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China31 Posts
Hello dear friends,
We are the author of BarCraft, and we are sorry to inform you that BarCraft has been removed from all servers.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/JyV5xMX.png)
We have already made an announcement on our forum and Blizzard forum, but we are afraid there are still some players don’t know what’s going on (because when the map is deleted all players have no way to contact us), so we decided to post this thread on Teamliquid and Sc2Mapster, because these communities are where BarCraft begins and we have many friends who made a lot contribution to BarCraft here.
You can find more detailed information in these threads on our forum and Blizzard official forum: http://www.sc2barcraft.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=551&extra=&page=1 http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/9280998450?page=2
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DJ7f87T.png)
Our group was the champion of "First StarCraft II Map Making Contest" in China, 2011. You may found our name here(in Chinese): http://s.163.com/special/mapdesign1/ All maps begin with [cob] are our creation.
In 2012, we participated in the "Second StarCraft II Map Making Contest" in China, with the card game BarCraft, and another map call “Clash on Abaddon” which is a multiplayer coop tower defense game.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/d6kWLGO.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3jdNiGi.png)
Both map has been selected into the final nine maps. After the case of BarCraft happened, Blizzard removed all BarCraft on all servers, including Chinese server, and the final nine maps become eight ones, which means they disqualified BarCraft. You may see the eight maps here(in Chinese): http://sc2.163.com/articles/1001/69947 Although the title said "final nine maps"(in Chinese), but you can see there is only eight maps.
We don’t know if such things happened before, and we don’t know how to make BarCraft online again. We can understand the necessity of removing our game after they get charged by davinci, but we are very upset about Blizzard didn’t help us on reviving BarCraft. When everything is OKAY all profits goes into their pocket and now they leave us to an army of lawyers alone and just be a looker, besides that it is very hard for us to accept any reason why they disqualified BarCraft even before we came to a conclusion whether BarCraft is a copy work or not, and DMCA is an American law but the contest is held in China.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/E1ESAzn.png)
If you are a hard working StarCraft or WarCraft modder too, just look at what’s happening to us, and think twice about your own future.
Maybe the “Clash on Abaddon” is the last creation we made on StarCraft II Arcade, and the last one we send to “Map Making Contest”. After we finished translating, we will upload this map to US and EU servers.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/woVP38c.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/wcVOyzl.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/cKYAYRz.jpg)
We will still updating it like what we did to BarCraft, but we probably will move to other platforms such as iOS or Android.
Contact Info Mail: cob_service@163.com Forum: www.sc2barcraft.com
Yours Crusade of Blader(COB)
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
Best of luck, It seems slightly unfair that it got outright removed but yeah, lawyers.
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while I can understand the motives of why Blizzard removed the map, I feel it's a bit unfair for you. I haven't played it yet but copyright issue is just a huge problem everywhere. this is pretty sad for the map modders imo
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Can't you just change the name of the map and republish?
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
On June 15 2013 16:51 Piledriver wrote: Can't you just change the name of the map and republish?
It's not to do with the name, the company who made the original card game asked Blizzard to remove the map due to copyright issues, Blizzard, not wanting to start anything, removed the map.
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How does daVinci Editrice Have any justification/support for demanding that the game get taken down? I haven't played either games, but unless the games were identical in nearly every aspect (Which I'd say would be quite unlikely or impossible, particularly if one was to consider the difference in media), there's no validity whatsoever to the copyright infringement claim.
I don't even see the motive behind why daVinci Editrice would do this. They don't have a digital product that would compete with this, and this wouldn't lower their sales at all (if anything it could potentially increase them).
I can't believe that Blizzard caves in so easily just because a map has some similarities to some product in real life — it's ridiculous. IP is what's generally covered by copyright, not whole game principles.
That would be like Westwood Studios suing Blizzard for making Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. It would be a complete joke.
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So how similar is this "Bang!" game to your BarCraft game?
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Isn't blizzard launching their own card game or so? that might have to do as well :p
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how similar is top trumps to ANY card game really? have i missed something? why they has this been removed? Copyright? When it comes to games whats the copyright ruling? Youve just made a card game with the sc2 editor . . .shoudl they take pictionary down, cos i would like to say that is a DIRECT copy of the game, then all the tower defense games go, then . . . Not getting this at all. please someone enlighten me to why this is considered copyright?
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On June 15 2013 17:25 StatixEx wrote: how similar is top trumps to ANY card game really? have i missed something? why they has this been removed? Copyright? When it comes to games whats the copyright ruling? Youve just made a card game with the sc2 editor . . .shoudl they take pictionary down, cos i would like to say that is a DIRECT copy of the game, then all the tower defense games go, then . . . Not getting this at all. please someone enlighten me to why this is considered copyright?
Let me just copy Magic the Gathering while just modifying the names and artwork. See the copyright there? I'm presuming Barcraft was very similar to Bang! in the same way as the aforementioned scenario. Card copyright is pretty fiddly but not all Tower Defense games are the same and not every dictionary based game is the same.
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On June 15 2013 17:25 StatixEx wrote: how similar is top trumps to ANY card game really? have i missed something? why they has this been removed? Copyright? When it comes to games whats the copyright ruling? Youve just made a card game with the sc2 editor . . .shoudl they take pictionary down, cos i would like to say that is a DIRECT copy of the game, then all the tower defense games go, then . . . Not getting this at all. please someone enlighten me to why this is considered copyright? No I don't think you're missing much or anything. It's really completely nonsensical and baffling. Rich Blizzard is being a coward to a small Italian board game company who's bullying them for apparently no good reason. The whole thing is one big mess and joke. The principle of a card game is not copywritten, nor is any specific mechanic or type of unit in a card game. It's names names names (and stuff like appearance) that IP covers unless the game is replicated to like 99% or something.
Edit: Apparently this is even more ridiculous than it seems; Check this out:
Barcraft was based off a different game (at least, that is what I heard) with those same base mechanics. The situation is more complex then just game B copying game A. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bang!http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legends_of_the_Three_KingdomsI don't know if there are any other games that mimic the mechanics or not. Why is "Bang!" enforcing the copyright against Barcraft when there was another game that mimics the mechanics and is actually making money off it? According to the dates I found on wikipedia, Bang! was made back in 2002 and Legends of the Three Kingdoms was made in 2008. source (also“YingXiongSha(TencentGames)” “San Guo Zhan”,”Pook City 2011” ?)
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From what I read it's just that Blizzard didn't really want to start any problem but this sucks for you guys.
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this is bad, i really want to try this map it looks awesome
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On June 15 2013 19:24 S:klogW wrote: This is really bad yes,really sad
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Bit of a shame, for me this was one of the most enjoyable custom games out there, though eventually it took really long to fill lobbies (at least in AM)
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And here we see a large part of the reason why I never got involved with the sc2 mapping scene.  I am sorry, centralized systems like this have inherent problems.
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It's unfortunate that Blizzard is yielding to davici's pressure, but they may have been sued directly otherwise. Blizz did what it had to do to avoid legal fees / bad press / a big settlement.
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