Last year, lawyers for Blizzard Entertainment drew attention to the Turtle WoW fan server and filed a lawsuit — questions arose regarding copyright infringement. The modders not only developed an unofficial game client, but also planned to assemble a new one based on the Unreal Engine 5 engine.
It has now become known that the court has ruled in favor of Blizzard:
- all those involved in the project must immediately and permanently cease: development, operation, updating, support and advertising of Turtle WoW and modified clients, including the version on UE5
- a ban has been imposed on the publication of source code and guides for launching private / emulated servers
- it is forbidden to collect donations and other payments related to prohibited projects and activities
The parties concluded a "confidential settlement agreement" and now the modders must take "undisclosed" actions.
Players fear the complete closure of Turtle WoW. However, some hope that the project will simply be restricted from access / payments in the West and they will be able to continue playing through workarounds.
Dissatisfied users noted that on the "pirate" Turtle WoW, developers actively released new content, and support worked much faster and better than on the official servers.
Several weeks ago, a major update was released for WoW Turtle with a new location, faction, dungeon, 20-player raid, boss and other content.