Posts with tag sue

Blizzard has a very clear line on private servers: they are against the rules. If you have one or play on one you're going to get in trouble. Your account will get shut down and you'll likely face some legal issues if you don't capitulate to their demands.

However is their stance right? Are private servers really that big of a deal?

There are two ways that I look at the issue. One way is to view the issue through the lens of morality and legalese. In this respect Blizzard is on solid ground. They own Warcraft and all the associated games, and they own the servers we play on. When we buy the game we're not buying the property. We're buying the right to use the property as long as we keep paying a monthly fee, and as long as we operate within their guidelines (the terms of service).

Some might contend that there is an innate right to privacy in the fact that after we've purchased the game (and its associated data), Blizzard has no right to tell us what to do with it or to find out how we're using it. I'm not a lawyer, but some are, and there's an interesting debate to be had here.

A man sitting in a South Carolina prison serving time for wire fraud has decided to file a third-party motion in the MDY v. Blizzard. Jonathan Riches is accusing Blizzard of "...causing [me] to live in a virtual universe, where [I] explored the landscape committing identity theft and fighting cybermonster rival hacker gangs."

I probably don't need to say anything else, and he probably doesn't either. I'm pretty sure most judges would just throw the motion out right there. But, the motion continues...

"Riches was addicted to video games and lost touch with reality because of [Blizzard]. This caused Riches to commit fraud to buy [Blizzard's] video games. Riches chose World of Warcraft over working a legit job. Riches mind became a living video game."

Wow. Just wow.

Is that all that bad? I would love to live my life as a video game. Maybe one day my girlfriend will show up as an Eredar Twin or Pirate. That wouldn't be so bad. Or perhaps she'll be riding around on a giant turtle. With pink elephants.

He has also sued the Eiffel Tower, and lost.

An interesting discussion went on in the Community Service forums yesterday concerning the role Blizzard developers play in those very forums. A poster was obviously attempting to troll and start some argument, asking if the Blizzard devs actually do read what people write or pay attention to the community at large. Kisirani, a Blizzard developer, responded that indeed they do.

A few interesting things came from subsequent blue posts that help outline the roles of the developers and community managers. First, it is the job of the community managers (CMs as we call them) to do just what their title says: manage the community. This includes the forums and everything that goes on in there. Kisirani tells us that they regularly collect feedback and suggestions and pass them along to the developers. Kisirani makes it a point to say that they don't have enough time to read everything themselves, and if they were to read everything the game itself would not be developed – and again, this is where the community managers come into play.

In Blizzard's attempts to get rid of gold farmers and hackers, one of their most annoyingly persistent enemies has been the WoWGlider bot, now known as MMOGlider. They've been throwing suits and countersuits at each other for a few years now, but the latest salvo seems to have gone against Blizzard, the Game Activist reports. Blizzard was trying to subpoena Joe Thaler, owner of Lavish Software LLC, maker of programs such as EQPlayNice. While Lavish Software's programs do not appear to be cheat programs on their own, they did make a deal with MDY Industries, maker of MMOGlider, to use the programs within MMOGlider.

According the judge's decision, Blizzard was hoping to obtain all documentation related to the deal, all communication between Thaler and Lavish and MDY and its owner, Michael Donnelly. They also wanted a list of all WoW accounts owned by Thaler and Lavish, as well as the contents of the WTF folders of every installation of WOW used by Thaler and Lavish Entertainment. Unfortunately, the Judge ruled that Blizzard was demanding information that could compromise Lavish's trade secrets and client confidentiality, and that the demand for the information within 9 days did not give Thaler and Lavish enough time to respond an gather information.

It's worth noting that the judge did specifically say that Blizzard could file another subpoena that would be more narrow in scope and allow more time for Lavish and Mr. Thaler to respond, so this is probably not a fatal blow to Blizzard by any means. I personally hope not. I've never had much patience for bots, or people who feel they have a civil right to cheat at games, so I'm rooting for the big bad corporation on this one. What about you?

Thanks for the link, Tyrsenus.

I know what you're thinking: haven't I read about this before? You've probably read something similar, but we've moved on to the next phase of ligation: the counter-suit! Back in November MDY Industries, the creators of the automation software WoWglider, was suing Blizzard over an alleged attempt to prevent the distribution of their software. MDY wanted a court to assert their right to create and distribute WoWglider. And now Blizzard is fighting back with a lawsuit of their own. Besides asserting that the sale and promotion of WoWglider violates both the World of Warcraft EULA (end user license agreement, which you re-agree to each time you install a patch) and TOU (terms of use, which you agree to when creating your account), Blizzard claims that...

Blizzard has suffered damage in an amount to be proven at trial, including but not limited to loss of goodwill among WoW users, diversion of Blizzard resources to prevent access by WoWGlider users, loss of revenue from terminated users, and decreased subscription revenue from undetected WoWGlider users.

And Blizzard is asking not only for MDY to stop selling and distributing WoWglider, but also that Blizzard be given all rights and titles to the application, the source code, and all sales information. And while I'm not a lawyer, I think someone just got pwnd by Blizzard's legal department.

If you are a lawyer, or if you just enjoy reading dense pages of text, you may like to see the full text of Blizzard's counter-suit and MDY's initial complaint.

[Thanks, Prissy]

Whoever writes this blog is saying that his 3/8 Tier 3, full GM, level 60 human Warlock, with over 6,800 hours played, was deleted from his account by means of a stolen password, and on December 25th, no less. He tells a fairly compelling story. He contacted Blizzard as soon as he found his character missing, assuming it was an error on their part; they got back to him and said his password had probably been compromised via a phishing scam. Our protagonist looked back in his email and found a likely candidate from December 23rd that had asked him to "update his credit card info".

Understandably ticked off, and apparently possessing considerable financial resources, he hired an investigative firm to look into the matter and track down whoever had done this to him. (On a side note, why would the scammer want to delete the character? I can see why he'd want to steal the character's gold, but deleting a character is just sadistic.) He now plans on finding a lawyer and suing this scammer for, presumably, whatever he can get out of him (the blogger hopes for prison time, but that seems unlikely to me; however, IANAL).

In case you're out of the loop, WoW Glider is a 3rd party application that automates all major aspects of gameplay. You set the parameters and it starts farming loot, experience, reputation -- whatever you'd like. This is, unsurprisingly, against Blizzard's terms of service -- those things you have to click agreement to before you play the game after every patch. But this lawsuit isn't just about whether or not WoW Glider breaks the terms of service: it's about whether or not Blizzard has the right to kill the distribution of WoW Glider. WoW Glider's complaint suggests Blizzard has been attempting to strong-arm them into stopping distribution based on alleged copyright and DMCA violation -- and WoW Glider's makers are jumping in with the first lawsuit, which (and, no, I am not a lawyer) seems to be asserting their rights to distribute WoW Glider and telling Blizzard to back off. Lawyers and non-lawyers can read the full text of the complaint and chime in with your own opinions below.

[Thanks, Baratrill]