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Blizzard Suing Bot Maker for Damages
Post by KostaAndreadis @ 02:32pm 12/11/15 | 13 Comments
In a post on TorrentFreak (with a link to the legal documents in question) it looks like Blizzard is suing a number of individuals over the creation of bots for its games like World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Heroes of the Storm. According to the suit these bots, which can be purchased by players, "have caused, and are
continuing to cause, massive harm to Blizzard." The Bot sites in question are still currently in operation and in their defense they claim that "botting is not against any law".

But, Blizzard argue that the company and individuals in question have made a lot of money through the sale of Bots, which it believes infringes on copyright and the license agreement.

You can check out the full post here, which links to the legal document.


blizzardworld of warcraftdiablocopyrightbotssuinglegal





Latest Comments
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NiTrat3
Posted 11:37pm 12/11/15
hahahahaha.
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Khel
Posted 12:37am 13/11/15
Might not be illegal to use them, definitely illegal to be making them though and infringing on someone else's IP. Hope Blizzard f*** them up
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Jeffro
Posted 03:03am 13/11/15
BGs are full of them right now. Even arena has a lot of kick bots. It's out of hand and players are leaving because of it.
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Malthius
Posted 09:34am 13/11/15
Tortious Interference is where the real fun is - by making a bot for a game where botting is against the TOS, you are potentially interfering with the contract between the player and Blizzard, and if Blizzard bans the player, they can go after the bot maker for the lost subscription revenue. That amount can be far more than the actual money made from selling the bot, and Blizzard can even double dip because the banned player will probably just sign up again...

Times like these is when I miss being involved in games law.

More info here: Last time they did this.
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Raven
Posted 10:48am 13/11/15
How is it infringing on their copyright?

This is a dangerous suit - it basically claims that automating a process by the use of technology is copyright infringement. And license agreements aren't worth s***. What next, Google suing software developers for creating tools like Selenium which automates use of a browser for software testing, on the basis of "copyright infringement"?

I hope Blizzard loses incredibly hard in this one. If they don't want bots playing their games, devise better mechanics to prevent them connecting.

I will happily develop token authentication or facial recognition tokens to aid this if they want to hire me.
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Malthius
Posted 10:57am 13/11/15
A "licence" for a game (that you get by agreeing to the licence agreement) boils down to "as long as you abide by this agreement, your using this thing doesn't infringe on our copyright". If the licence agreement includes "if you do X your licence is automatically ended", and you do X, you no longer have a valid licence, so you are using copyright material without a licence (i.e. you've infringed their copyright).

The above is a hyper simplistic version, there are a whole bunch of interesting questions around it, but that's the ELI5 version.

Anyway, read the second link I posted, that explains what happened the last time they went after bot makers.
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notgreazy
Posted 11:00am 13/11/15
They are using copyright law as an excuse to go after the bot makers. I think Malthius is spot on, it's the loss of subscription is real and worthy issue.

Also this part from the last time Blizzard tried this is, is really important:
The court therefore upheld the judgment that MDY violated the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act against trafficking in copyright circumvention technologies, at least with regard to the dynamic nonliteral elements of Blizzard's content, i.e., those portions provided by the World of Warcraft servers.
i.e circumventing software = violation of DMCA.
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Raven
Posted 11:12am 13/11/15
f***it.
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Khel
Posted 12:02pm 13/11/15
I will happily develop token authentication or facial recognition tokens to aid this if they want to hire me.


And thats why they wont hire you, because that wont stop it at all. They already have token authentication, these aren't automated bots that connect by themselves, these are players who connect to the game with their own account and their own details and then use a bot to automate it for them. Think the equivalent of wall hacks or an aimbot in an FPS. Its still an actual person's account, just the bot is playing bits of the game for them, in a far more efficient and (in the case of pvp) unfair way than a player could.

This is far more than just automating a process, if you're ok with this then you're ok with bike riders doing performance enhancing drugs to get an edge over everyone else. Extreme straw-man comparison maybe, but thats the sort of effect it has on the parts of community that take the competitive aspects of the game seriously. And on the other end of the scale, farming bots have done extensive damage over the years to the ingame economy. In accounting terms, when you're talking about the value of a company or product, 'Goodwill' has a dollar value attached and it wouldn't be difficult to make an argument that the impact that bots have made on the game have eroded the goodwill and cost money.
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Tollaz0r!
Posted 12:10pm 13/11/15

This is far more than just automating a process, if you're ok with this then you're ok with bike riders doing performance enhancing drugs to get an edge over everyone else.


Well the drugged up rider is still actually performing all the actions themselves. It's more like attaching a small motor to the bike so the rider doesn't have to do the peddling, or helps do the peddling more efficiently outside of the rider's body.
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Obes
Posted 08:24pm 15/11/15
Every-time you post, all I see is agenda from s*** house local publishers.

You do not represent gamers.
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Enska
Posted 10:38pm 15/11/15
and neither you do. your f***** strange grudge against khel because you didn't like his review f*****g years ago is getting old.
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Tollaz0r!
Posted 10:41pm 15/11/15
Obes is just a bitter old man.
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