Blizzard Sues World of Warcraft Private Server Project Ascension Developers
Lawyers continue to track unofficial servers of the popular MMORPG.
In June, news broke about a new blow from Blizzard Entertainment's lawyers against World of Warcraft private servers. This time, their attention was drawn to Project Ascension.
In their statement, company representatives indicated that "the defendants in this case [Project Ascension developers] have built an entire business on massive, blatant, and ongoing infringement of Blizzard's intellectual property rights."
Lawyers emphasize that to play World of Warcraft, users must have a licensed copy (client) and an active WoW account, which provides access to Blizzard's remote game servers, as well as pay a subscription. However, emulated servers, such as those offered by Project Ascension, allow playing modified versions of WoW without the game publisher's/copyright holder's permission and without a licensed copy of the game.
Blizzard representatives claim that such unauthorized Project Ascension servers "harm the gaming experience in various ways." For example, the servers "distract loyal WoW players," and also create security risks for users, fragment the WoW gaming community, and cause confusion about which versions of WoW are official and supported.
Lawyers pointed out that Project Ascension encourages piracy, negatively affects the reputation of official WoW, and leads to "significant revenue losses" for Blizzard:
When a player switches to an unauthorized, illegal server, such as Project Ascension, and has a negative experience (including security issues or degraded game quality), this confusion damages Blizzard's official WoW brand and leads to significant revenue losses. Private servers, such as Project Ascension, also encourage and facilitate video game piracy by allowing users to avoid paying for a gaming experience that Blizzard has invested significant resources in creating.
Blizzard previously took similar action against Turtle WoW. After legal proceedings this year, the project was finally shut down. The developers subsequently founded Moonwhisper Games studio and now plan to work on their own MMORPG.
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