With the advent of "Warcraft 3: Reforged," there were hopes that the custom game scene that thrived on the original game would be revived. The idea for the later "Dota 2" and "League of Legends" was born because of the custom games of "Warcraft 3. However, the likelihood of a major revival of that scene seems quite low.

The reason for this lies in Blizzard's recent changes to its usage policy. For starters, custom games using third-party copyrighted material are prohibited; as Blizzard forum user ThunderPope points out, this means that "Anime Fight," "DBZ Tribute," and "Pimp My Mario" such as Warcraft 3", which means that custom games like "Anime Fight", "DBZ Tribute", and "Pimp My Mario" cannot be remade.

This type of restriction is not uncommon these days; Creative Assembly has a similar policy for Total War's Steam Workshop content. It states, "Please refrain from creating mods that provoke, threaten, or antagonize other groups, reference other IPs, or create sexually explicit content." However, even so, there is no shortage of people making Total War mods based on "The Lord of the Rings" and "Game of Thrones."

A large part of Blizzard's policy details that all custom game ownership in Reforged belongs to Blizzard and not to the creators. In other words, Blizzard can do whatever it wants with any custom game, including removing it entirely if its content is deemed inappropriate. This is also a very common policy.

However, where Blizzard goes a bit further than other policies, including those created by Epic Games and Riot, is that it immediately and fully owns the copyright to all custom games. This means that custom games created for "Warcraft 3: Reforged" cannot be duplicated anywhere else. This gives Blizzard the authority to shut down stand-alone versions of custom games created in "Reforged."

Given that some of the custom games in "Warcraft III" went on to become some of the most successful games of all time, this move may not be that surprising; while Blizzard got nothing, companies like Riot and Valve took the idea and made a lot of money. With this new policy, if the next Dota 2 is made inside Warcraft 3: Reforged, Blizzard will have full ownership and profits.

Matt Morris, lead designer for Warcraft 3: Reforged, recently spoke about the team's decision to go the other way and open up custom games and empower their creators. He said, "Anything we can do to give more power to users who want to create maps like this and keep the custom mode moving forward."