No, it's because people put the time and effort into creating and maintaining original content. That content has dwindled drastically, partly because of people editing maps against the mapmaker's permission, which makes mapmakers no longer want to put the work into creating something that's just going to be stolen (aka, taken and used without their permission).

People edit and improve maps legitimately most of the time, all it takes is running a message by the mapmaker first. You say you want to talk to him now, but that should have happened before you started distributing an unofficial version of his map.

Also, I'm pretty sure you don't know what open source is. You're just taking someone's work and modifying it against their wishes.

It's not just the administration who is behind this view. It's pretty much the whole SEN community. As a group of designers and creators, we put a lot of effort into what we do make, so it's only natural for us dislike other people taking credit for our work. Which does happen all too often. And we're not saying that you're guilty of taking credit for the whole map.

It's not even unnatural for a designer to pick up a map someone else made and tinker around with it or improve it, even releasing out into the public. It's not ill-intentioned, after all. But at the same time we've all been around for quite some time, and this issue has been discussed rather thoroughly. And intention doesn't undermine the fact that we are editing someone's work, without their permission. It's simply an indecent thing to do.

You will find that we are largely not anti-open source. In fact, it's quite the opposite, most of us are in support of it, and we offer a lot of work that you can just take up and play around with. If you're inspired by a particular map and think it could be better, by all means, make it. If you can't figure something out ask for help or just look through our more than generous knowledge base. We're not opposed to people posting protected maps and asking how particular systems work.

We support open-source, but we do not force it on other people. This is a community of designers, not a community of fascists.

TL;DR update of events:
HellFire uploads stolen copy to DLDB. DankBudSmoker joins SEN to defend his map edits. He and his 9 other accounts get banned for map stealing/ban evasion. HellFire is banned for evading a prior ban involving map stealing. The stolen copy (and link to it) are removed from the DLDB. DankBudSmoker is unbanned assuming he follows through in not spreading the map and keeps it private. Hopefully topblaireau comes back and reads all this and stays for good.

Wow it's been quite a few years since those days..

I would like to clarify a few things here.

1. hellfire(killer2121) is a good friend of mine and he had my permission to upload the map to this site.

2. I didnt even bother to ask Topblaireau to modify the map. I knew he would say no. There were changes my friends and I wanted to see that we knew were never going to happen so I made them happen.

3. The map was never intended to be a private release, it was all lies.

4. Pretty much the day after this thread I started hosting the map publicly and it exploded. Topblaireaus RCP version essentially disappeared.

5. Topblaireau did say he was done with the map and was focusing mainly on bugfixing. Any future releases he planned were going to be minor.

6. Maps are made by people who work very hard on them, Topblaireau being no exception. Having said that I feel no remorse for modifying his map without his permission, I made more than 15% changes to his map which is the legal requirement to prevent copyright infringement. I completely rewrote all the the triggers, redid the locations, I spent 3 weeks on this map. Poker ELITE is mine.

7. The only thing I regret is lying about the map being a private release, if I could go back I would still have made this map but I wouldnt have lied about my intentions.


Topblaireau if you ever end up seeing this, I didnt steal your map. I took your project, reverse engineered it, and completely rebuilt it from scratch the way I wanted it to be.

Im not agreed.

You "took" my project, without asking me or permission.

End of discussion

I disagree, if it was truly your work and only your work, you would have started from scratch, not modified work he already did. We're obviously way outside the realm where legality applies, this is an ethical issue not legal. I see your stance as childishly immature, "I didn't do anything illegal, I just took his work and changed (read: plagiarized) it without his permission." If you wanted to create a fresh map from scratch inspired by things you saw in his map, that would be another story but directly editing his work and calling it your own is theft/plagiarism, plain and simple. Anyway, it's an old, tired argument but just my $0.02.

As one of the biggest zealots in anti-plagiarism mapping, I'm aware that my opinion may be considered a bit extreme by others.

There are 2 significant points that devious creators use to justify tweaking the content of others and releasing it as their own. In short terms:
- Mapping does not profit
- Maps do not have security

Now in detail:
- Mappers do not make profit directly from mapping. This isn't like Youtube or Twitch where creators get commissions and paychecks. HOWEVER, this allows mappers to justify the creation of Patreon/Paypal accounts to take donations. The idea of taking donations was not big in SCBW's prime years, but it has become huge in SC2's recent years.

- The SCBW developers never intended the map editor (and UMS mode) to be used to the professional degree that is commonplace today... a big reason why map security is non-existent in the original software. Although it was improved in SC2, I don't consider that to be enough.

Map "locking" is an invaluable technique that I wish the community had better knowledge of. I've often heard the complaint that it is a selfish practice, but I strongly disagree. It is vital in preserving the experience of the map and the creator's vision of it. We absolutely cannot have trolls hosting versions with subtle tweaks that rig the map in a certain way, and to prevent this, we unfortunately also have to lock out good-intentioned people wanting to improve (or even bug fix) said map.

Last thing I want to address is less important (giving proper credits):
- When permission is acquired to tweak a map, ensure that the original author's name is noted as the creator, and list the specific parts that you've changed.
- When building a map from scratch that is inspired or has strong resemblance to another, adding "Inspired by (map) by (author)" is always a good idea.

why didnt he do that instead of taking satos map, why didnt sato do that instead of taking novas map, why didnt nova do that instead of taking 2highs map, why didnt 2high do that instead of taking liveingraces map

u act like im the first and only person to take a map that was no longer going to be worked on and kept it alive. here we are almost a decade later and i still work on this map today.

plus Im one of the only authors that has actually credited the original engine to liveingrace (topblaireau didnt...), and i credited topblaireau, sato, and nova in ELITE as the previous Editors (u know, editors, not creators of the map), so dont sit there and say i credited it as my own.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Oct 27 2021, 4:59 pm by DankBudSmoker.

you on the other hand have excellent points here. I did feel bad for causing topblaireau to quit so i actually asked for permission from sato to work on his version instead.