Why do I always read, that Starcraft is a 40K rip-off?

More like a vidya thread, but I guess it fits here too.
Seriously tough, I often read that Starcraft is just a rip-off from 40k, especially that the three main armies represent the Space Marines, Eldar, and Tyranids...
Ok, there are similarities between both series, but on the other side Starcraft is also very different from 40k.
The Terrans for example. There are actually more like the Imperial Guard then the Space Marines. The Space Marines in Starcraft are normal dudes and no enhanced supersoldiers. Mankind in Starcraft doesn't have crappy and old technology.
I don't want to say, that there are no similarities, but it is far away to be a total rip-off...

Starcraft was inspired by RT and 2e era 40k. 40k has changed a lot since then, making the comparisons a lot less obvious than they used to be.

But the two are not directly related in any way.

starcraft was originally suppose to be a warhammer game, but GW pulled the license, so blizzard had to change the game a bit before releasing it as starcraft.

This is mostly correct but both StarCraft and 40k also drew heavily on similar source material - StarCraft isn't necessarily dependent on 40k for inspiration, but that both owe a lot to Aliens and Starship Troopers.

This is a lie.

except it's the story of Warcraft I, not Starcraft, and it's a myth anyway.

also Dune, that with worms, and psionic stuff

10 silver coins were donated to your World of Warcraft account

That actually makes a lot of sense.

Thinking about it though, RT-2ed might as well be a different universe to the 40k we have in 7th. So much has changed for the better.

All three of the factions are just standard sci-fi tropes at this point, which W40K did borrow, so I am not seeing it. Something like EYE on the other hand is clearly inspired.

>also Dune, that with worms, and psionic stuff
For all we know they were just aping the 40k cribbing of them.

Of course they're similar! They got the earthlings using boxy unsubtle balistic weaponry and vehicles, a race of insectiod creatures known for swarming the enemy, and a technologically advanced alien race with advanced weaponry that is nonetheless in decline for some reason or another.

I actually respect Grey Goo's story a little just because they at least tried something new by giving the aliens a boxy industrial vibe and the humans the superior curvy-impractical aesthetic.

StarCraft was heavily inspired by 40k just like Warcraft was inspired by WFB.
Warcraft was supposed to be a Warhammer game at first, but Blizz decided they don't want to make a game off a license they can't control.

As for races comparisons: Terrans are like old-style Marines (back when they were a lot less ubersoldier), Zerg are Tyranids (and funnily enough Tyranids became more zerg-like after StarCraft's success, making it a case of original ripping off the rip off) and Protoss are uglier Eldar.

>I actually respect Grey Goo's story a little just because they at least tried something new by giving the aliens a boxy industrial vibe and the humans the superior curvy-impractical aesthetic.
Too bad the Goo faction, the music and the cinematics were the only good things about Grey Goo.
It was way too shallow and also too slow. I had hopes for Grey Goo.

This.
>StarCraft was heavily inspired by 40k just like Warcraft was inspired by WFB.
>Warcraft was supposed to be a Warhammer game at first, but Blizz decided they don't want to make a game off a license they can't control.
It was both sides reaching an impasse and I've read that it was GW that took their ball home.
Some devs wrote a blog about it.

EYE is 40k on coke, nobody's gonna complain that it's a rip-off, because nobody wants to associate their IP with such a crazy setting.

But I gonna admit a 40k mod for EYE were you play as radical Inquisitor Rimanah reviving his cycles of guilt would be pretty awesome.

The rumor goes that Games Workshop originally commissioned Blizzard to create a 40k game OR Blizzard attempted to court GW with a RTS game that would eventually become Starcraft and Warcraft, which is more likely. In either case GW didn't want to follow through and Blizzard was left with a functioning game and no license, so they did what any VG dev would do and just generically rebrand it.

If GW were to confirm this, it would prove that GW has no fucking clue what they're doing (which they don't) and they missed out on a huge cash cow.

If Blizzard were to confirm this it would prove that they lack anything resembling creative originality (which they do), and can only make games with strictly adhered to tropes, memes, and references to pop culture.

As much as I believe both possibilities, I don't believe that this event actually happened and does just come from the same source material which armchair historians don't realize exist because they're just greasy nerds who only understand the bounds of their own fiction collections.

>also Dune, that with worms, and psionic stuff

It is Dune, what are Psionics but a hybrid of Mentats and Bene Gesserit?

thats a big urban legend. I don't think its ever been confirmed or will it ever be confirmed.

>If Blizzard were to confirm this it would prove that they lack anything resembling creative originality (which they do), and can only make games with strictly adhered to tropes, memes, and references to pop culture.
I dunno man. Setting-wise, Diablo was pretty innovative, it's not like dark fantasy was that much of a thing back then. And Warcraft introduced orcs as honorable, possibly noble savages, while keeping them violent and bloothirsty. Gameplay-wise, Diablo is the paragon of the hack'n'slash genre and it has been copied for what, twenty years now? Starcraft introduced asymmetric gameplay in RTS and made it also a lot faster, simpler and yet full of complex unit interactions. And Warcraft 3 is the epytome of the "RTS with RPG elements" subgenre, which has been copied (unsuccesfully) a lot in the following years.

he was talking setting

mostly you're talking gameplay

It was ambiguous although leaning towards setting. I spoke about both setting and gameplay.
>Setting-wise, Diablo was pretty innovative, it's not like dark fantasy was that much of a thing back then. And Warcraft introduced orcs as honorable, possibly noble savages, while keeping them violent and bloothirsty.
>Gameplay-wise, [...]

Also I forgot to mention that Protoss are fairly original in concept and design themselves.

Lies and retardation brought live to Veeky Forums, courtesy of /v/.

Yeah it's true, Blizzard were working on making a 40k game ages ago, but in the end Games workshop for whatever reason decided against it (from memory, it was something as stupid as "if we make a vidya gaem, people wont play the tabletop") but they cancelled it very very very early into production. They basically had some shitty looking 40k models, that they re-worked into starcraft units/models.

Nah bot zerg and tyrannids got inspired by the alien movie

>Yeah it's true

No, it's not. At the time that WarCraft was in development, Games Workshop was still exclusively licensing Gremlin Interactive ('91 to '94). While StarCraft was in development starting in 1995, EA had the 40k license, which went to SSI by the time StarCraft was finally released in 1998. There is literally no scenario in which Blizzard could have been working on a Games Workshop licensed game at any point, ever.

Andy Chambers went on to be the creative director of Starcraft 2 a few years after he left Games Workshop.

It shows.

But random strangers with no source told me otherwise, it must be true!

As litigious as Games Workshop is, do you really think there'd be zero proof if there was even a whiff of a breach of contract lawsuit? That there wouldn't be a single source, an article from a gaming mag or archived website or White Dwarf, itself, to corroborate?

StarCraft had an unusually public development at the time because the internet was rapidly becoming a thing in the mid 90s. There was never any mention of Games Workshop being involved until the game came out and then, as redshirts became aware of it for the first time, they started throwing shade that it was all stolen from GW - when I was with the company, one of my coworkers would regurgitate that bullshit every single time it came up and he swore - swore! - that he had an inside track with the studio that would back him up. It was "my dad works for Nintendo" level bullshit.

>I don't believe that this event actually happened and does just come from the same source material which armchair historians don't realize exist because they're just greasy nerds who only understand the bounds of their own fiction collections.
>I don't believe that this event actually happened

For a hobby that exists mostly in print, there sure are a lot of illiterate retards on Veeky Forums

What are you criticizing, exactly? Because isn't claiming that GW and Blizzard don't ape the same source material, he's claiming that anyone who repeats the lie that StarCraft was originally a 40k game is a moron; which is objectively true.

>The rumor goes...
>I don't believe that this event actually happened
>does just come from the same source material

lern 2 reed

Protoss being called an Eldar rip-off triggers me. Protoss have more in common with Space Marines than they do Eldar. With Eldar, they are both aliens who are psychic with advanced technology. With Space Marines, they are both a warrior society of 10ft Tall guys in powered armor who deep strike into enemy lines to punch things with their fist and swords while being vastly outnumbered, both focus on having few very durable/powerful warriors to make up for their lack of numbers and manuverabilty, when their either number are wounded too badly they are interred into a walker robot to continue their fight, their empires begins their settings as the big fish of the Galaxy (like Space Marines in 30k and Protoss at the beginning of Starcraft), both have Empires that have been reduced to a shadow of their former glory due to a combination of Civil War and Alien Invasion, and both have the most powerful non-hero psychic warriors in their games.

Blizzard was trying to come up with a mission statement. They settled on "Let's take good ideas other people have had but not executed all that well and polish the fuck out of them."

That's pretty much how all the best shit gets made.

>protoss
>ugly
You take that back!
Selendis a cute!
A CUTE!

Yeah, but Alien did not have Carnifex/Ultralisk, did it? Zerg don't looks too much like Alien IMO.