Can anyone access and link this “warlight” domain and link it because I can’t find it by typing in warlight.com?

It was warlight.net. Warlight.com is owned by someone who, at least as of 2015, was not willing to part ways with it.

Warlight.net redirects here. The expectation that the domain would be "warlight.com" is one of the reasons cited in that old thread for why they wanted Warzone.com, because they wanted a .com domain.

Today's the day. May justice prevail. Good luck Activision 🙏

Ik but warlight.com does not direct anywhere so why wouldn’t the owner just sell it lol

I hope Activision pushes for the death penalty, Inshallah.

@UFO: The site ownership information is currently anonymized but in 2015 it was owned by Warilght Industries aka Lightspeed (https://lightspeed.ca/), the number 1 ISP in Western Canada. You can contact them and ask, maybe: https://lightspeed.ca/contact-us/

It is the company name of that ISP, still, so they might want to keep owning the domain name.

Cool I can see why they would own a domain with ‘light’ in it. Tho the war part is pretty sus.

edit: light sped is an internet company

Edited 10/1/2021 19:13:58

Update (courtesy of Fizzer on Discord): the hearing on the motion to dismiss did not occur on October 1st. It was postponed to December 10th.

Wow. Those son of a warzoners

booo call of duty

Edited 10/13/2021 02:36:07

im so confused

I mean ‘Warzone’ is a pretty lame name and with the popularity of COD Warzone it makes it almost impossible to naturally find this game when googling Warzone. Definitely wouldn’t back down if Warzone was using the name first but a name change to something more fitting would potentially boost the player base.

Since this began, COD: Warzone is the first hit in a search.

This Warzone maintains the .com but the title is not simply Warzone, it follows with, "Better than Hasbro's RISK® game - Play Online Free".

Imho, War Room is more descriptive and appropriate.

My $0.02.

Or even War Arena

Well, there's a weird double-standard here, right? There's a bunch of indie games named "Warzone" made since the 1990s, including a very small turn-based strategy game of the same name that came out almost exactly a month before this Warzone (https://www.indiedb.com/games/warzone2/images/warzone-kea-games11). They got knocked out of the top spot in Google search results when Warlight rebranded; no one saw this as troublesome- after all, almost everyone understood at that time that this was just fair competition, that Warzone was "an actual english [sic] word" and not some word for those prior users to exclusively claim and demand money for.


If we're going to talk about the big guy steamrolling the little guy, there's a bunch of "little guys" this game did the exact same thing to. For years until Call of Duty: Warzone, Warzone.com never seemed to entertain the thought of asserting that trademark, even as several other new and existing "warzone" games operated (https://www.igdb.com/search?type=1&q=warzone). Indeed, back in 2015, when the top search result for "warzone" was another indie game, the question was brought up of whether those other, smaller indie devs had unregistered "warzone" trademarks (like what Warzone.com claims to have today) but that thread was never picked up:


It's not only Activision that's used "warzone" to market its games. If you search for "warzone" on the Play Store today, you'll see that the top result isn't Activision but yet another small indie "Warzone" game:



The only difference this time was that Activision went for the "warzone" trademark themselves, claiming that the word itself isn't special but their usage of it has caught hold in consumers' minds, and so they should be able to go after knock-offs (not prior users like Warzone.com, who get grandfathered in under trademark law). Then suddenly "warzone" stopped being a real word

but instead an exclusive trademark for Warzone.com to claim among not only video games but for software in general. Suddenly, the act of creating a new "warzone" that overtook the existing ones in search rankings and popularity became a transgression. Why do those other small indie games not count when Warzone claims "first to use" and seeks to register the trademark to an actual English word? Because they're small and- like Warzone until 2020- didn't bother asserting some trademark to the word "warzone"? Where do we draw the line? Not legally- that's the court's ballpark- but philosophically. If the first "little guy" to start calling itself "warzone" gets the right to that word, deserving of protection against getting overtaken in Google search results, then Warzone.com has at least a dozen little guys like that to answer to. This isn't some novel insight- some variation of "what about the 'warzone's before this one?" comes up all the time when someone tries to foster sympathy for Warzone.com off-site:


It's just a form of special pleading that the Warzone playerbase (for obvious reasons) has been a little bit blind to. Does history start in November 2017? Why does this Warzone get to demand money from others for using an actual English word? From reading the GoFundMe and associated marketing, you'd think Activision was the one going after Warzone for money and to make them stop using the word "warzone":



But they're not (the handwritten/crossed-out stuff above is obviously done in jest)- they're just suing to have the court make those claims (like the above) by Warzone.com go away. Even back in the halcyon days of this thread, when questions about why Activision would concoct a cease-and-desist out of thin air (the legal record now shows they didn't) got downvoted to the point of being hidden, no one really questioned why "we" (they're suing "us", right?) get to be David instead of the even smaller guys to whom we look a heck of a lot like Goliath.

Activision did the same thing that Warzone.com did. They just did it well. Now Warzone.com wants to get the law to say it's wrong to launch a "warzone" game and muscle out smaller guys from the search rankings.

Edited 10/16/2021 19:59:17

First of all, I'll second myself, but if I do ever need a lawyer in the US, I don't call one, I call Knyte :d (but because he'll be rich as founder and CEO of a next GAFAM, I'll have to pay him a lot, on top of begging for his time :D)

Knyte, I'm worried you may have done all these researchs, not only for our curiosity and information sakes, but also for Activision lawyers (and maybe expecting something in return from them ? Not insulting you here, true question, and "not your business" would be a fair enough answer) ?
If so, please bear in mind that the game you may (still ? ...True question) love, or have loved once upon a time, giving you probably like the rest of us, at any point, hours of good time and enjoyment, and great people to "meet" and to talk to. All that may disappear eventually, shall Fizzer lose the case. I mean, in the worst case scenario, and possibly along with making Fizzer in debt possibly for the rest of his life (I'm not adding jail though, being only realistic), and breaking the toy of thousands of daily players. So, are you ready for all that ?

I understand you feel justice must rule, whatever it takes. Plus you feel betrayed. And probably as a gifted person, those feelings are stronger for you than for any common people. But still, let's be aware of all these possible consequences.

On the betrayal part btw, we could debate on the reasons you originally raised to feel betrayed, the legitimacy of these reasons, and the legitimacy to feel the way you feel, despite other things.
Other things such as despite Fizzer being on Activision's back for money, and hidding the truth to his community (that's your point right ? Well this has, so far, still to be proven), he probably makes way low money in relation to the quality of the product he made (as an indie, compare to what giants in the gaming industry would have made with the same great product, just with massive marketing budgets), or than the amount of time and quality (as in skills) of work he has put in his product, and so on.
Nobody should be happy in case of a lie from Fizzer to its community, but what if this was the only way for Fizzer to raise enough money to defend its platform against Activision attacking its brand ? Maybe telling the less dramatic truth would have raised less money, not enough, and prevented him from defending its work ? And keeping in mind that a failure to defend himself may cause the end of 15 years of work, his baby creation, his living material, and maybe his life (nobody knows how a human being may react when losing everything ; and double effect, after having tasted success thanks to it) ?

On another subect. How would you feel, as an indie app developer, or for indie app developers, who can't afford to trademark their brand name until they have reached some amount of benefits, but in the meantime, a big guy comes, sees the marketing opportunity of stealing some of the indie customer base, just by registering the name first ? Not every indie developers was born in a rich west coast family and can afford to avoid such situation.
Fortunately, this does not happen, as law was well written, and protects not the first user to have registered a name, but the first one to have been using it (or using it widely).

That being said. Coming back to the points you are raising today.

What Fizzer may have meant when saying "Warzone being an english word" to convince the disappointed users, may be that it is the composition of 2 words having a meaning when put together, of which common sense is enough to understand : "a zone where there is a war". You can not tell the same for "Warlight" (a light where there is war ?).

Also, can this line, that Activision's lawyers must be in possession by now, thanks to their own research or not, be accountable against Fizzer ? Fizzer did not seem to be talking about legal terms, but about strategic, and own perception terms. Now, if he used a legal term in the past, without knowledge of the law on this specific subject, and using it in a hypothetic wording, what value would this have in a court ? Or to a jury ? And how related to the subject would this be ? I would therefore object this argument.

Now, showing Fizzer saying exactly the opposite in your next screenshot, may not be necessarily by dishonesty, but this time simply starting using legal terms. Legal terms, or law, was born to protect businesses. Shall we blame Fizzer for starting using legal terms once a trial is under course and being here to defend himself ?

You're raising the question why Fizzer would ask for Warzone to be registered for him and not for Activision as being using it before, despite plenty former Warzone platforms exist ? And that as such, it makes no sense.
Well it does make sense, Fizzer (maybe with his lawyers help) explained : Activision may plan to prevent any former users, including Fizzer's platform, to keep using it. And without the possibility to find another domain name related to its product that he can afford, this may mean the end of Fizzer's world. Without mentionning all the accumulated marketing effort from Fizzer around the current name that would be lost and to start over.

Of course, you may wonder how, if the threat of destroying former platforms using the name was a good enough reason to grant Fizzer with the name, could this be granted since the same could then happen by Fizzer towards other former Warzone platforms ?
Well, apparently, they are all (or is it most ? Or all of those with a significant active user base ?) discontinued. So that's one difference with Fizzer's Warzone.
Second, Fizzer did mention he would not go against previous platforms. As far as we can tell, he only goes against big giants coming after his own platform. And if word was not enough, I have very little knowledge about laws, but this may well be added in written in a court decision, if needed.

Next you're asking -and you are right, but with your obviously high intellect, you already have the answer, so are you being totally neutral ?-, why, as an existing platform using a "Warzone" name before Activision did, would Fizzer gain cause from the court, when there are (were ?) plenty other platforms prior to Fizzer using the same name ?
Well, Fizzer has been the first ever, and before Activision's, to reach a valuable number of users, or MAUs, in a "Warzone" named platform. That's a difference with other former platforms.

For me, this last point may be the key (reading what follows of your message, I think that's exactly what you mean with "drawing the line", so we may agree at least on that principle) : from how many MAUs (monthly active users) does a plaform "acquire" the "right" to register a name that has been in use by others in the past ? Or how many MAUs (and maybe countries covered by its customer base) make a name "descriptive", as in giving it a "second meaning", or reminding the platform just by its name (if I finally understood this term correctly, this is what it is about at the end of the day) ?
- If it's 50 millions, then Fizzer can't beat Activision to it.
- If it's say 100 000, then Fizzer can, and former Warzone users can not.
- Maybe even 10 000 users is already enough, and maybe Fizzer's Warzone has been the first ever "Warzone" platform to reach such a number. These estimations, giving the win to Fizzer, do not seem too unrealistic to me.
- Maybe the popularity worldwide is part of the criterias too ? If so, Fizzer matches it, and I doubt former platforms do.

Maybe this is not even that. Maybe Warzone is the only currently still active platform using that name before Activision did ? And that may be an enough reason already.

Anyways. If things were so simple, how lawyers would not know (appeal from money, rather than winning a case ? True question about lawyers' integrity), and how a court case would take so long to be decided ?

(sorry for my english, not mother (nor father :p) tongue)

Edited 10/16/2021 23:31:48

Knyte, I'm worried you may have done all these researchs, not only for our curiosity and information sakes, but also for Activision lawyers

If my forum musings tell them something they don't already know, then they need to hire better clerks. Activision's counsel, Mitchell, Silberberg & Knupp, is a law firm that routinely argues in front of the Supreme Court; they've done high-profile IP law cases before, including ones that helped take out services like Napster, and appear to hire some pretty good lawyers (based on credentials- in the United States, there's only about 12-16 good law schools. All of Activision's lawyers seem to have gone to them).

If my last post impacts the case, then that'd be especially concerning as they contain zero new information- only this community's blind spots that have been brought up by others on other platforms (or in court). There is virtually no chance anything you or I say or do would have an impact on the outcome of the case, especially given court evidentiary requirements (like the rules against hearsay). Nor is there much risk of impact to third-parties' behavior: our posts are too long to actually change anyone's opinions, and those coming to this thread have already made up their minds.

All that may disappear eventually, shall Fizzer lose the case.

This is highly implausible; see https://www.warzone.com/Forum/543174?Offset=365.

making Fizzer in debt possibly for the rest of his life

This is similarly implausible; beyond that tacked-on legal fees demand, Activision isn't even asking for money. Warzone, on the other hand, not only similarly asks for attorney's fees but also has more substantive monetary demands: they seek punitive damages from Activision simply from using the word "warzone" in the title and marketing of a game. Unlike in Europe, lawyers' fees in the US are almost always paid by the each party to its own lawyers, not by the loser (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_rule). The worst-case scenario here is a world where Warzone.com has no power to regulate others' use of the word "warzone" (or demand funds for doing so), while Activision is able to go after Call of Duty: Warzone knock-offs that use the word "warzone" to market themselves- but not after good-faith prior users like Warzone.com, who got grandfathered in.

If the priority were to simply avoid a bankruptcy scenario and protect the future of the game, all of that (plus money) has already been rejected by Warzone in settlement negotiations. Not only that but Warzone.com has more financial resources than most players realize. I can't explain why directly (due to a chilling effect), so let me do so obliquely: Have you ever been to Seattle? If you go on a seaplane or boat tour of the city, one of the places the tour guides really like to show visitors is where many of the super-wealthy Seattleites (like the Microsoft millionaires and winners of the dot-com boom) live, in mansions on the waterfront. They're some really majestic places, with varying architecture styles and all sorts of trappings of luxury- yachts, of course, but also "keeping up with the Joneses" arms-races over silly little things that normal people can't afford, like sophisticated lake trampoline systems. This place is called Mercer Island.

from how many MAUs (monthly active users) does a plaform "acquire" the "right" to register a name that has been in use by others in the past ?

This isn't how the law works and just seems like special pleading so we can draw an arbitrary line and call a leopard seal David to a killer whale's Goliath, as if the penguins further down the food chain don't matter. I'm not making a legal argument or anything in my last post, just wondering why one side calls itself the little guy when there's a lot of littler guys that could make the same claims toward it.

how lawyers would not know (appeal from money, rather than winning a case ? True question about lawyers' integrity), and how a court case would take so long to be decided ?

Cases take long in general because American courts are backlogged. So far, between April and now, all that's transpired has mainly been the parties sending documents (of claims) back and forth, about once a month. It will not be until December that even the motion to dismiss- where the court decides whether the countersuit even has legal merit if we take all the fact-claims for granted- will be heard. These motions only get heard one-at-a-time by this judge, on only one day of the week (Friday). Once judges hear these motions, they try to provide a decision within some window of time but functionally they can extend this forever, so after that next step this case could even just be in limbo while Judge Aenlle-Rocha catches up on all his work.

Cases are just slow. This one even had a 1-2 month delay simply because a lawyer went on vacation. Absent a party settling, regardless of the merits of the case, we'll most likely not see it conclude for some time.

Two tangents:

he probably makes way low money in relation to the quality of the product he made

Value and quality are somewhat arbitrary terms; the closest we have to a general mechanism for determining "value" is the market, where individual decision-makers have to constantly weigh trade-offs and decide how much they are willing to give up to acquire other things. For example, I may feel that the the quality of my labor has some value, but the realistic arbiter of that is simply just its price in a competitive market: when people pay me a certain amount, they on aggregate have communicated exactly how much they would be willing to give up in exchange to reap the benefits of my labor, by actually making those choices. Is there a much more valid measure of "value" than that already communicated in a price-coordinated competitive market? We can say anything about how much we value this game, but empirically, the value I place on my enjoyment of this game is around a few thousand hours of my life that I spent on this rather than on their alternative uses, as well as a few hundred dollars that I traded for marginal improvements in my enjoyment of this game (rather than how that money could have otherwise been spent). You could probably find similar measures for how much you have actually valued this game.

If so, please bear in mind that the game you may (still ? ...True question) love, or have loved once upon a time

I still enjoy the game and care for its playerbase. I don't believe the future or interests of either are actually at stake in this case, although- to be clear- my latest forum posts are simply case updates for those following along and musings made purely as musings, not out of concern for anyone or any party in this case. In some ways, I believe the interests of the community, player base, and the future of this game conflict with those of the company presently running it. IOW, if you don't buy the claims about this case being an existential threat to the game (see: prior discussion in this thread), it's worth considering whether the player base loses from Warzone.com losing and wins from Warzone.com winning. In the extreme case, how would Warzone.com be functionally different if it were owned and operated by Activision Blizzard? The complaints people have about big game dev studios- lack of responsiveness to user feedback, unaccountability and intransparency, arbitrary and unpredictable adverse treatment of random players, focusing on the cash cow parts of the game, making things increasingly pay-to-win or pay-to-use, introducing gacha-game addictive mechanisms where players are nudged into generating revenue through mild frustration punctuated by short dopamine hits- already apply to the status quo. It's like how mom-and-pop corner stores are supposed to be better than big supermarkets, but in practice that's just a bias because they've got faces- they tend to pay their employees less and generally don't provide the same quality to consumers (this is why they get outcompeted on the market). They operate under the same incentives, minus some of the competitive advantages of scale that often allow companies to serve consumers better. Mom-and-pop shops try to claim the moral superiority of pretending care less about money, but being unprofitable does not a non-profit make. (Big companies are unfairly disparaged, I tell you! At least the ones that actually have to compete, not ones like Comcast or Disney that get to dodge competition. Coincidentally, supporting the idea that someone should have exclusive rights to an actual English word requires making a trade-off against instead having more competition.)

As some counterpoints, consider that: People who win retirement money in legal windfalls sometimes tend to retire, and people who donate money to others' legal funds had alternative uses for that money. Reality is not really the black-and-white, we're-under-threat, David-and-Goliath yarn of the GoFundMe.

Edited 10/16/2021 23:34:18

Just to clarify, are you drunk ?! If you wrote all this the same way Zuckerberg did according to The social network, whatever your business is, I want to be part :)
Because there are connections with my message but, lol, you've been deep, especially toward the end :d (but still as interesting as usual indeed)

Your previous message you linked does mention you notified Activision lawyers about findings. Here is where my brain got this assumption from. But that's more down to legitimacy of feeling betrayed by Fizzer.

Also, I can't believe until now, I've been fooled in thinking Fizzer was residing in Washington city.

But ok. Maybe Fizzer is a millionnaire (with his skills -not sure which one is the most impressive, but I definitely can't ignore his confidence and success in nailing his SEO- and a past experience at Microsoft, I would not be surprised after all), then again why would he ask a $50k from his user base ? Why would he struggle with a domain name at $60k (I don't remember where I recall this number from) ? And why would he be after a retirement money from Activision ? I mean $1M, a lot of people don't even make this much in a whole lifetime.

Greed ? Can't you feel or just trust Fizzer as a passionnate and genuine (honest) indie developer that just wants to enjoy his time with a baby creation that is sucessful and please a massive community, rather than making much more milions working back for a GAFAM ?

Edited 10/17/2021 00:11:19

does mention you notified Activision lawyers about findings

I don't know which message you're referring to, but if it's the one I think you're referring to, it was a joke. Was it something like "(after notifying Activision's lawyers about my findings, of course)"? I remember saying something like that because there's an inside joke about me secretly working for Activision, but in general I don't believe I have anything to offer them of value.

he is a millionnaire

That wasn't the implication, nor do I want to dive deep into Fizzer's personal finances (or Mercer's), but it certainly would not be surprising. Last time I sampled, top-of-market pay for software developers 15-20 years deep into their careers easy breaks into seven figures. Plus Microsoft stock from around when Warzone was created has increased in value by a factor of 19-20x since then. So his skill set certainly can be lucrative, assuming he can pass the interview bar and whatnot, but that's neither here nor there- and to be clear, he doesn't live on Mercer Island (afaik).

$60k (I don't remember where I recall this number from)

The Washington post article (https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/06/04/warzone-name-lawsuit/):

“At the very least, I would like to be made whole,” he [Fizzer] said. “I spent about $60,000 on the domain name and legal fees, plus three years of my life into this brand and it hurts business to have to change the title.”

And why would he be after a retirement money from Activision ? I mean $1M, a lot of people don't even make this much in a whole lifetime.

My speculative working model of the case is that it's essentially a game of Texas Hold 'Em. The two parties don't perfectly know the other's hands (i.e., strengths of their legal arguments) and don't know the other's risk-reward profiles (e.g., size of their respective war chests), and every legal event is like flipping over a communal card, adding more information about how things might go. You have to decide whether to call, fold, or raise the stakes. Sometimes it makes sense to be bold so as to not leave any money on the table; sometimes, being bold can backfire when you bluff (or think your weak hand is actually strong). Although I suspect, in this game, the parties have radically different ideas about how strong their respective hands are, but that's especially pure speculation. This game will most likely end in a settlement- there's a lot of communal cards left, so odds are one or the other will fold when they find a comfortable spot in the zone of possible agreement.

If you view the case from this lens, I think you understand my risk-reward profile (w.r.t. the impact of this case on the future of this game and community) and start seeing this as more of a minor curiosity where someone else will either shoot themselves in the foot or receive a variable windfall due to a quirk of the legal system, rather than an existential threat to something we value.

Greed ?!

I think this unnecessarily personalizes things. The higher the stakes get, the faster people's behavior tends to converge to match the incentives available to them. "Greed" and "kindness" are common explanations for specific actions by people, but imo they're usually not parsimonious explanations.

Just to clarify, are you drunk ?!

Thank you for the (unusual) compliment. I'm sure, if we were having this conversation in French (of which I presumably have far less command than you), I would be awed by your command and communication of ideas. Not to say your English is bad (no need to apologize for it), rather that I just have experience (unsurprisingly) of writing and communicating a lot in this language and so I'm able to come across well, often simply by recycling others' ideas rather than having particularly deep insights of my own.

Edited 10/17/2021 00:46:52