Is it risky to make an adult game based on Blizzard's games ?

[Shadde03]

Basically title, but I was wondering about that since I recently stumbled upon Tails of Azeroth and I thought Blizzard was trying to shut down these kind of games as well as SFM stuff. Did Blizzard give up, realizing it is an endless crusade ? Or are they focusing on smaller creators?

 

[TCMS]

It's a risk. They can be ok now but at any time blizzard can intervene

 

[Burt]

IMO thats the last company I would attempt to lock horns with
Generates enormous weekly profit and is one of the worlds most litigious companies

 

[OttO]

You have no idea, the more popular you are the more problems with them you'll have (e.g. fow)

 

[Silver]

Here is the thing, I am not sure you are aware of it. Most of the companies/people don't just care at the very beginning, but it doesn't mean they ignore it or not aware of it, but once your game generates enough money from it or when it's so famous then that's when your are gonna be hit, then you will lose a lot of money, fans, so the lose is enormous, especially since by then you already invested a lot of the efforts and money in the game. so don't get yourself into that place, use your own idea and make your own game legally, then you won't have any problem at all.

 

[Shadde03]

That's what I think as well, I wouldn't want to mess with Blizzard. That must be something to work on a project with a sense of impending doom... Thanks for you answers !

 

[Onysko]

Here is the thing, I am not sure you are aware of it. Most of the companies/people don't just care at the very beginning, but it doesn't mean they ignore it or not aware of it, but once your game generates enough money from it or when it's so famous then that's when your are gonna be hit, then you will lose a lot of money, fans, so the lose is enormous, especially since by then you already invested a lot of the efforts and money in the game. so don't get yourself into that place, use your own idea and make your own game legally, then you won't have any problem at all.

Exactly. Same thing happened to Justice Unlimited (or was it INjustice unlimited?) which they renamed to Something Unlimited.

 

[jason95821]

they only care if you make money on it
or they feel it damages them in some way
other wise you should be fine
and if they do have a problem you will get a cease order before a lawsuit

 

[Desoxiefedrina]

It is never good to go against great companies, as long as you do not have much success and repercusion there is no problem

 

[DaScoot]

Exactly. Same thing happened to Justice Unlimited (or was it INjustice unlimited?) which they renamed to Something Unlimited.

Note that they didn't even have to go after the project directly. They just had to ask Patreon to take it down (which is why content directly related to the game is now done off of Patreon itself).

 

[OhWee]

I'd recommend the 'inspired by' route if you are trying to do something along these lines. Just don't use the same location and character names. People will still appreciate you for it.

Think Star Trek vs Galaxy Quest. Galaxy Quest is definitely a 'rip off' of Star Trek and Trek cons, but they manipulated all of the elements to avoid any copyright infringement issues. Yeah Paramount could have still taken issue with it (Galaxy Quest was produced by Dreamworks/Universal), but that would have been a hard case to win. Plus, maybe Galaxy Quest was also based off of Buck Rogers? Gotta luv parodies!

Elves, Orcs/Orks, etc. are very much NOT Blizzard copyrights. Did Orcs even exist before Tolkien? Well, not by name but there are examples of similar creatures in various mythologies.

And if Blizzard had the copyright on hot Elf babes, yeah there's a lot of models over at the Daz store that run afoul of this. Really, though, Elmore and Company made hot elf chicks popular in the '80s for D&D, long before Warcraft ever came along.

So, it can sort kinda really look like Warcraft, just don't use anything specifically/exclusively tied to Warcraft. This advice would also apply to a Starcraft parody...