Blizzard Lawyers Visit Creator of WoW Glider

Rick Hamell writes "On October 25th, Blizzard/Vivendi payed a personal visit to Michael Donnelly, creator of WoW Glider and accused him of violating the DMCA. Their demands were unclear, but come in the wake of recent player bannings for using bots in the popular MMORPG. It looks like he's going to fight it, but I think it'll be an interesting case if it ever reaches the courts." From the post: "The visitors from Vivendi / Blizzard made demands of Michael and stated that if the demands were not met that they would file a complaint in court if he did not meet them. I asked Michael what the demands were. He was unable to comment at the time to the exact details. But I do know they handed him a copy to very briefly 'Look at'. He was not given a copy. I think I could make a good guess and say that they asked for Glider to be shut down and if they feel that they have been harmed they may have asked for a financial settlement."

Comments

Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Audigy]

I'm glad to hear of this.

Sure, it's an independent software developer, who cares? He's charging money for a program that explicitly violates the TOS that a user agrees to when signing up for World of Warcraft.

It's just one bot program out of many, but maybe the others will get the picture and GTFO also. I'm tired of trying to play legitimately, having bots always stealing my kills. :(

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[daeg]

Just because his product violates a TOS it doesn't mean he did anything illegal. A TOS is a civil agreement, and not a very strong one, at that.

I'm all for shutting this guy down (I play WoW and hate bots, too), but I don't want shutting him down to clog our already congested legal system.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[belmolis]

Selling a program that has no use other than violating the TOS may be actionable as tortious interference with a contract or something along those lines, but I fail to see how copyright is involved here. What copyrighted work is copied by the bot? Similarly, I don't see how it violates the DMCA.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Anonymous Coward]

"He's charging money for a program that explicitly violates the TOS that a user agrees to when signing up for World of Warcraft."

The law doesn't work that way, thankfully. I'm not liable for the contracts you make with other people, and you're not liable for the contracts I make with other people.

That's why there isn't a case against the software creator for "violating a TOS," unless he also agreed to the TOS (and even then, the legitimacy of such a TOS is subject to debate).

Yeah, it sucks when people cheat, but I'd rather deal with the cheaters than be unable to write any code that some corporation somewhere dislikes.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[Flentil]

1) He's not interfering with the sale of their product or the collection of profits, so tortious interfence is unlikely. (no money to be made in trial.)

I disagree. You only have to look at some of the above comments to see that bots annoy thier customers, and thus might hurt thier profits due to cancellations. They could sue for damages from lost revenue.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[westlake]

A TOS is a civil agreement, and not a very strong one, at that.

The TOS is a contract. It's strength or weakness is for a judge to decide. But protecting the integrity of a service with 7.5 million paying subscribers sounds to me like a perfectly good reason for going to court.

Re:Taking the bull by the horns, so to speak-

[GodInHell]

Problem 1) Causation. Prove that it was this fellow and his activities that caused you that harm. Prove that it was not some other bot application, or that the customer could not have easily used another piece of software that was easily attainable, etc. They could try to get all the producers of this kind of software together and sue them collectively for tortious interference, but, in a game that releases new bugs on patch-day, good luck connecting terminated accounts to frustration with bot-players. Further - Blizz would have a VERY hard time proving that these guys did not in fact ENHANCE their revenue vis-a-vis the accounts Blizzard cancels for non-compliance. Many of those accounts may have been purchased specifically for the purpose of leveling and selling (not un-common), or may have cancelled long ago without the software. No clear line of effect between action and loss of value, There/4 lack of causality.

Problem 2) Damages. How much? The amount of cancelled accounts? Which ones, certainly not all the accounts cancelled since the game released.. those in which clients have specifically stated a reason for leaving that includes bots (might get a few there), at what cost - would a player who quit over this issue have otherwise continued to pay monthly fees until the next generation game was released? Forever? Make them pay for one month? Two? Even if they manage to link causation to 20,000 users, how much will court fees run? Lawyers? Experts (they'll need alot to talk about the techincal issues and to prove causation)?

Problem 3) Deep Pockets (lack thereof). These guys (the alleged tortfeasors) do not likely have that kind of money in bank accounts lying around to be taken in suit. That means that even if you win, even if the court assigns all legal expenses to the defendant, even if everything goes your way through the appeals which will probably follow - the defendant declares bankruptcy, and walks away. You still have to pay your lawyer.

It's not a perfect system, but it does more of the little guy than people think. Here's hoping they don't hit the lottery anytime soon :).

-GiH

Bots

[HappySqurriel]

I love WoW but think that the ability to be remarkably successful by using a bot demonstrates one of the biggest design flaws of the game (and the entire MMORPG genre as a whole). MMORPGs require very little thought or skill and most of the content is not worth seeing; killing 100,000 monsters that react in (pretty much) the exact same way in order to get to the point were you have 'Finished the game' only to have to kill 100,000 mosters that react in exactly the same way to get all the leet loot. I recognize the technical difficulty of producing intelligent (or atleast different) mobs, but until you have to be reasonably intelligent to survive these encounters a bot will be successful.

Re:Bots

[1.000.000]

I completely disagree. Aimbots play first person shooters (FPS) far better then most people, but that doenst mean that FPS require no skills or thought.

Name me just 1 popular game, where its impossible to make a bot play it reasonably well!?

I think it says a lot about WoW

[3dWarlord]

If people are willing to pay for a program to play the game for you.

Re:Clever Marketing

[Jarnis]

And it most definitely is not undetectable. His own boards have dozens of pages of posts from his customers who got their accounts banned for using WOWGlider.

Funniest are the morons who whine how their other accounts got banned too - stuff like 'I only glided on one (farming) account, they wtfpwned my main account too!!!' (duh, TOS says Blizzard can nuke all your accounts if you violate it)

Anyway, WOWGlider dev is a lowlife who profits from runing the game for those who actually belive in playing by the rules. So props to Blizzard if they actually try to bury him in legal crap - he'd deserve something much worse, but sadly judges don't toss people into jail for hacking game clients with the intent of ruining the game for all players.

That bad of a game, eh?

[pizzach]

If a game is so suckie that you are willing to pay for a computer program to do it for you....wouldn't it be better to just not get the game to begin with?

No, Glider benefits all parties, except demagogues

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyway, WOWGlider dev is a lowlife who profits from runing the game for those who actually belive in playing by the rules.

Except that what you say is factually incorrect. He profits only from those who wish to have their gaming experience improved by Glider --- they pay him for that improvement, and an exceedingly good improvement it is. After all, to mindlessly repeat grinding or farming actions thousands of times is the ultimate in braindead activity, and completely at odds with fun gameplay.

And no, it doesn't ruin the game for those who enjoy grinding or farming. In fact, they may have to do it even longer because of Glider, so he has extended the gaming experience which they enjoy.

See, you can't have it both ways. The only way in which you could validly complain that he does you a disservice is by admitting that you dislike WoW's grinding but that you want everyone to suffer it equally. And if you do that, then (i) you don't like WoW so why play it, and (ii) you are basically coercive towards your fellow players, which is not nice.

Do you need a 12 step program?

[deacon]

Are you enraged that some people have automated a mindless task while you are still doing it manually while paying monthly for the privelage?

Do people who use a can opener while you are still bashing your can of beans on a rock make you angry?

Do you hate those who use spell check while you are looking up words in the Un-abridged dictionary?

What about those assholes who use windsheild wipers instead of a squeege while driving? Not to mention those bastards who put gas in their cars instead of pushing their non-running cars down the street like you do?

If so, WOW has an offer for you!

Seriously, some of you need help. Paying a fee to perform mindless, repetative tasks that a program can do for you is idiotic. Gloating that someone who offers a product to automate this task is in trouble is just sad.

Re:Do you need a 12 step program?

[Anonymous Coward]

So your claim is basically a botter has so much money around he buys stuff at inflated prices hence inflating the economy? because money doesn't matter to him, right?

How about the fact that the botter picks up a lot of item drops he then proceeds to sell at a price lower than suggested because money doesn't matter? Because I hear a lot more whining about that... "Oh the prices of my rare item is going down so quick, darn botters, now I can not sell this at the inflated price I wanted to sell it for..."

Ever wondered why stuff in world of warcraft is really expensive upon release of the item and then drop like a rock? Yes, that is because at first there is a high demand and a low supply... then when people start farming it (yes, a lot of them might well be botters) the supply increases while the demand is relatively static... the price drops. Then the demand will reach a level where there is too much supplies for it, the price will bottom out... and the botters will move on, leaving yet another mature market behind them with prices fluctuating completely normally based on new uses for materials new population booms in the area and so on.

If there wasn't any botters the finances would work much the same... just slower. And anything you bought from another player would be many times more expensive. Then again anything you sold would be more profitable, so... in the end you'd be still balancing just the same way.

So the server economy might be affected... but it has it's clearly good points. Cheap stuff.
Now if you don't like it - lay off the auction house completely, and never buy anything from anyone but a person you can trust. And pay three times as much as on the auction house, because after all, this is not cheap labour, it is items actually grinded through blood sweat and tears.

Re:Pwned

[Dachannien]

If you believe that this site should be shut down, you believe in the same principles that the DMCA was based on.

I'll take False Generalizations for $200, Alex. I believe that this guy should be put out of business, but not because of the DMCA.

This is pretty straightforward. It's bullshit.

[dfenstrate]

If they had a legal leg to stand on, the Blizz team would have left him with their list of legal complaints, not taken it back after allowing him to briefly look at it. They can afford a few pieces of paper in a legal process.

I don't see any other way to interpret their behavoir. Their complaints wouldn't stand up to scrutiny, so they don't let him scrutinize it.

That being said, there are two reasons people grind: to level a toon they want to actually play, and to gather cash so that they don't have to grind for it to support their raiding habits.

They could eliminate the former reason by giving new characters on an account with one or two max level characters perma double xp, or triple or something along those lines.

If leveling subsequent characters was much faster a good deal of folks would lose interest in bots. That is an old complaint, to be sure, but it's relevant.