 |
|
|
| |
Blizzard Awarded $6 Million In Glider Bot Case
by Eric Caoili
|
|
| |
|
October 1, 2008
|
| |
A US district court awarded Blizzard $6 million in damages against MDY Industries, the developer behind software bot Glider, which allows players to automate repetitive actions in MMORPG World of Warcraft, such as killing monsters and scavenging loot.
Blizzard claimed that the program infringed its copyright and filed suit in February 2007 against MDY founder and Glider creator Michael Donnelly, asking for "injunctive relief and compensatory damages."
The action was in response to a previous lawsuit filed in November 2006 by Donnelly against the publisher, arguing that Blizzard had no right to terminate Glider's distribution.
Judge David Campbell ruled against MDY in July, declaring that Glider not only broke the license terms that players agree to when playing World of Warcraft, but that it also "tortiously interfered" with Blizzard’s relationships with its customers through its sales.
According to a report from the BBC, Donnely is thought to have sold more than 100,000 copies of the $25 application. The court's ruling was helped by an admission in court from MDY's side that it would be reasonable for it to pay some form of damages.
MDY could delay the damages award if it decides to appeal against an earlier judgment, which dismissed its claim to double or even triple the cash settlement.
The case is scheduled to go to court again in January 2009 when it will be decided whether MDY broke the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act and whether Donnelly will pay the damages from his own pocket.
|
| |
|
|
It's the McDonald's of video games. Just because the sign says BILLIONS SERVED doesn't make it good.
Your comment is itself a specimen of mindless stupidity. The genre of role-playing strategy games has always featured a certain amount of repetitive tasks that can be exploited programmatically. Nearly every noteworthy game title in the genre has dealt with similar bots and cheats.
Its OK if the genre doesn't appeal to you. But your quip attempting to establish your superiority relative to WOW players only betrays your ignorance (and arrogance).
As for the case, I have to wonder sometimes about where Blizzard is drawing this invisible line between acceptable automation, a la macros and the like, and cheating. What's the difference between handing off your keyboard to a superior player while you go make a pot of coffee and handing character control over to a scripted AI? In fact, most of the functions MDY's program did could have been done in WoW's own UI API and macros. So really the issue is not so much the fighting and looting aspects of this program but the automation of movement and limited decision making in combat. So again how's that different from handing off your keyboard to a friend?
Granted even the act of letting someone not registered on the account play under your name may violate the EULA but I know of plenty of households that have only one computer and the kids have to share the one account because of budget constraints. Does this mean that Blizzard is going to ban them for cheating as well? Or worse yet, if you paid me to play your account until you reached a certain level or attained some other goal, could Blizzard sue me for damages? It seems so, but how is Blizzard damaged by such activity? If Blizzard has made WoW as generic and widely available as McDonald's then who cares if the game is flooded with a couple thousand lvl 70s. Most of the fun I've had playing the game was at the lower levels anyway. They themselves have said they have over 10 million users, that's less than .1% of the user base that purchased this MDY product. So who's really getting hurt here?