You can't copyright an idea in the US. To demonstrate copyright infringement you need to show a weight of copied execution across the board. The derivative-works stuff that seems like it might apply doesn't.

When I played Urban Dead it pissed me off when people would advocate features be added to the game which were covered just fine by player-written Firefox extensions, but those extensions had become a big part of the game, and UD had accumulated a history of integrating with them rather than incorporating them.

Plugins and other utilities for a major retail game are quite different. They aren't part of a community effort. They are a cottage industry. There are in a way parasitic, and tend mainly to benefit the author, not the game.

It's also worth noting that all of these things were done by other games before anyone thought to tack them onto WoW.
 

You can copyright a visual design and you can copyright the code as text you wrote. I think the difference is not taking good ideas from other competitors, it's taking ideas from the community and not acknowledging them (AFAIK). Blizzard shouldn't exploit their player community.
 

Writing as a programmer, although admittedly as one who hasn't written any WoW mods yet. I don't see any problem here.

Blizzard didn't take anything away from anybody, they just incorporated good ideas into their game. Ideas don't belong to anyone. We (as a society) could change that, and certain powerful people would like to own all the ideas, but it would be a tragedy. Are you sure you've ever had any really original ideas? Isn't your framework for even having ideas shaped by your experiences which are in turn based on other people's ideas? Some aspects of WoW came from Diablo (itemisation) or Warcraft itself (races, locales) but a lot of the ideas were lifted wholesale from other good games in the fantasy MMO genre. Good!

Since Blizzard isn't actually using any recognisable material (code, images, etc.) from mods in their patches it's hard to attribute anything. Suppose lots of people are raving about PriestWhacker by Tobold, and Blizzard decides to incorporate almost identical functionality into the game itself. Maybe Blizzard should write 'Tobold's PriestWhacker' in their thankyou credits (not that anyone reads those...) right? Ah, but Blizzard only used the idea, not the code, so a few days later someone will point out that PriestWhacker is basically just a nicer UI for the same feature as a guild-hosted mod called DDBkill - now Blizzard is in the middle of an argument about whether Tobold actually "invented" PriestWhacker or whether he in fact got the idea from seeing DDBkill in a guild video on Youtube. If adding someone to the credits means doing a prior art search and getting signed paperwork then it's probably /more/ expensive than just leaving the feature out altogether. Hence no credits.

So far as I can tell, the mod community is comfortable with their relationship to Blizzard. Maintaining a mod long term is a pain in the backside and no-one is making any money so the most important thing is keeping features available to players, integrating the feature into WoW itself achieves this. Blizzard delivers not only UI improvements (taken from mods, other games and internal ideas) but also new features for mod authors to play with. What we have here is a healthy but asymetrical relationship. If you want mod makers to be equals with the core game developers then you need to look at one of the Free Software MMO projects, and right now that means relatively unpolished gameplay, very low server populations and no promise of continuity.
 

alex said... reusing pre-existing ideas isn't new to World of Warcraft.

Does that make it right? Does that make it legal? Just because others have done something before, has no bearing on if its right or legal now.

godsoflust said... Code that modifies an existing framework, like the WoW interface, is derrivative work. Bliz grants license to its users to modify it's interface, so long as Bliz retains ownership — this is completely normal, and actually a little mundane, in regards derrivative work.

I'd love to see where in Blizard's license it mentions that any addon created is owned by Blizard. Is this actually stated somewhere, or is it something you 'think' is there?

anonymous said... Ideas don't belong to anyone.

Ideas no, but software, code and implementation does belong to the creator.

My point is this. If you use something that someone else created, you should acknowledge the creator. In the form of payment, credit, or anything agreed on by both parties. Just my own little humble opinion.
 

You could also say that if I write about my adventures in WoW, that is a derivative work, full of ideas that don't belong to anybody. But I would be hopping mad if Blizzard or anybody else copied and pasted something I wrote and used it without my permission and without giving me credit.
 

Your written descriptions of adventures are copyrighted. If they were derivative, which they could be under some circumstances (particularly if they keep referencing specific WoW NPCs, locations etc.), you'd be prohibited from distributing them without Blizzard's permission except under fair use provisions. Blizzard are in any case prohibited from distributing the work without your permission because you're the author. So neither authors nor Blizzard can take e.g. WoW fanfic and publish a book without risking a lawsuit, they'd have to work together if they wanted to do that.

If Blizzard hires someone to write articles about the same /ideas/ that you have, maybe discussing how Priests suck in the end game, or how "Random" doesn't mean "bring any class you like" to some groups, then that isn't covered by your copyright. You don't own these ideas, you only have a limited time monopoly reproduction right for your specific writing about those ideas.

See how the analogy holds up? Blizzard didn't download Selfcast, paste the code into their next patch download and announce it as a new feature. They liked the idea (and the mod you used is by no means the only only instance of that idea) so they integrated the same idea, using their own code into WoW itself. I've already explained why it would not be as easy as you think to "just" credit specific modders when this happens.

Here's an idea Tobold, go find the people who wrote those mods you feel were "stolen", and ask them how they feel about this. Their opinion might be quite enlightening for you. My guess, based on previous times that non-programmers have decided to start this argument (yes, even that idea wasn't yours first) is that they're happy to see more people enjoying this feature, and maybe even happy not to have to keep fixing it when patch day comes around.
 

You are right, people could not copy and paste your articles. but NOR is blizzard copying and pasting the code from these addons. So they aren't doing what you might be upset about.

They are using the idea, and in the software world, and the law for hundreds of years, this is old. People say MSFT stole from Apple, but forget Apple first stole it from Xerox. etc.

It's more like, a chef creates a dish. You taste the dish and think it's great, and you think about the tastes and recreate it at your own restaurant. It's not exactly the same, but it's the same idea. That is legal.

Is it fair? Well, maybe. The opposite would be you have a great idea, no one else can use it, but you can only serve a few customers with your idea. That idea never spreads and improves society, and eventually dies out.

There is a balance. That is why ideas cannot be copyrighted, trademarked or patented. But your exact words, processes, and products can.

And seriously, we are lucky Blizz is so nice to us, even sponsoring fan art contests. Remember when Wizards of the Coast was run by that woman that had no respect for all the AD&D fan work? She almost singlehandedly killed the game.
 

On a slightly different but perhaps still related note, have these scrolling text thingies replaced the Combat Log?

Putting a check mark in that box to get scrolling combat messages now tells me when I enter and leave combat. Good to know sometimes, especially when walking through a minefield as I did last night on my Priest, taking down Gnolls and Hogger.

"Entering Combat" Ok, I just aggro'd a Gnoll, and I now know I've done that and am about to get attacked. A fairly useful feature.

"Exiting Combat" Also useful to know when I'm fleeing from several Gnolls. I now know I can stop right here and eat, and I won't be attacked by the Gnolls because they've quit chasing me.

What other combat messages can I get?

Can I be notified when a Mob I'm fighting starts casting a spell? Very useful for my Thief and Warrior with Kick and Shield Bash.

What about when another Hunter starts casting Aimed Shot? Very useful to know so my Hunter can Feign Death at the 3 second mark and give him a No Target error message. Had a Hunter do that to me in AV, twice. Really pissed me off at the time and I'm itching to do it to someone else :P
 

I still use Scrolling combat text. The sound alerts for low mana is really nice.
 

I still use Scrolling combat text. The sound alerts for low mana is really nice.

I ended up installing Scrolling Combat Text 2 and turning off the Blizzard version, after finding that the Blizzard version wasn't showing the result of my healing spells on others. SCT2 shows you not only how many points you healed on somebody, but also how many points you overhealed. Very valuable information to optimize raid healing.
 

The complex addons which Blizzard has tried to integrate into the base UI are, to be quite honest, poor reproductions of the given functionality.

I don't know of any end game raid groups using Blizzard's raid UI over something like CTRA or RDX. This is in the same vein as my not using Blizzard's Floating Combat Text, it just doesn't match up to the continued development of SCT. The only advantage Blizz's FCT has is the player knows it won't be broken by patches.

Blizzard not acknowledging the original mod authors does seem bothersome, but as was mentioned earlier its really only an extension of Blizzard's code. I believe its a creative extension and one that deserves credit, but Blizzard is certainly within their (legal) rights to do what they have done.