• Light/Dark

Blizzard Demanded to Stop the Development of the Warsmash Engine

delete12345

delete12345

One Winged Slayer
Member
Nov 17, 2017
20,131
Boston, MA
On July 3, 2022, the day of the 20th anniversary of Warcraft III, modder Retera, the developer of an alternative engine for Warcraft III, Warsmash, posted a video statement revealing that Blizzard demanded that he stop creating the project and remove it from public access.

According to Retera, the Warsmash project was made to create an alternative Java 8 engine for Warcraft III, which significantly expanded modders' capabilities. The project was not monetized and was distributed as open source under the MIT license. All the necessary assets were indeed taken from the game, but to run the engine, users were required to have a licensed copy of Warcraft III.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

However, according to Blizzard's letter to the developer, the company believes that Warsmash violated its copyrights, practically copying the original strategy. Blizzard stated that the creator of the modification must cease the project and remove it from public access within 17 days from the date when the modder received the letter. If this does not happen, the company said it will take appropriate legal action.

The Warsmash developer joked that he did not expect such a "gift" from Blizzard for the 20th anniversary of Warcraft III. He did not specify whether he plans to abandon the development of the engine. However, Warsmash is no longer available on GitHub as well as the video statement was removed from the modder's channel.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

80.lv

Blizzard Demanded to Stop the Development of the Warsmash Engine

Modder Retera recently shared that Blizzard contacted him asking to remove his alternative engine for Warcraft III Warsmash from public access.
80.lv 80.lv

I think it's because of the sentence (boldfaced) up there, is why Blizzard had to take action.

Close if old.
 
Dakkon

Dakkon

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,487
Should have not included the assets and taken them from a licensed copy that is installed.
 
Turnabout Sisters

Turnabout Sisters

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
2,398
This is from the archive.org github readme of the project:

This is a Warcraft III modding project that aspires to eventually make Warcraft III modding easier by providing a replacement component for the game program that can be more easily modified while still requiring the Blizzard Warcraft III game and assets to be installed on the computer only from Blizzard. In short, buy Warcraft III from Blizzard, and then you can begin to use this mod engine with it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The article is confusing, but it sounds like it did not include the assets.

In terms of pure probabilities, I trust ABK to threaten to bankrupt a regular citizen making a legal mod who probably can't afford to defend themselves, more I trust a respected community modder forgetting that they can't upload the entire game's assets to github
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.