14 DAY TRIAL // An executive from Blizzard has stated that his company might soon take legal action against those Korean television stations that are broadcasting tournaments built around Starcraft, the real time strategy game series, without explicit approval from the developers.
The Korea Times newspaper quotes Paul Sams, who is the chief operations officer of Blizzard, as saying, “It’s unfortunate that the e-sports industry in Korea is lagging behind other industries in recognition of intellectual property (IP) rights and the basic principles related to them. Korea is the only region in the world where we have had to resort to litigation to protect our IP rights.”
The two main targets of criticism cited by the Blizzard executive in the article are MBC game and OnGameNet.
The move is probably a direct result of the problems that have been brewing since early in 2010 between Blizzard and the Korean e-Sports Players Association over the right to create and to broadcast tournaments based around Starcraft.
The player association has taken up the position that, when used for competitive gaming, Starcraft is in the public domain even though the activities generate quite a bit of revenue in South Korea, where the game is widely played.
Blizzard disputes this idea, with Paul Sams saying, “StarCraft is not a public domain offering, as Blizzard has invested significant money and resources to create the StarCraft game and the overall StarCraft universe.”
Blizzard also says that it is acting on principle in this matter and is not aiming to create a monopoly on the revenue generated by Starcraft tournaments in South Korea, highlighting the fact that the country has only generated five percent of the overall sales of Starcraft in the last three years.
Blizzard is at the moment working on Heart of the Swarm, the next installment in the Starcraft 2 saga, which does not currently have a launch date and will focus on the Zerg.