Blizzard and Valve Make Up

A while back there was some legal issues between Valve and Blizzard about Valve making Dota 2, Dota originally being a Warcraft mod. But this has been sorted out according to the guys at PC Gamer where I found out about this. (The italic paragraph below is quoted from the PC Gamer article about this linked above)

Valve will retain the commercial trademark to DOTA, and will not be required to change the name of their upcoming title DOTA 2, a stand-alone sequel to the Warcraft III map. Blizzard, however, will retain the right to use the DOTA name non-commercially. This includes promoting DOTA-style maps made for Blizzard games by the community. Their in-house DOTA successor, formerly known as Blizzard DOTA, will be renamed to Blizzard All-Stars while keeping the core gameplay mostly unchanged. 

The great Gaben in the sky has commented about this ordeal stating “We’re pleased that we could come to an agreement with Blizzard without drawing things out in a way that would benefit no one,” “We both want to focus on the things our fans care about, creating and shipping great games for our communities.”

I don't like it when mum and dad fight and am glad they've kissed and made up.

Blizzard Vs Valve over DotA trademark

Vs

It would seem that Blizzard are appealing against Valve and there attempt to tradement DotA 2. I can see why as the original DotA game was a mod for Warcraft 3 and has had the Blizzard name behind it over all these years. However it is just that a mod, a fan made game and we all know Valve are famous for taking mods and making them full fledged games with the likes of your Counter Strike, Team Fortress and Day of Defeat. However I'm sick of frivolous lawsuits popping up every which way.

I still think every quarrel in the gaming industry should be solved by playing games. Notch mentioned about playing Quake to determine the outcome of the whole "Scrolls" thing with Bethesda a few months back. Shit like that should be the way forward. Best of Valve vs the best of Blizzard in a winner takes all DotA tournament. If Blizzard win Valve changes the name. If Valve wins they get to keep it.

You could take this principle in to other mediums as well. Take the music industry for instance, the amount of people that bitch and whine about how "this band stole my riff" or "that band is using the same chord progression as my song" bull shit (I'm looking at you Joe Satriani, yup as much as I dislike coldplay, them using as tune similar to one of your riffs is hardly worth a law suit, there are more examples but I can't think right now). Anyway crap like that could be easily sorted that out with a guitar battle.

Anyway I'm getting slightly off topic but if you want to have a read through of the appeal you can here. From the law side of things I would probably be on Blizzards side as the name has always been associated with them and they have accepted the mod as one of there own. I can't see it going anywhere as it was a fan built project and not actually owned by Blizzard.

From a gamers perspective however, I couldn't honestly give a shit what the game is called so long as it's a decent game. So my message to all those throwing lawsuits about in the gaming industry is fuck off and get back to developing video games. At the end of the day Valve could just easily change the name and this could all be over saving people a lot of time and money. The game would still be exactly the same except they'd have to think of a new name and logo. But as I said before I honestly couldn't give a crap about the name, it doesn't matter.

Round 1 goes to Mojang

While I am not the biggest fan of Mojang or the 'Elder Scrolls' series I have been following the law suit over Mojangs new game named scrolls. In case you haven't been following it basically Zenimax (Bethesdas parent company) have been involved in a law suit lately in dispute over Mojangs newest game named 'Scrolls' which apparently is infringing on Bethesdas trademark for 'The Elder Scrolls' series. Which in my honest opinion is a complete and utter load of shite as by that logic if anyone every decides to name their game 'The' or 'Elder' for some stupid reason (possibly to agitate Bethesda and co) that would also be infringing 'The Elder Scrolls' trademark. Anyway I'm not here to get into a rant about the stupidity of this case. Merely to point out that Mojang have won an interim injuction allowing them to keep the name of their game as 'Scrolls'. While Bethesda can appeal hopefully they will just drop this ridiculous case. Either that or take up Notch and his Quake Deathmatch challenge, as I believe all law suits in the gaming industry should be settled by gaming.

No angry mobs allowed at Sony and the Playstation Network.

In Sonys new PSN terms and conditions, there has been a little bit of controversy about law suits, the following bit in particular:

"Any Dispute Resolution Proceeding, whether in arbitration or court, will be conducted only on an individual basis and not in a class or representative or private attorney general action."

So yes you can indeed still sue Sony but you have to sue them individually. You will not (if you accept new terms) be allowed to get together with your local angry mob and go along for a group lawsuit. As of late I have started reading terms of service, and no doubt would of picked up on this. I probably would of agreed to it anyway. If I was to sue them I would rather sue them individually anyway, as if I won the case I wouldn't have to share whatever compensation received. If something does happen that requires a mass law suit, surely a hundred small cases would be more expensive for them than one case for a hundred people, so it would be their loss anyway.

I am only writing this due to the fact that the majority of people commenting on posts/articles about this are not even bothering to actually read what has been put in the ToS, and blinding bashing Sony, with comments such as:
'So sony's servers get hacked into and gamer's who's (unnecessary apostrophes, not important but it annoys me.) personal info get compromised and spread possibly all over the net can't sue them...That um...nice i guess. way to go in covering up and fixing mistakes, Sony!!!'

There are many more like that this is one I picked at random though. I'm just going to tear apart this comment to finish off this blog post. Aside from the grammar, which I'm not going to get into (I'm trying to keep my inner grammar nazi under control), let's start with the point about the Sony hack, while this is more than likely the primary reason behind this being added to the terms of service, if you were going to sue Sony about your details being taken due to the fore mentioned Sony network hack, you would of done something about it by now. Secondly you still can sue them as I mentioned earlier in this post. As for the covering up and fixing mistakes, I am not sure what he is on about here. The problem has been rectofied and they have updated their security system, ie fixing their mistake. Still not sure what they are meant to be covering up, unless he means covering their asses from angry mobs coming along to sue them in the future. Which while I'm not sure how legal that is, as it is essentially saying they are above that law, you can, and this is going to be the last time I say it, still sue Sony if you choose to, you just have to leave the pickforks, flaming sticks and angry mob at home.

Lawsuit to be settled with a game of Quake?

You heard me right. Bethesda are currently in battle with the guys who made Minecraft over a new game coming out named 'Scrolls', which they think is to close to the name 'The Elder Scrolls', one of there most popular games, there is a little about the case here. I think it's quite ridiculous to be honest. Are they going to go after anyone that uses 'Elder' as there game name or even 'The'. Its quite frankly stupid. Anyway Notch, the Minecraft guy' challenged Bethesda to a game fo Quake 3 to solve the lawsuit. If Bethesda wins the name will be changed from scrolls to something else if they lose however they must drop the case. Full Details Here. I do hope Bethesda take up the challenge. I want every video game lawsuit to be resolved by playing video games. It would be a much better world if that were to happen.