You had to have known that this was a matter of “when” and not “if” Blizzard would legally go after the extremely popular World of Warcraft rogue server Turtle WoW, and now we know that “when” was this past weekend, as the studio officially filed a legal complaint against the server operators.
“The Defendants in this action have built an entire business on large scale, egregious, and ongoing infringement of Blizzard’s intellectual property,” the complaint opens. “Through Turtle WoW, Defendants have found a lucrative way to exploit and profit from the popularity of the WoW game experience.”
The rest of the filing provides examples of Turtle WoW’s operators stealing artwork and iconography, describes “brazenly escalating […] efforts to cannibalize and disrupt WoW” through social media presence and influencer partnerships as it planned to recreate the MMORPG in Unreal Engine 5 as part of a “Turtle WoW 2.0” release, and argues that the server “induced hundreds of thousands of users to breach contracts that they entered into with Blizzard” while raking in what it believes is possibly millions of dollars from user donations.
“In the two decades since WoW first was released, Blizzard has invested an enormous amount of time and money into creating, maintaining, and updating the game. But when unscrupulous actors such as Defendants seek toprofit from Blizzard’s valuable intellectual property (including protected code and game assets) they undermine Blizzard’s own efforts to deliver classic and community-driven content, devalue the WoW experience, and cause serious harm to Blizzard and the many artists, programmers, game designers, and other creative professionals who have worked (and continue to work) tirelessly to create a unique and enjoyable gaming experience for both new and longtime players.”
Blizzard is seeking the complete shutdown of Turtle WoW, all copies of data from the project, a full account of money earned from the project, relinquishment of the Turtle WoW domain to Blizzard, and the usual statutory damages and other associated fees. Players are already saying farewell, though many players seem to be shrugging it off as a problem easily solved by using VPNs to access the server in Europe, the ease of doing which is part of the problem. Server operators told Discord fans that the game is going nowhere and that the team is “prepared to face” the “challenges” of a legal battle.
This isn’t the only legal action we’ve seen against rogue servers this summer; Daybreak is in the middle of a lawsuit targeting profit-seeking EverQuest emulator operators too.
