Blizzard Entertainment Chief Operating Officer (COO) Paul Sams led a press conference in Seoul, South Korea this past Thursday (Dec 2, 2010) to lash out at cable channels MBC Game, and OnGameNet.
Blizzard will strongly defend their intellectual property against anyone that continues to broadcast Starcraft tournaments without the consent of the company.
KeSPA sold broadcasting rights to local broadcasters in 2007 without Blizzard Entertainment’s consent, action that triggered their relationship with Blizzard to deteriorate, according to The Korea Times.
 Blizzard Quote: |
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“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,’’ Paul Sams told Korean journalists at the Park Hyatt Seoul in Samseongdong. “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. Classifying StarCraft and other e-sports as part of the public domain deprives developers such as Blizzard of their IP rights. There will be no incentive to do what Blizzard had done to balance the games for competition, which is a more difficult task than creating a normal game.’’ | ||
Read the full article at Korea Times.
The problem here is Blizzard hasn’t done anything for the ESports, and that’s a fact.
I’d say 50% for Kespa and 50% for Blizzard would be the best idea. After all, esports exist because Kespa, not because Blizzard.