Remember last month someone remade StarCraft using HTML5, thus creating a game that was playable within your browser itself? It was a pretty cool project, and we say “was” because that project is no more. It turns out that Blizzard didn’t really appreciate the fanmade project and has since gotten GitHub to take it down.
According to a message that the project’s creator Ryuta received, it read, “This repository is a blatant, direct, literal copy of the StarCraft software and is disturbing [sic] source code and artwork assets owned by Blizzard without permission.” However it seems in the process, GitHub has also removed some of Ryuta’s original work along with the copyrighted materials.
Speaking to TorrentFreak, Ryuta said, “Removing just the copyrighted assets is acceptable, but they shouldn’t have removed the whole project. The JavaScript code is written by me, they have no right to remove these files too. It will be difficult to get my files back on GitHub, but I plan to continue developing the project and host it on my own site.”
We can’t say that we are too surprised that Blizzard has reacted this way. In the past we have seen the company go after gamers who would use their likeness and assets to create mods, but at the same time they have also endorsed certain mods and given it their blessing, but we suppose in this case they decided not to.