Earlier this week we reported that a group of eager fans was hard at work on a StarCraft II mod which they were calling “World of StarCraft”. As the title suggested, the game was an MMO based on the StarCraft universe, and judging by the pre-alpha game footage which has since been removed from YouTube, it was looking extremely promising.  

Sadly, publisher Activision got wind of the project and swiftly deployed lawyers to shut down the entire operation.

Blizzard has now weighed in on the incident with an open letter:

Hi everyone,

We appreciate everyone’s interest in the matter of Ryan Winzen’s MMO-style mod for StarCraft II. Blizzard Entertainment’s official statement is as follows:

Earlier this week, a player-made StarCraft II mod called World of StarCraft and described as a “StarCraft MMO” was featured on a number of prominent gaming news sites, catching the attention of gamers as well as our own. With the name so closely resembling that of World of Warcraft, we wanted to discuss the title of the mod with the developer, and as part of our routine procedure, we contacted YouTube to request the video be removed while that discussion took place. We were also curious about the project and wanted to discuss with the developer what the mod entailed.

It was never our intention to stop development on the mod or discourage the community from expressing their creativity through the StarCraft II editor. As always, we actively encourage development of custom maps and mods for StarCraft II, as we’ve done with our strategy games in the past. That’s why we release an editor with our RTS games, and why we feature top player-created content in the custom game search. It’s also why we held a contest to spotlight the best community-crafted StarCraft II mods at last year’s BlizzCon, and why we’ll continue to improve Battle.net to better showcase player-created content.

Like many players in the community, we’re looking forward to seeing the continued development of this mod, and as part of our ongoing discussion, we’ve extended an offer to the developer to visit the Blizzard campus and meet with the StarCraft II development team. As always, we appreciate all of the efforts of the talented and enthusiastic mod-making community, and we look forward to seeing and playing what they create using the StarCraft II editor in the future.

But project lead Ryan has even more prospects now. Turns out someone over at League of Legends developer Riot Games was following the story on Pixelated Geek, and offered Ryan a job opportunity with his company in the comments under the article (classy):

“Ryan, I’d like to speak with you about potentially working for Riotgames (League of Legends). You can contact me directly at [redacted] since I think you’re awesome.”

To which, obviously, Ryan responded:

“I would be a complete idiot not to… I’ve waited my whole life for something like this. I feel like I’m in a dream man.”

D’aaw.

Discuss “World of StarCraft” in the forums