwise.
Software EULA's has been to court in several Western Constries as a legal document (Several cases regarding the Windows EULA that i know of). So yes it will stand up in court in most contries. Why would anyone have a EULA if it wouldn't?
|
On May 12 2012 06:10 windzor wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2012 05:40 Zombo Joe wrote:
EULA don't mean anything and never stand up in a court.
You have to buy the game to read it, and there is no way to disagree with it, as you will never get a refund for it.
So people who keep saying "the EULA says" stop being complete tools. Maps are the intellectual property of their makers, this has always been the case and always will be, no EULA can say otherwise. Software EULA's has been to court in several Western Constries as a legal document (Several cases regarding the Windows EULA that i know of). So yes it will stand up in court in most contries. Why would anyone have a EULA if it wouldn't?
Even if the EULA doesn't hold up it wouldn't be clear that MLG is infringing on anything.
|
Incontrol said he's going to ask sundance about this on state of the game (which is currently live).
|
I am sorry, but i strongly disagree with the premise of the OP that the author of anything should be able to ban modifications on the work. Yes, I know that copyright often works that way, but it does not make it any better (by now you could have guessed that I am strongly anti-copyright anyway).
There are two things that you can with an "unphysical" work (such as a SC2 map, but any image in general): you can give it away, or you can charge people for using it. In either case, I believe that once you have gievn it away, or received money for it, the recipient of the work should be able to do whatever he pleases with it. Just think about it, how nice a world it would be, if it worked like that. So much creativity!
The modifier should be required (or have enough reasonablitiy to do so on his own) do declare, that modifications have been done and who is the original author. But the idea that people should be restrcited from changing something, so that the author's irrational feelings are not hurt, is on the same level of absurdity as software patents. (Yet.... )
|
I've been curious how Blizzard and tournament organizers interact with mapmakers for a while now. Unfortunate to hear it's mostly ham-handed changes and overwrites.
|
Maybe because map makers have no responsibilities to the people who play on their maps but tournaments that run them are fully responsible for making the players play on a shit map? I understand where you are coming from, but that is exactly why map making is for hobbyists or those employed by tournaments. You simply can't expect your map to fall to a fate within your control if you want it to be popular at all. You can't sell your replays or your maps, even if you put all the effort into it.
|
Don't let mlg use any more of your maps until they decide to not be fucking morons about the map pool.
|
On May 12 2012 06:12 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2012 06:10 windzor wrote:On May 12 2012 05:40 Zombo Joe wrote:
EULA don't mean anything and never stand up in a court.
You have to buy the game to read it, and there is no way to disagree with it, as you will never get a refund for it.
So people who keep saying "the EULA says" stop being complete tools. Maps are the intellectual property of their makers, this has always been the case and always will be, no EULA can say otherwise. Software EULA's has been to court in several Western Constries as a legal document (Several cases regarding the Windows EULA that i know of). So yes it will stand up in court in most contries. Why would anyone have a EULA if it wouldn't? Even if the EULA doesn't hold up it wouldn't be clear that MLG is infringing on anything.
That doesn't really make sense. But as Blizzard owns the content, and they have never shown interest into doing anything of upholding it, the argument is moot. But again, the real question here is, has MLG the ethics to give the mapmakers the respect they deserve to do their work for them.
|
Blizzard is pretty clear on this stuff. They want the community to put in more work than them, while they reap all the financial benefit, with the protection of their EULA and basically their ownership of the software itself. If map-makers want more say in how their maps are used, they're shit out of luck.
|
Even though there is no legal obligation for tournaments to consult with mapmakers, it is immoral to make changes to their creations without first consulting them. It is disrespectful and unprofessional to alter a person's hard work without their consent.
|
On May 12 2012 05:13 prodiG wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2012 04:58 TrickyGilligan wrote:
Sadly, I don't really think there's much you can do about it. Once you make a map and publish it to Battle.net, anyone can download it and mess with it as they see fit. I don't think this is right, but I also don't think there's any way around it. Making maps proprietary opens up an entirely new can of worms, that I don't really think we want to get into.
On the other hand though, I'm really sick of each tournament making small changes to maps. Are close positions allowed? Is it only cross positions? Will there be a supply depot at the bottom of my ramp? It's too much for both players and spectators. I want to be able to just watch a game on a map I know, without all the endless caveats and addendums the casters have to go through every single time. I also hear all the time in interviews with players, "You knew that map only had cross spawns, so were you checking the close ones for proxies?" "Wait, what? Really?" This isn't exactly true. Once you make a map and publish it to battle.net, the system is designed so that people can only download and EDIT the map in the galaxy editor if you publish the map as "unlocked" - which no professional map will be published as. The problem here lies in that tournaments want us to give them the map file so they can publish it under their official accounts and add whatever tags they like - "MLG Cloud Kingdom" for example - so players know that they are playing on the correct version as per MLG. Does this give the tournament organizers the ability to edit the map? Yes. But only because no proper read-only .sc2map stuff exists at this point (which is frankly really fucking stupid.) Does this give the tournament organizers the right to edit the map? Not without the mapmaker's consent, as far as I'm concerned. Maps are designed with features and their concept in mind and nobody should know these things better than the map's creator itself. If the map's creator feels like the islands on Metropolis are bad and opts to remove them, fair enough. I wouldn't agree with his decision, but at the end of the day it's his decision to make. To sum this up, it's not a matter of intellectual property. It's not a matter of "oh they have the map file so they can do whatever they want" - it's a matter of respect. These guys work really fricken hard to bring you new and exciting maps to make your tournament experience better for spectators and players alike and all we really recieve in return is a warm fuzzy feeling that we're making a difference in the professional scene and our map is going to get played on air in front of thousands with our favorite players. To crap all over that by defacing a map in any way without consulting the mapmaker is flat out disrespectful and simply put a shitty thing to do overall. TL;DR This is not fucking okay. Yes, I am fucking chapped about it.
Everyone needs to read this post, not the TL;DR that prodiG posted, because that is just relaying his emotions, the actual TL;DR for his post would be this: Tournaments should respect the mappers that put in their work for the COMMUNITY, and not abuse their position. It comes down to RESPECT.
|
On May 12 2012 04:49 Diamond wrote: However why are we as a community not saying "Hey wait a minute, you arent mapmakers, you don't make maps, why are you editing stuff that is past your level?"
It's not so much that it's okay it's just that : 1 people don't care 2 : people are dumb. Activision does whatever it wants and people barely even whine about it. And since it probably won't affect the sales why should they care ??
If the community did something we would most likely get a better game but people just don't give a shit and are quick to jump on the " they're doing a good job you're just a bunch of whiners " bandwagon.
Video game X lacks Y feature, an expansion of this game, Z will come out soon. Will not adding the feature negatively affect the sales ? Will more people buy the expansion if i bother adding it ? No ? Then why should i care.
They want money, they'll get it anyway so why should they care ?
Then you have fantastic modding communities like FPSBANANA who do really amazing stuff. Seriously it's mind blowing how skilled some of the people are and what they come up with is impressive. But guess what ? All that stuff doesn't concern games like COD, and it doesn't affect the sales of the games concerned one bit. But since those people use different tools ( and the source sdk / hammer is not the same as activision blizzard's mapmaking program ) they own what they make. They just decide to give it for free to the community. When you create a model or a texture for an existing model, you own that thing, so most of the time the author leaves a note that say " you can edit this as long as you give credits to the author blablabla ".
This problem could be fixed by giving mapmakers ownership of what they make, while stating that they cannot use it for commercial purposes. ( IE you can make a map and give or refuse someone the right to edit it but not make money off of it ).
Having said that it was to my understanding that they wanted to mlik that too. In an interview i think they said they wanted to allow mapmakers to make money off of some of their custom maps or something along these lines. It's not as good as a DLC but, who knows, it could work.
|
Right i like to join this discussion to point a few things out, before they explode.
On May 12 2012 05:55 Diamond wrote:
The problem is that Battle.net is such a pile of shit we HAVE to send it to them so they can "MLG" it. I'm fine with this, it's the only way to make sure you have the right version for that tournament.
Also even if we don't, the locker doesn't actually work right and you can unlock maps at will. For example on various map sites you can find copies of most of the ESV maps even ones we never gave to any tournaments.
Map protection is a new feature of Battle net 2.0 so before you start bashing "Battle net 0.2"(Because it is getting really old) just rememper, Battle net 1.0 didn't have any map protection features and map protection happened by breaking the map files only just enough so that they still worked in WC3 but couldn't be opened in the editor. They could still be "fixed" by people who knew how to do it, but it was out of reach for the average person. But this is a completely new feature of battle.net 2.0 and Blizzard is new with this kind of tech too.
EULA don't mean anything and never stand up in a court.
You have to buy the game to read it, and there is no way to disagree with it, as you will never get a refund for it.
So people who keep saying "the EULA says" stop being complete tools. Maps are the intellectual property of their makers, this has always been the case and always will be, no EULA can say otherwise.
Right i wanna kill this right here and now. The text above is a myth and has been so for over 10 years.
http://www.frictionlessinsight.com/archives/2002/03/you-may-read-th.html
This blog gives some insight what actually goes on when you "agree" on the EULA, TOS and such. I always like to quote my favorite part:
+ Show Spoiler +Time and again, forum board dwellers seem to believe that software license agreements cannot be binding. They seem troubled by the fact that you have to buy the game before even seeing the agreement. The licenses usually appear inside the game packaging and state that by installing the software you agree to the terms of the license (a "shrink-wrap license"). Alternatively or in addition, the license pops up during installation and requires you to click "Yes" to accept the agreement before the installation will proceed (a "click-wrap license").
EULAs is very likely to stand in courts and i would not recommend anyone from any mapteam to try and test the work of Blizzards legal guys against them. They got the advantage in both the legal and in funds. Just play by them, all i can say.
|
agreed. mapmakers make the maps. tournaments use the maps. and that should be it.
|
Seems like editing somebody elses art to better suit your tastes.
Seems like a kind of shitty thing do.
|
What right does MLG have to change a map? They clearly have no idea about map balance. I dont mean to be rude but this is the same tournament that used metalopolis until march of this year. They still use shakuras plateu. I really do not like the tournament administrator for MLG. The guy clearly has no idea what he is doing when it comes to maps and tournament formats.
Just my 2 cents. I hope that they listen to the community and modernize their map pool according to the GSL standard.
|
On May 12 2012 06:19 thurst0n wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2012 05:13 prodiG wrote:On May 12 2012 04:58 TrickyGilligan wrote:
Sadly, I don't really think there's much you can do about it. Once you make a map and publish it to Battle.net, anyone can download it and mess with it as they see fit. I don't think this is right, but I also don't think there's any way around it. Making maps proprietary opens up an entirely new can of worms, that I don't really think we want to get into.
On the other hand though, I'm really sick of each tournament making small changes to maps. Are close positions allowed? Is it only cross positions? Will there be a supply depot at the bottom of my ramp? It's too much for both players and spectators. I want to be able to just watch a game on a map I know, without all the endless caveats and addendums the casters have to go through every single time. I also hear all the time in interviews with players, "You knew that map only had cross spawns, so were you checking the close ones for proxies?" "Wait, what? Really?" This isn't exactly true. Once you make a map and publish it to battle.net, the system is designed so that people can only download and EDIT the map in the galaxy editor if you publish the map as "unlocked" - which no professional map will be published as. The problem here lies in that tournaments want us to give them the map file so they can publish it under their official accounts and add whatever tags they like - "MLG Cloud Kingdom" for example - so players know that they are playing on the correct version as per MLG. Does this give the tournament organizers the ability to edit the map? Yes. But only because no proper read-only .sc2map stuff exists at this point (which is frankly really fucking stupid.) Does this give the tournament organizers the right to edit the map? Not without the mapmaker's consent, as far as I'm concerned. Maps are designed with features and their concept in mind and nobody should know these things better than the map's creator itself. If the map's creator feels like the islands on Metropolis are bad and opts to remove them, fair enough. I wouldn't agree with his decision, but at the end of the day it's his decision to make. To sum this up, it's not a matter of intellectual property. It's not a matter of "oh they have the map file so they can do whatever they want" - it's a matter of respect. These guys work really fricken hard to bring you new and exciting maps to make your tournament experience better for spectators and players alike and all we really recieve in return is a warm fuzzy feeling that we're making a difference in the professional scene and our map is going to get played on air in front of thousands with our favorite players. To crap all over that by defacing a map in any way without consulting the mapmaker is flat out disrespectful and simply put a shitty thing to do overall. TL;DR This is not fucking okay. Yes, I am fucking chapped about it. Everyone needs to read this post, not the TL;DR that prodiG posted, because that is just relaying his emotions, the actual TL;DR for his post would be this: Tournaments should respect the mappers that put in their work for the COMMUNITY, and not abuse their position. It comes down to RESPECT.
Correct and still completely irrelevant since tournaments edit blizzard maps all the time. The rules should apply to all map creators individuals AND comapnies
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
