Montreal Designer to Release CS:GO Map Despite Being Threatened With a Lifetime Ban

A Montreal-based PC gamer and entrepreneur received a cease-and-desist letter from Société de transport de Montréal (STM) for designing and making plans to release a Counter Strike: Global Offensive map of the city’s well-known metro station Berri-UQAM. Diego Liatis said that the map is due sometime around March 2013 and plans to stick with the launch time even if he faces a lawsuit brought by the local transit authority.

Ars technica reported that it took nine months to create a playable map of Berri-QUAM which was then featured in LAN ETS 2013, one of the LAN party viz. held at a university in Montreal, Canada. The map is a digital reproduction of the real world station in the game and that’s what the local transit authority didn’t like.

Diego Liatis said,”If you ask me to change the name of the station, forget about it. I understand [copyright law], but there are limits, such as the name of the station.”

The spokesperson for STM said that they asked their lawyers to meet Diego’s lawyers and have asked that certain elements of the CounterStrike map should be removed. He and his lawyer need to discuss and get back to the transit authority to comment anything further.

Liatis and Frederik Denis haven’t released the CS:GO map yet, but they did put up a YouTube video which gives a good idea of the map itself:

Liatus clarified that their goal was to make a map involving Montreal or another Canadian location and wanted to do something independent as there’s no money involved, but if he still goes ahead with the launch, STM will impose a lifetime ban on using the transit services.

Till now, Liatus is only willing to alter the STM logo and a well-known piece of art in the station, but not the layout or the station itself. A second letter was sent to Liatus, stating that “copyright on architectural works is well established in jurisprudence as well as in [case law]” and invited Liatis’ counsel to meet the transit authority last Friday.

As of now, a LAN ETS spokesperson said that the university and the LAN party event is disassociating itself from Liatis and the map without any explanation, but Liatis is still standing his ground, saying that either STM could oppose him and meet him in court or if the transit authority will be OK with the map.