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votes
Blizzard Entertainment files lawsuit against World of Warcraft private server Turtle WoW
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- Title
- Popular World Of Warcraft Fan Servers Hit With Blizzard Lawsuit
- Authors
- Cher Thompson, Mary Kassel, Lukas Shayo, Nicolas Ayala, Matthew Thomas
- Published
- Aug 30 2025
- Word count
- 429 words
Surprised it's taken this long. Turtle WoW is huge. It has half a million accounts and reached nearly fifty thousand concurrent players this month. They had been advertising their recent patch a ton with a pretty big presence on social media, to the point that Blizzard also took down their trailer for that patch on YouTube. So they have really been shooting themselves in the foot in my opinion, and been arrogant/naive that they could keep this all up. They are also working on porting the game into UE5 which, again, why would you draw so much attention to yourself?
All of us on TWoW play on it because despite being free, it's somehow better than the subscriptionbased official Blizzard servers. Those ones have major botting and gold selling problems, and there is basically none of it on TWoW. They have also developed a ton of custom stuff, improved on classes, races, added a dozen new zones, new dungeons, even new raids, most of it high quality and nearly indiscernible in quality from official WoW. So it really is not a surprise to anyone that there is a lawsuit. From the article:
Cannot emphasize the point about donations/in-game shop enough. t's not quite pay to win, but you can buy an item that gives you a summonable vendor, auction house, bank, etc., which is true quality of life. It runs like €20 each though. There's also mounts and pets etc. just like the official game has. You can also buy a house for your guild for €90 - someone in my guild has done this twice. And a lot of others bought aforementioned stuff. Safe to say with the many thousands of players that TWoW has, they are likely making bank from it. Undoubtedly also attracting negative attention from Blizzard to sue.
ETA: discussions on WoW reddit here and Classic WoW reddit here.
You know, I'd be curious to know if a savvy lawyer could beat Blizzard on grounds of statute of limitations, which best I can tell is 3 years from either discovery or violation.
It's been 7+ years since it came online. I'd be hard pressed to believe that it took Blizzard 4 years to find it and submit a lawsuit. Ditto for Kronos WoW.
If I were a lawyer (and I'd love to have one critique my line of thought), I'd demand discovery of the last 7 years of all Blizzard internal communication to provide proof that they hadn't discovered it until 4 years ago, along with a list of methods in which they discover illicit private servers.
There would have to be some incredible legal bullshit to believe it took 4+ years for someone at Blizzard to google "popular private WoW server" and file the copyright claim.
Obligatory disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and I have not played WoW beyond the demo ages ago.
The way I read this, if it hypothetically applied to this private WoW server, is that Blizzard could sue for damages for the last 3 years (assuming today is the discovery date). If the discovery date was over 3 years ago, that doesn't magically wipe away any infringement charges. If it somehow did absolve the private server operator from past infringement charges, they would still likely be shut down to stop continued infringement.
Assuming the service uses some variation of the official WoW client (especially if it provides a download of it from their site), It would easily be decided in court that the private server is resulting in loss of income for Blizzard while clearly using copyrighted assets, code, etc. I looked at a previous version of their site with Wayback Machine, and saw they use the full name "World of Warcraft" a few times, and I would guess some of the other terms are WoW specific.
One service I have seen skirt around this is PokeMMO. They very clearly do not use any phrasing or logos that would directly infringe on Pokemon. Perhaps the most risky thing they do is include screenshots. But in order to use the client, you have to provide your own ROM of one of the pokemon games, so their client contains absolutely no official assets or code. Nintendo is not shy about copyright enforcement, and this has been around since 2013.
Huh, I was going to say "nah, violation is continuous" but a read of that article actually says there is absolutely grounds for time-barring the suit. Wow, that's kinda nuts.
Yeah, it makes sense. It avoids issues where a patent troll waits for some other company to succeed and then clamp down only when they have a lot of money to take.
I've long been of the opinion that WoW private servers are basically reverse engineering and copyright does/should not apply to the extent that Blizzard argues for go after them.
Presuming the user buys the client and changes the file that points it to another server, there is no copyright infringement there. They purchased software and personally used it as they see fit.
Presuming the people running the private server have developed their own software, with no knowledge of Blizzard's code on the server side (which they absolutely do not have), it's just reverse engineering. Which is legal and not something copyright applies to. You study the control messages sent between the client and the server, you study how the game behaves when running normally, and you independently reimplement those on your own server software.
The content of the game is all in the client. The server just instructs it to act.
To an extent, that's what Stop Killing Games is trying to do albeit after official servers close down, which is to have sanctioned methods of reproducibility like private servers without having to hand over IP rights and the like.
Nobody is willing to take the plunge into an actual court case to set precedent though. It's mostly big dudes like Blizzard and Nintendo throwing out C&Ds to force the kids to back down.
Maybe you're right and this isn't a copyright case. But who has the cash to fight Blizzard on that front?
The market elements on the private server are likely drawing the most ire. If they just took donations, they'd have a better argument for being a noncommercial fan project.
I think the issue comes from them profiting off it with the in-game shops and donations. I don't know how much it costs to run and maintain the private server, nor to hire people to develop new content, but... Well, they're making enough to hire at least 100 people for various positions. Don't know if the team is full-time or how much they pay (the forum post I found mentions it includes developers, artists, modelers, writers and game masters, and I know that writers are usually hired for projects rather than full-time), but that implies a decent amount of profit to afford it.
I am not a lawyer, but I don't think the reverse engineering argument stands up in this case. It would be one thing if they reverse engineered the code to make their own, original game. Plenty of clones of popular games exist. But this isn't about the code, they're directly using World of Warcraft branding as a selling point. Emphasis on selling, since again, they're most likely making a profit off this server.
They might be adding and developing totally new content, they may have developed the code from scratch. But the base is still indisputably World of Warcraft. Not even "WoW with a different coat of paint", or some derivative of it. It's literally WoW, it is based on a specific version of WoW. Anyone who plays it, plays it because it's World of Warcraft from 2004, but with upgraded content.
Fan-made works usually avoid profits because of this sort of thing. Plenty of totally free projects get shut down by the owners of the IP (just look at the recent Bionicle fan game shut down before its release after eight years of work), but adding profits to the mix? That's a different ballgame entirely. Especially in a case like this, where they're directly competing with the actual owners of the IP. Even if they didn't make it a direct copy, using the World of Warcraft branding and making a profit off it would still cause the same issues.
Note, I do support private servers. But adding profits to the mix changes things and makes it too messy. It would be far too easy for private servers to fall victim to the same greed that can turn people away from public servers.
It is not just reverse engineering. Turtle WoW actually distributes Blizzard's assets along with their client from their website.
Usually they get hit for using copyright material in advertising
Was only a matter of time before they drew the ire of Blizzard's lawyers. They've been very brazen about advertising their servers on social media, and I had joined the server several weeks ago after what I can best describe as a marketing blitz.
I skimmed through the details of the legal complaint and it's a hefty one. They've not only outed the identities and locations of people on their team, but have also thrown around serious accusations of Turtle WoW being an elaborate criminal enterprise and invoked RICO (the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) in their lawsuit. Because apparently running a private WoW server puts you on the same footing as organizations like MS-13 and the Sinaloa Cartel...
In all honesty, I find it rather ironic that a corporate tech giant (Microsoft) that has been leaning heavily into AI, using it in the marketing, development and customer support of its games, and has also been accused of widespread copyright infringement in the training of its LLMs is now crying wolf about unauthorized use of its trademarks.
AI bros are already trying to eliminate any and all moral arguments against piracy by arguing that their rampant copyright infringement is "fair use" when it comes to training models.
Not really. It's a civil RICO claim, not a criminal one. It's just alleging the Turtle WoW team negatively affected their business via racketeering. Which is probably true.
I see they're trying to claim EULA violations. I would really like to have a survey company attain a significantly significant resule of whether the average non-lawyer could accurately describe what any random complete clause of a shrinkwrapped EULA.
The entire concept of "perpetual contract" for purchased goods needs to be eliminated. EULAs for services should mostly be limited to "you only have access if you keep paying" and "we have the right to ban you if you're abusing the service."
Don't get me wrong, I hate EULAs but the problem arises when you get banned and ask " what constitutes abuse?" For instance, say I use Spotify to download the music and play it on my own, then they ban me. Why? To steam the music it has to be downloaded to my phone, even momentarily, so why can't I keep a local copy, rip the album art and transfer it to my iPod? So then Spotify has to add "only play music through our app or web portal" and now third party apps are banned and the API is useless because, obviously, Spotify isn't Napster.
Contact law gets this way because contact lawyers spend lots of time digging through contacts to find ways to get around them. The layperson is completely overwhelmed and you the up with a 200 page contract that doesn't even stop people from trying to groom minors in the game lobby.
The answer tends to be pretty easy for services like Spotify. Pretty much the same way Tildes handles bans. Spotify bans you for whatever reason they like, refunds whatever or remaining unused time, and doesn't owe a single thing, not even an explanation.
Don't let the rules lawyers contest service bans. They'll be out of business soon enough if they're ban happy, so they'd probably only reserve that for people actively attacking the service instead of making unofficial clients.
Complex contract law has its place, particularily in B2B contracts where both sides would have a lawyer. Or where you're borrowing literal things like apartments. But when selling goods and services to people? Nah.
You sell a DVD to me? I can use it how I wish, short of making illicit copies, none of this "public performance licensing."
I buy a phone, you don't get to sue me if I break your bootloader encryption. I buy cell setvice, you can't prevent me from using tethering via bullshit locks.
The situation with private servers is unfortunate. There’s a lot of creativity and passion on display that’s often absent from the official product that might never get to see the light of day otherwise, given the herculean effort involved in building an MMO from scratch. Even “just” cloning circa 2004 WoW 1.0 is something that’d take many years as an unfunded indie project if it reaches the finish line at all. I totally understand the desire to use something that already exists as a base.
IP holders will never allow it so long as their works haven’t become public domain though, by which point the franchise and all the software involved will have become so thoroughly irrelevant that it can no longer serve as a base.
I imagine a lot of people don't appreciate the truly Herculean effort involved. I was part of a MapleStory private server from before there was even a source available. It took until Odin for anyone to have anything to play, and it took something like 2 years to have a super buggy version 1.
Plus, the skills are niche with limited commercial applicability. Turning Wireshark captures into a working game server is crazy, and I can't think of many jobs that would need that.
Remaking World of Warcraft using Unreal Engine was a risky, dumb move. Turtle WoW has also been advertising on Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. They flew too close to the sun, calling too much attention to themselves.
It makes sense from one angle however, which is that the old clients’ days are numbered. Already they don’t run on Macs without WINE and are starting to exhibit quirks with current versions of Windows and modern GPUs. In the coming years it’s going to require a VM running old Windows to run well even under Windows which a lot of players won’t be interested in or will find confusing. It’s something of an existential threat looming in the background, so I can see why they decided to try to do something about it.
Unfortunately it brought a different existential threat along for the ride.
I kinda hope the source to the client finds its way out one way or another, sans Blizzard IP, so it can live on similarly to how private server software has been able to.
The current non-Unreal client runs perfectly fine on Windows. Turtle ships it with several tweaks. As a player I personally have nothing to gain from Unreal. I wish this project never existed. Personally.
Same. Didn't want it, diverted resources, was extremely dangerous. What a catastrophe.
Hopefully Project Epoch comes out soon, and makes a point to stay under the radar.
Risky as hell but I gotta admit I was curious to find out what that would've been like had they completed it. Oh well.
According to their roadmap, Turtle WoW 2.0 (the Unreal 5 client) is due to come out around November/December this year.
It's highly debatable how much danger Turtle WoW is actually in.
Based on the case filings, the only person named in the lawsuit who lives within US jurisdiction is Akalix, their head of marketing, and that guy is going to be taken to the fucking cleaners. The rest of the named team members are based in Netherlands, Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic and Russia. Last I checked, Russia doesn't really give a fuck about US copyright law.
If they secure an injunction and get the server blacklisted from social media platforms, or even blacklisted by Visa, Mastercard and PayPal, they could be in trouble, but also, they could just switch to cryptocurrencies to solicit donations.
God, the fucking balls to be involved in a project like this while being in the US.
Blizzard put out a survey somewhat recently to see what users would want in a classic + server. This reminds me of them shutting down the vanilla private server Nostalrius before they opened their own classic servers.
With how well Turtle wow is doing it feels like they could have just purchased the server and hired on the team and reset everyone to level 1 for an official release and rename is Classic +. Maybe get rid of the donation mechanics that they didn't like or heck keep them in since they like micro transactions.
There’s no way Blizzard would ever do a direct officialization of TWoW’s version simply because it’s dependent on the old WoW client, which is full of unpatched bugs and vulnerabilities, doesn’t run on modern Macs at all without emulation, and is entirely incompatible with their server architecture. They’re not going to want to use TWoW’s Mangos (server software fork) either.
The closest that is reasonably possible is if they put the unique TWoW assets and server content through the same conversion process they did the original WoW assets and then included them with the official Classic client, which would entail a multi month dev and beta period at shortest.
I was thinking a long those lines, more that they were buying all the custom code and balancing that they had included and then using those ideas in their Classic+ release. A pipe dream for sure since they'll want to do their own thing which I have little hope of being better.
Been waiting for this day.
I've been playing on TWoW since it was about a hundred total people (hence the cross faction grouping), which I'd say was something like 5 or 6 years ago. I wouldn't say I've been a constant presence, but I dip in and out for a couple of weeks a couple of times per year.
It's really a fantastic server, but the way they've been going hard advertising and pushing for their UE5, there days were numbered. Had gotten my friends hooked on it and even mentioned as much to them, but they didn't really believe me, given this is their first Private Server experience.
I grew up with just Warcraft (II maybe?), playing games over direct dial modem connections. I tried WoW once early on but couldn't get into it. So to say I'm out of the loop is an understatement. But I would think the smart movie here would be to learn the dynamics that work and make their own WoW clone. Since they are so deeply rooted in the server development, it seems like they have the chops for it. Or maybe they are leveraging a huge amount of the core art/map/character design that would be hard to replicate?
Yes. They have copied everything one to one and then built on top of it. What they do is nowhere near from scratch - the house was already built, they just renovate it and make new rooms.
Never played WoW, but way back when Ultima Online was pretty new, I only ever played it on private shards. (Shout out to "The Alter Relm")
I just kind of assumed Orgin was cool with it, but now I'm not sure.