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StarCraft21 years agoGosu "GosuGamers" Gamers

Blizzard going crazy? **

[subject_blizzard]Blizzard, the creator of the Starcraft and Warcraft series, have just banned their games from being played at LANs (Local Area Network) where money is exchanged in part for playing the game, i.e winning money, unless they are compensated.

According to the EULA’s(End User Liscense Agreement)-
Paragraph C Sub Section II:
  • "Exploit the program or any of its parts for any commercial purpose including, but not limited to, use at a cyber café, computer gaming center, or any other location-based site. Blizzard may offer a separate Site License Agreement to permit you to make the Program available for commercial use"

The various leagues around the world, such as OnGameNet and other LAN leagues haven't payed this Site License Agreement and therefore EULA have made a notice. This could, if this information will be confirmed, probably mean the end of Pro-Gaming associated to Starcraft and Warcraft. There is a petition online for those who are angry about this decition:
http://www.petitiononline.com/lanparty/petition.html

Not only Pro-Gaming will be "punished". You may not even see Starcraft or Warcraft in the Cyber Cafes, Gamingcenters etc. in the future, if they not pay this fee to Blizzard.

Update 1:
Quoted from CS Central:
Just another reason why we love Valve. Blizzard Entertainment has banned all of there games from LAN party where money exchanges hands for the rental of space to play and all party members “pay” money towards the rental of the room unless a license from blizzard to play blizzard games even though they have already purchased the games is purchased. Most LAN parties will not able to afford the fee for the license. That must crush all you big WarCraft III fans. Don't worry I feel your pain, but all I can say is "thank God that Valve has common sense not to do such a idiotic thing".
How large this fee will be is still unknown, but this news has been confirmed by a number of big sites such as StarcraftLegacy, CS Central, ESReality, TeamLiquid and more. Is this true? Can we not play on LAN with prizes without having to pay Blizzard anymore? Time will tell. We'll be back when we've got more information.

Update 2:
After some heavy researches, we've found out that the original information about this comes from Secon.us. This is the exact quote from their newspost:
Members of Secon.us (www.secon.us), a southeastern US LAN alliance, have posted a petition on petitiononline.com asking Blizzard to at least explain to gamers why they will not allow their paying customers to play their games in a LAN party environment. We have been informed by Blizzard that any tournament held by a LAN group is a violation of their EULA, and that gamers must pay a royalty to Blizzard in order to participate. Go see the petition for yourself, and please sign it, if you agree with us! http://www.petitiononline.com/lanparty/petition.html
I believe that this information is not enough to claim that it's illegal to play at LAN cafées without paying Blizzard a fee for it. Blizzards official homepage says nothing about this case, nothing is to be read in their F.A.Q about it either. It seems that the ones who created this petition are the only ones with information about this case. It seems suspicious that Blizzard has nothing on their webpage and this petition has a lot of information. I think the only good source for confirming this romour is an official press release from Blizzard, posted on their website. Until then, neither GosuGamers nor I can confirm any of the information posted above. We will be back if we get our hands on more information.

Links
EsReality - EULA
TeamLiquid - Forumspost
Secon.us - With the original newspost

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