voobly had a all time peak during first phases of corona 11Voobly is still a thing? Didnt DE kill voobly? All pros moved...
voobly had a all time peak during first phases of corona 11Voobly is still a thing? Didnt DE kill voobly? All pros moved...
Depends on how you define "still a thing"Voobly is still a thing? Didnt DE kill voobly? All pros moved...
This mod broke my wololokingdoms version on voobly. Furthermore, i now cant restore or join restored games without an autocrash on regular aoc games. Wouldnt recommend this to anyone.
This mod broke my wololokingdoms version on voobly. Furthermore, i now cant restore or join restored games without an autocrash on regular aoc games. Wouldnt recommend this to anyone.
Very impressive work, but don't you think that website name is tempting fate a little bit?
Corporate lawyers are very expensive and if Microsoft couldn't budget enough money to make DE properly it is doubtful they would expend a lot of effort on a legal fight where the defense can draw things out easily due to the overlapping meanings of the "de" abbreviation.
I suspect Microsoft's in-house legal team will feel rather different if this comes to their attention. The truth is, we've been remarkably fortunate about how Voobly/WK has been allowed to flourish despite being colorably a competitor with an existing Microsoft product. Putting up a website that tries to stealthily take advantage of the "AOE2 DE" label is a great way to have that charitable treatment disappear.
As we say in the webpage, we are not Microsoft haters nor want to steal market share of their game. Except for the adaptative Age of Mandala, AoE II DE still has a lot of gameplay advantages over what we have adapted here. Our only aim is to allow as many people as possible to enjoy the current state of the game, even if they don't have a powerful enough computer or preffer the lobby system for looking for games.I don't disagree with your point that it is an unnecessary risk, I just think you are overstating the actual likelihood of Microsoft doing anything about it. Corporate lawyers are expensive even if employed directly and the actual benefit to getting the site renamed is dubious at best. Someone cannot play on this "competitor" platform without first giving Microsoft money to access the IP and this competitor platform has a proven history of adding value to the IP, so what do they get out of being harsh on it now when they have indicated they do not view DE as a long term investment of their own?
Obviously law differentiates in different countries so an absolute answer is difficult, but you won't find a judge who will believe that "aoe2de" does not stand for age of empires 2 definitive edition when it's literally the content of the web site. Also, in most countries (that i know of, so most of europe and USA) it doesn't even matter since the law also protects from anything that's too similar that could be mixed up. ICANN doesn't check for trademark and copyright, all they do is check if the domain is available. It even says so in their FAQ.As for the webpage name, the discussion is irrelevant. Microsoft doesn't own every word that starts with "aoe". The one responsible for web page names is ICANN, the organization that distributes them.
I don't think you understand how this works, ICANN is certainly not responsible for investigating whether any URL infringes on trademark or copyright, not to mention whether the website itself infringes on IP. It would be one thing if your website, www.aoe2de.com, led to an entirely unrelated page - but you literally have "Age of Empires II" on the page itself. Age of Empires II is a trademark.As for the webpage name, the discussion is irrelevant. Microsoft doesn't own every word that starts with "aoe". The one responsible for web page names is ICANN, the organization that distributes them. The domain name "aoe2de" was not registered so it could be taken by anyone, us or the "Affiliation Of Europeans to Destroy England".
I don't think you understand how this works, ICANN is certainly not responsible for investigating whether any URL infringes on trademark or copyright, not to mention whether the website itself infringes on IP. It would be one thing if your website, www.aoe2de.com, led to an entirely unrelated page - but you literally have "Age of Empires II" on the page itself. Age of Empires II is a trademark.
And this is all ignoring the fact that you are still distributing their assets. If MS really wanted to, they could drag you to court in a second. You could try and defend your heart out all you like, that costs money, MS has more, and the page will be pulled to conform to DMCA regardless so it wouldn't be worth it for you. It is very, very fortunate that MS hasn't done so yet so why would you risk having this occur by antagonising them? Microsoft is well within their rights to take action - and here's the kicker - even if the action would be eventually unsuccessful in court. If MS really wanted to, they could send notice to every single streamer who's ever broadcasted DE for infringing on their IP. Would they ever be stupid enough to do that? Nope. Would it be successful in court? Almost definitely not.* Would it nontheless be an expensive, lengthy process that MS is far more likely to be able to sustain indefinitely than any of the streamers would care to? Probably!
More to the point, your website tarnishes the XBox brand. If you head to aoe2de.com, one of the first things you see is " We are no Microsoft haters, but we certainly hate their subsidiary company called “XBox” for what they have done to us in the past 15 years". Rightfully or wrongfully, this is a sure way to piss them off. I guarantee you that if you asked a suit at MS the intangible value of the XBox brand would be worth (at least in their minds, if not in reality) orders of magnitude more than any money than AOE2:DE has ever and will ever bring in. They are very likely to be protective of that branding. Your only saving grace is that the website is unlikely to have enough traffic for MS to notice.
tl;dr: for the sake of this community and the continued existence of voobly (which really should last as long as possible, because who knows what will happen to DE's servers down the track), please don't go out of your way to piss off MS.
* It's actually an open question as to whether streaming gameplay is considered transformative enough for a defense and it's never had a day in US court, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqmzxw0t6Ok for an interesting overview aimed at laymen - but regardless, it would be a defense, which requires you to get in front of a judge, which will already set you back tens of thousands!