I think they literally replaced the game people owned prior, and removed features.

I definitely remember that they made legal language for it so if anyone made anything like DoTA out of it again, they’d own it.

Of course, the game was rejected by the community.

Edit:

…but was plagued by bugs, a lack of features and poor design choices such as the “massive” user interface. German magazine GameStar opined that the remaster was still a good game in regards to its single-player, despite it not including the promised changes and additions, but its multiplayer features were now either worse than before or non-existent.

Player response was overwhelmingly negative. On release, the game was review-bombed by users on Metacritic, temporarily becoming the lowest score ever for a Blizzard game, before being surpassed by 2022’s Diablo Immortal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_III:_Reforged#Reception