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Upload A Wang To Battle.net, Get It Deleted
Blizzard is fessing up to deleting custom StarCraft II maps published to Battle.net in its official forums. The stated policy basically says that Blizzard can and will do what it wants with your maps (and the EULA for StarCraft II goes so far as to claim that all maps made with the editor are straight-up property of Blizzard), so no surprise that there are some pieces of questionable content being taken down.
The best part about the whole outcry over this (and boy oh boy, are the official forums full of rage right now) is twofold. First, the popular Ultimate Tank Defense map got taken down because the incoming enemy units apparently kind of vaguely looked like a swastika, so there’s plenty of failure to go around there: the map’s creators for not realizing it, someone being sensitive enough to think that the white power movement is advancing its cause with StarCraft II maps, and Blizzard for taking long enough to let the map’s creators know why they had taken it down to let the nerdrage reach fever pitch.
Second, Blizzard taking down maps for arbitrary reasons should come as no surprise to anyone who knows someone who’s been banned off of a false positive for hacking in World of Warcraft (and by that, I mean 80% of the player base). No, the real rage should be directed at the bizarro ways that Battle.net presents custom maps to players. By only allowing players to only maps that they’ve published themselves, you’re forced to download and re-publish other peoples’ work as your own if you want to play it on Battle.net (and, of course, there’s no multiplayer in StarCraft II other than through Battle.net). So apparently a few hundred people are all “authors” of every popular map out there.
I love StarCraft II, and I love that Blizzard is giving away the massively powerful Galaxy Editor with it. I just wish that there was a way to play modmakers’ creations that made sense. Though I'm not opposed to a policy that prevents an inappropriate "StarCraft II: Wangs of Liberty" map from being distributed over Battle.net.
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