Blizzard, the anti-christ of Open Source?

[leech]

http://www.happypenguin.org/show?FreeCraft#comments

Isn't this going just a little too far? I mean come on, if I decided to create an open source game called MidgetCraft, would Blizzard send me a Cease and Desist?

Bastards.

Leech

[bsdgeek]

FreeCraft was really starting to make progress too!

[leech]

Yup! Doesn't that just erk the shit out of you? Oh well, having read that, I hurried up and apt-get installed it through Debian It looks like it'll be saved through a project called Inferno. Let's hope that it does.

Leech

[albatorsk]

But what I don't get is why FreeCraft just didn't simply change their name?

I mean, the aim of the project was after all to clone Blizzard's game, and with a name like that it's pretty obvious that some confusion could arise.

[leech]

I think they are just changing their name. To Inferno from everything I can gather. We'll have to wait and see how this one pans out....

Leech

[TnT]

I really don't understand why Blizzard did that, it's not like Warcraft II is still selling. I was going to buy Warcraft III, but after that news came out, I have decided against it.

[leech]

The really funny thing is that Freecraft helped Blizzard SELL copies of WarCraft 2. Since if you wanted to use the artwork from that game you had to have a copy of it. (I myself was considering getting a copy, since I had lost mine years ago, just so that I could use the artwork with FreeCraft... go figure..)

Leech

[nehalmistry]

freecraft has been renamed to stratagus (the engine) and robovasion (the game using stratagus) ... the homepage is here: http://www.stratagus.com/

btw, none of the original developers of freecraft are working on this, we were not motivated to do this .... but we are working on a different game though from scratch (kinda like ttd) http://transitexec.sf.net

2 issues caused fc to shutdown:

1) the name was too similar... StarCraft WarCraft, FreeCraft , you get the idea

2) the game concept was very similar, mostly the specifics, it looked the same, units were the same, resources were the same... etc...

apparently blizzard would have let it go but someone complained on the battle.net forums so they investigated and sent a cease and desist letter

[TnT]

Originally posted by nehalmistry
apparently blizzard would have let it go but someone complained on the battle.net forums so they investigated and sent a cease and desist letter

So the whole W*rcr*ft scheme for reference did work

Thanks for filling us in with the info.

[nehalmistry]

no i think you misunderstood.... they *already* knew about freecraft and had known for a year or so... they were letting it be... and would have continued to do so ... but because someone complained they did something about it...

there is a post on the battle.net forums, you can find it here:

http://www.battle.net/forums/thread.aspx?FN=warroom&T=17874&P=1&ReplyCount=33#post17874

the "W*rcr*ft" wasnt really a way of hiding it, obviously it didnt work and they did find it another way.... it was basically a useless thing that was done...

[Kooldino]

Hmm, i never even knew Freecraft exsisted. I remember they shutdown the StarCraft game ppl were making for the Unreal engine awhile back. I can't be mad @ Blizzard for shutting down a clone of WC2 tho. What I don't understand is that if you bought the WC2 CD so you can use the graphics libs from it, why wouldn't you just play WC2 instead of a clone?

[leech]

The reason to play Freecraft over WarCraft 2 is simple. WarCraft 2 was Dos based. Since it's a pain to emulate it or run it under modern operating systems, they just created a new engine. Also they had added a lot of new features, plus you can play it under multiple operating systems.

By the way, freecraft is still probably available in most distributions. I was actually considering buying a copy of WarCraft 2 (since I lost my copy oh so long ago....) just so I could play it again with FreeCraft.... but I don't think I'll do that now....

Leech