[FALSE] Things you might not know about Starcraft 2.

1. No LAN
If you are disconnected from the internet and you and your friends want to have a game of Starcraft 2 on the router, your not going to be able to because you now have to be connected to battle net to play it.

IF YOUR INTERNET DOES SO DOES STARCRAFT 2 MULTIPLAYER

2. You have apparently no rights to your Starcraft 2, even if its retail.

"Account Suspension/Cancelation.
BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ACCOUNTS AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU."

"YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT BLIZZARD IS NOT REQUIRED TO PROVIDE A REFUND FOR ANY REASON..." ...if they terminate your account. So no compensation.

3. Anything you make in Starcraft 2 Galaxy Editor will Eventually Belong to blizzard


User Content.
"User Content" means any communications, images, sounds, and all the material and information that you upload or transmit through a Game client or the Service, or that other users upload or transmit, including without limitation any chat text. You hereby grant Blizzard a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, paid-up, non-exclusive, license, including the right to sublicense to third parties, and right to reproduce, fix, adapt, modify, translate, reformat, create derivative works from, manufacture, introduce into circulation, publish, distribute, sell, license, sublicense, transfer, rent, lease, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, or provide access to electronically, broadcast, communicate to the public by telecommunication, display, perform, enter into computer memory, and use and practice such User Content as well as all modified and derivative works thereof. To the extent permitted by applicable laws, you hereby waive any moral rights you may have in any User Content.
http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/termsofuse-new.html

This means that anything you made in the costume map(models,2d art,music), as-well as the costume map all belong to Blizzard upon uploading


4. Unless your map is 'premium,' and then you may be able to sell it for money as Rob Pardo announced.

BUT!! Blizzard may at any point be able to change how much you get out of the proceedings.

so that means at any point when you sell your map they may say "ok we want 100%"
In combination they may also delete your account then go give themselves all of the money made from the map.

5. I play Starcraft 2 beta with a network of 5 other friends.
Whenever we make a costume game with more then 3 people from the same place the game lags every 2 seconds almost exactly. So we need lan. Just out of my friends and i alone its over $1000 worth of Starcraft 2 Retail copies.

All of my friends from this recent news are not buying Starcraft 2 because they will not be able to play.

 

Well you are making maps with Blizzard's technology and game. So if people cry about it then that's their problem.

 

Well, if it is true that they can take ownership of user created models and what not, I consider that an issue. As well as any story lines you write should be your own. If you buy some lumber and nails to build a spice rack, but borrow your nieghbors saw and hammer to build it... whose spice rack is it?

Absurd analogy ftw... or ftl probably.

I doubt Blizz would really do anything like that though. I mean they would alienate the player base by doing **** like that. More importantly they would piss off map makers whom may decide to stop producing maps if Blizz has "legaly stolen" the rights to others maps. If you don't have map makers, you don't have custom maps. Love 'em or hate 'em, custom maps are a big part of Blizz RTS games.

The no lan thing is something everyone already knows and has had way too many threads about already.

I'm fairly confident Blizz is just giving themselves as much legal room as possible to make sure they don't get sued.

"BLIZZARD STOLE MY MAP IDEA! I WANT BLOOD MONEY!"
"Sorry champ, we own "your" map."

"BLIZZARD BANNED ME FOR HAX! THEY CAN'T DO THAT! I PAID GOOD MONEY TO PLAY ONLINE."
"Lookie here at line 1337c in the EULA; it says GTFO."

 

1. We're well aware of this, and is, at the moment, most likely our chief complaint. Simply annoying really.

2. But they won't. Apple has the option to completely remotely disable any product of theirs. But they don't. Do you know why? If they remotely disable a single account for no reason, the PR backlash would be incalculable. Essentially, don't break the rules, and you won't get banned. Simple, no?

3. Technically, no. You still 'own' it, but you give Blizz permission to do whatever they want with it. It's a bit of word-fu that allows other people to use your custom maps without contracts involved for you, Blizz, and the third party.

4. I'd imagine said premium maps are exempt from the above, and, as such, have a seperate contract system. This contract would guarantee a certain percent of proceeds from prem maps, and any breach in said contract on Blizz's part could conceivably award you with 100% of the proceeds.

Also, your math is broken. 6*60=360USD, since the multiplayer is the same for all three games - Only the single player is different.

Fear-mongering is frowned upon by myself, and most likely other mods. Don't do it plzkthx

 

Clarifications:

1. True.

2. Not true. Blizzard Entertainment has to define definitive reasons for account termination and will do so in the game's official release. The terms you're specifying only apply to StarCraft 2 Beta, not the actual EULA of StarCraft 2.

3. Not true. User created works which are based on the game engine of StarCraft 2 have a licensing responsibility to Blizzard Entertainment but nothing more. User-created works which are properly protected (registration for a patent, etc.) would belong to the user only. Blizzard can demand only licensing rights. I will check with Blizzard on this for further details, but I'm also trying to find some court cases between Valve and the makers of the Counter-Strike mod because there is a similar issue here. Valve took Counter-Strike and created an official modification claiming ownership. The makers sued and won because of latent creation rights. A company can't just take your idea/map/creation. Doesn't work that way. Besides which an EULA is not considered a contract. It is a binding use guideline, but cannot be translated into a contract. The terms and conditions of the EULA do not apply beyond the best interest of the user (there's some legal jargon about knowledge of intent which means the company KNOWS it's not in your best interest to "sign" the EULA but force it on you). I asked a lawyer friend about this. Again, I'll check with Blizzard.

4. True. Blizzard can demand any share of the profits they like, but that doesn't mean you have to accept them. You could always simply not sell your product.

5. This is beta. Period. Making any kind of decision based on the outcome of beta is a mistake and is short-sighted.

 

I agree that no LAN play is very annoying - especially for users in isolated locations far away from Battle.Net servers, or without Internet connections, but even normal users like to have LAN parties with highly responsive low latency connections. It's particularly absurd to expect competitive play to happen via Battle.Net.

You can still play single-player and/or create a new multiplayer account. No big deal. Can you imagine what it'd be like if they *couldn't* ban cheaters?

You misread this. They're not assuming rights to the content, they're merely asking you to grant them a "perpetual non-exclusive" license. Non-exclusive means you own the rights and you can still grant rights to other people too, or sell the map, regardless of whether it's "premium" content or not. I don't know whether the content counts as a derivative work of Blizzard's intellectual property - if it does, they may be able to control who uses it.

 

1: Aye, le agoneh about thies ies muoy terrible!

2+3: Standard clause in pretty much any game. Blizz puts it in any contracts for their dance shows too. Why? So they don't get their asses sued off if they post content from those things on their site. Doing anything more would be PR suicide. Also, it would not hold up in court, just like those papers you sign that the skiing resort is not responsible for your skies suddenly bursting into flames.

4: Same goes for this, blizz can do it, but then any judge will shut their right down if they do it, which they won't due to PR.

5: Isn't that just point 1 again?

 

1. does suck for LAN parties.

2. standard procedure in ALL software. you never own software- you have technically only purchased rights to use the software.

3. fairly standard procedure for many programs or events where content is generated specifically for that program or event- say, "make your own commercial" contest or talent shows. many games with custom maps or mods will have this clause.

4. like ijffdrie said, it's just open-ended so that blizz's lawyers can argue what they need to. they wouldn't actually set it to 100% unless they wanted a PR ****storm.

5. i'm sure we will all miss you guys. battle.net and starcraft 2 have suffered a major blow and the gaming community will never be the same without you guys. we are all feeling the loss. now, everybody- a moment of silence for the departed, if you please.

 

The OP is a major troll. Probably dispatched across the internetz by the likes of TeamLiquid to rile the community.

Posts an inflammatory article and then never shows again. I'm changing this thread to [FALSE] in the title.

 

Just lock the topic JonX. I;ve read in detail the SC2 beta agreement we all said ok to before we could play SC2 beta. And what the OP said about it is all untruths. Just put a lock on here so the topic can die and dissappear.