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Blizzard Sues Creator of WoW Bot
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Blizzard, the makers of World of Warcraft, are suing Michael Donnelly, the creator of the MMO Glider program, which performs key tasks in the game automatically. Blizzard says the software bot infringes the company's copyright and potentially damages the game. 'Blizzard's designs expectations are frustrated, and resources are allocated unevenly, when bots are introduced into the WoW universe, because bots spend far more time in-game than an ordinary player would and consume resources the entire time,' Blizzard wrote in its legal submission to the court. More than 100,000 copies of the tool have been sold while more than 10 million people around the world play Warcraft. Donnelly says his tool does not infringe Blizzard's copyright because no 'copy' of the Warcraft game client software is ever made. The two parties are now awaiting a summary judgment in the case."
Don't really see how it infringes on the Warcraft copyright; but maybe it infringes on the trademark somehow if it's being marketed as something official to Blizzard and WoW, and giving customers the perception that this is an extension of the WoW service. As for damaging WoW by taking up more resources than the normal player would; what if I were an abnormal player who is on nearly 24/7; is there some provision in the agreement where I am charged more for the subscription or something?
This is only a problem in a game like WoW where you can't lose items on death (specifically to other players) and are built around a constant grind to get that next tier of armor or those next few points in the battlegrounds to get that next tier of weapons. Darkfall, while long in development, is a game that offers complete freedom to the players to run their world as they see fit. If they wish to just be in chaos all the time and killing each other willy nilly, then so be it! If they wish to form a world full with alliances throwing blows at each other here and there to capture more resources (which is the hope/intent of the game) and build more cities, then they can! You can be a roving assassin picking off lone targets who venture too far from a town by themselves, or you can join a massive player army to raid enemy towns and fortresses.
How? Unless he stole source code and used it in his program, I don't see how. Maybe I'm just missing something, but I don't think this program infringes on their copyrights, it may violate other things like their TOS, but this seems to be merely and intimidation act to make him shut down.
A program that plays the boring parts of the game. Can he come up with a program that does the boring parts of my life while I'm out having fun?
I'm really glad to see Blizz taking action against botters.
I've seen many folks using programs like this and they have ruined many MMOs, (esp. FFXI and Lineage 2).
It's about time a company really stands up and tries to prevent this sort of thing.
I don't know about free software, with that they may have trouble, but this guys program is pay to use, so they might be able to take him to task for it.
Less botters = less annoyance
For those that say this doesn't affect us regular players, just wait until you hit a battleground and ten people are botting, it really ruins the experience and wastes a lot of time.
Bots are grossly overrated for MMOs for the most part. Sure, there are some few players that will use them in WoW and other games, but for the most part, people want to experience the game. And many bot users are very easy to spot, as their users don't put in enough to make it believable.
I am kind of surprised that Blizzard is doing this, but I think it's just a publicity thing, and they don't really care if they make any cash off of it. They are just trying to placate the masses on the forums that worry about every single little thing they can.
The reality is, bots make money for Blizzard. Once an account is banned, the player has to purchase a new box of the game to start playing again. And with the expansion, that's 2 boxes. So, Blizzard makes money off of the players that register new accounts/CDs every time they get banned.
Besides, most gold farmers are played by humans, not bots.
Maybe instead of suing people who run bots to avoid grinding, they should make grinding less boring/time-consuming? Grinding is really the only reason they aren't getting $15/mo from me.
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so i can pay $10/month to have a bot do the boring grinding for me.
Oh wait.. that's why i don't play in the first place. Why the hell would you play an rpg that can be played more effectively by a bot than a human?
</flamebait>
http://www.xkcd.com/354/
This program almost certainly does not infringe on Blizzard's copyright. However, (1) this program exists for the sole purpose of cheating, and (2) cheating is a violation of Blizzard's terms of service. In other words, they're encouraging people to violate their contract with Blizzard, which could be considered tortious interference.
(Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and I don't know whether Blizzard is actually arguing this angle.)
I like Blizzard, but this argument smells of Comcast logic.
"We sold you X access, but you are using X access. Even though we promised you X access, we really don't want you using X access, and we don't even want you using almost X access that much. So we're taking action."
-Comcast starts forging packets to kill bittorrent transfers, even though they advertise/sell that bandwidth, they don't want you using it all the time.
-Blizzard starts suing to kill automated clients that are in the game, even though they advertise/sell you that access, they don't want you using it all the time.
I understand there's more lying underneath, but this reasoning doesn't win them any sympathy from me.
In Guild Wars (another MMORPG), those using bots are discouraged from doing so by a method different from suing those that write the macros -- ArenaNet (the devs) simply sniff out (using various AI mechanics) those that use bots and ban them from the game. This action is covered by the EULA that users accept before playing.
Whether EULAs hold up in court, etc. is another issue entirely, but in cases such as banning for using bots I'm fairly certain ArenaNet wouldn't have problems defending themselves.
People don't want to use bots in GW because they'll get banned. It takes tweaking the AI bot-sniffing to keep up with macros, but the system works well enough that high-profile lawsuits are unnecessary.
I like basketball!!1!
The program does not make a copy of any of the game files, it simply reads the memory space that wow.exe loads into and responds to certain procedure calls and what not in the memory. For example, a monster is on the map and the client loads it in memory to prepare it for rendering. Even if the player cant see it, the program can because wow.exe loaded it into memory. The program can see and interact with the wow.exe executable by reading what wow puts in the memory.
microsoft, apple, canonical LTD, transgaming technologies, etc are all guilty of copyright infringement because they make a copy of the game and store it to ram.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
All Blizzard needs to do is put it in the Terms of Service that USERS cannot use bots. Then they can suspend all users using bots on their system. Blizzard is just down the street from me. Maybe I should drive down there and tell them this.
Guild Wars does it right. I think Blizzard should keep real world PVP, but implement it differently. I think as soon as someone initiates PVP, an new toolbar should appear, and everyone should be the top level with top gear so it it balanced. There should not be level 70s killing level 20s and other grief tactics. In other words, PVP XP and PVE XP should be completely different.
Wow, this reminds me of 2006.
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/11/20/blizzard-sued-by-wow-glider-creator/
Except in 2006, he was suing them.
On some MUDs, if a player was suspected of botting, other players would give them an on-the-spot Turing test. Those who failed would be attacked.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Oh boy, another case of a company trying to make their own laws cuz they think they're powerful enough to do so. What is it with corporations and not being able to understand that their security can't detain or shoot people, they can't spy on their employees at home, and they can't sue bot makers. How arrogant can you get? If they would get over themselves and actually pay up to have their programmers create anti bot measures, they wouldn't be having this problem.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
WoW doesn't mandate it. You can never spend a single day grinding and have plenty of things to do. The problem comes from people who get in to this pissing match of having to have something just because others have it. So they want to automate it.
If people would just play the game to have fun, it wouldn't be a problem. It is a game, you don't "need" anything in it. Just do whatever it is you like to do. If you like to grind (surprisingly some people do) then grind. If you don't, don't. However don't get mad and say that you should get reward X that the grinders get.
More or less, Blizzard has a bunch of different kinds of rewards for different things. You can't get any reward doing any thing. However whatever it is you like doing, there are rewards for it.
The problem is when people aren't playing it to have fun, but playing it because they want to have all the best of everything. Well, that's pretty hard, since you have to do a whole bunch of different things. So they'll get bots to grind and such. That is just stupid. If all you care about is having the best, what's the point? The point should be to do whatever is fun. It is all just a game, none of it matters, other than to have fun.
Of course we can, but wouldn't it be more efficient to have a computer entertain itself, on our behalf? Your recreation could be taken care of, for you by proxy, freeing you to pursue other more fulfilling endeavors, such as laboring.
This is just a step toward the ideals mankind has dreamt of for ages. Someday, computers will be able to drink beer for us, have sex for us, and enjoy books,music, and movies for us. Perhaps they could even sleep for us. This would make us free to perform menial tasks.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Is your credit card a U.S. issued card? ... if so, you have a lot longer than 30 days. You have at least 60 days from the statement date, and potentially even longer for unauthorized purchases, to dispute them.
Chargebacks, for on-line purchases, even many months later are common - call your credit card issuer again and press the matter.
Ron
To see that this is what is always likely to happen. Looking at human history, it has historically been the strong dominating the weak, the few privileged exploiting the poor many. You come to realise that the relative stability and equality we enjoy in some nations is an anomaly of history, and took some incredible circumstances and efforts to create. For all that, they still aren't perfect.
So it should be ho surprise at all that is what happens in unrestricted games. Perhaps if some great leaders played the game they could inspire the masses to band together and overthrow the griefers. A George Washington of the gaming world. However, that isn't real likely since the masses can simply take their money to another game. There's no reason to put up with crap and try to make it better, there's other companies who'll be happy to do that.
My response to all the people who claim what a "problem" the design of WoW is and how much better their pet game is is the same one another poster made in this thread: 10 million users. They are doing something right.
As a long time gamer, I have to say WoW is the first MMORPG that has held my attention for more than about 6 months. Everquest was just awful, I quit that one after a month. DAoC was fun for awhile, I played for a few months, quit for a year, came back for a few months, quit again. Eve Online was... Well... Really boring. Tried it in beta, never signed up. Starwars Galaxies had a lot of promise, but it seemed as though Sony had a team dedicated to tracking down and eliminating anything fun. Lasted about 4 months.
WoW, however, I've been playing since a month after it came out, and I still play to this day. Is it perfect? No, of course not. However it seems to be able to keep things fun. I continue to be amused by it, and find that it is enough amusement to justify $15/month.
It seems to me that the people who primarily have a problem with WoW are the asshole griefers, who are mad that they can't become infinitely more powerful than everyone else, that they can't totally dominate. Well, I'm ok with that. If that segment has to be excluded, that's fine, because a whole lot of the rest of us find it fun.
And that is really what matters. Games are not about some magical standard of purity, they are not about perfect realism, they are not about testing you as a person. They are entertainment, pure and simple. So if they are good amusement for the money to you, then your money is well spent on them. If they are not, then your money is better spent elsewhere.
So a good game is quite simply one that people find fun. If people find it fun, they'll buy it and play it, and that is success.
For once, Blizzard has definitely done something wrong...sued for the wrong things all the way around here. Sue for damages? Sure. Copyright? No. Trademark? No.
The guy has disclaimers on his site about using MMOglider that pretty much state "Blizzard doesn't like this", so no, Blizzard can't really do a lot about it.
Unless the guy doesn't have the resources to pay for the lawyer, I would suspect that the odds are in the mmoglider guy's favor.
Every MMORPG suffers the same problem. How do you keep a game interesting and maintain incentive for people to keep playing the more they play? Every Single MMORPG, that I'm aware of, going all the way back to the very first network MUD's solved the problem with grindage. Grindage is play where all you do is hack and slash for experience/equipment. That the new generation of graphical MMORPG players is becoming aware of this and using the same techniques the text based predecessors used (scripting or bots) is absolutely not unexpected.
If every level is as easy to reach as the last then no one would play because there is no challenge in it. The grindage is a simple function of the game to make the higher levels and stuff more valuable as the time commitment goes up dramatically the higher you go. There are only a couple other tools you can use to keep things interesting and neither are perfect. Quests require massive continuing development of unique entertaining single player experiences (on MUD's this was handled by the volunteer development community of former players), the second solution is forcing everyone above a certain level to automatically accept Player killer status such that moving about in the world is much more dangerous. The only other option is to bring in elements of non killing group interactivity (true role playing), which graphical MMORPG's seem to be unusable for.
Don't blame Blizzard for the game being about grindage, it's a fact of the genre that you would know if you had been around long enough to have played MUD's back in their heyday. As a for profit company Blizzard has a goal of preventing people from cheating at the grindage because it can get people to stop playing because the achievement of working through the grindage means a lot less.
This "kooky business model" draws about 10,000,00 subscribers world-wide into PC gaming.
Explain to me your god-given right to disrupt a legitimate business, enable and profit from the cheaters, and spoil the fun for everyone else.
Explain to me why your argument won't drive developers to program exclusively for the tightly enclosed console game platforms. Explain to me why it won't drive developers to employ ever-more-rigorous-DRM.
The bot writer might actually be entitled to write his program without regards to how it is used.
It is certainly not illegal for someone to cheat at a video game, even though it violates the EULA. Blizzard would have to prove that this man selling a cheat program causes them damage, and that he is liable for that damage. Currently, cheat programs do not fall under the spam or malware category, they are not malicious code. It will be hard for Blizzard to convince a judge that a paying customer running a bot is costing them money.
On the one hand I root for blizzard to weed out griefers and farmers, they can hurt the gameplay experience. On the other hand though i'm not sure that what this man is selling is actually criminal. It's not very sportsmanlike, but i don't think it's illegal.
A large portion of World of Warcraft and other MMOs is the scope of the game's economy. I've been hearing rumors about the WoW Gold (piece?) being labled as a known and accepted form of currency somewhere, but I'm not sure.
Really, at the software can and does damage that economy, throwing off the balance of this economy. I'm a former player that used to try and make money through auction house deals and I slowly saw servers starting to decline economically as more and more goods flooded markets, with no real gold anywhere to spread about.
This may not neccesarily be the fault of Glider itself, but it certainly is a supportive factor. As for lost revenue, when someone's found to be botting, they get banned, and revenue is lost, it's that simple there.
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My opinion is biased as I was a player in a server with a ruined economy and rampant cheating, but I kinda hope Blizzard wins this one, despite the arguments used. I'd rather the sale, distribution, and development of Glider be stopped/halted.
Empathetic-- 94% You tend to walk in someone else's shoes a hundred miles before pointing a finger.
I would like to know how Glider has evaded the Warden.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Dear Blizzard,
When people are so desperate not to have to play your game that they'll write a program to do it for them, the gameplay model is broken. Try to do better next time.
Sincerely,
An indie gamer
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
This will not hold up in court. It'd be like windows suing people for making programs for windows, that use up resources.
WoW is just another shell that this guy has programed for, and they are pissy cause it automates certain things. As far as I'm concerned someone should be free to do whatever they want, with the game they buy, and the account they pay for.
People aren't exploiting people, they are automating their characters.
I think blizzard is out of line.
Most people aren't thought about after they're gone. "I wonder where Rob got the plutonium" is better than most get.
As an Ex-Programmer and user of Macroquest (Glider for Everquest essentially) the act of using active memory to alter game play has been around for a long time.
The automation of simple tasks does not need this memory hacking to work. In my days pre-macroquest, I used to take a nostromo speedpad, or other USB joystick of sorts, and program mini-macro's into them. Just a recorded set of keystrokes to do thing like autofire and such.
The use of Memory alteration, does a lot more then press the same button over and over. It can intercept, and redirect information being sent to and from the server changing what will happen. It can tell the server a new location for your character (warping) it can tell the server your default speed should be "x" so you can run as fast as you want. the list goes on and on.
In the Macroquest world, there are a few levels of "hacking", you have your non invasive macro's, which automate keystrokes, mouse movements, and clicks. Next are plugins, which are a little more difficult, it requires actually writing a program extension (.DLL file) to perform things, some are passive, utilizing the information recieved from the server, but not normally available to the player. Although not available, it's still being sent, so not really against the rules to use it. Lastly using plugins to access your memory, and "hook" game memory addresses, to alter the information and changed it to what you want.
All in all, cheating like this is not a simple task, it requires reverse engineering the programs exe, figuring out memory offsets for each thing you want to change, writing a programs to find and latch onto the memory offset to change it, and then figuring out the value to change it to to get the desired effect. Doing this is what we call an active hack, these are the ones that places like Sony and Blizzard can find using there tracking programs. These are what hurts them, using more resources then a normal player.
The simple automation of button pressing can (and has) be argued to be allowed based on most games EULA, which prohibits the use of 3rd party applications to alter game play. Automating keystroke/mouse click tasks does not alter game play, or change the way the program they wrote works in any way, if anything it may prevent carpal tunnel.
What I'm trying to say is: The user is chosing to use a program to violate the EULA, they should be punished. It's like sueing a company that makes bolt cutters because a customer of theirs bought some bolt cutters and broke into your house, or shed. The person performing the breaking and entering is at fault, not the manufacturer of the tool used to break and enter.
Like others have pointed out here, the reason people like me use Glider is simple. I work long hours at the office. I also take night classes. So my time is very limited. Grinding in WOW is brutal. The best part of any MMORPG for me is PvP. However, it would take me months, if not years to achieve the maximum level with my time constraints.
So a program like Glider allows me to hit the maximum level and then go enjoy the PvP. I was ALWAYS at my keyboard when Glider was running as to not interfere with others enjoyment.
I paid for 6 months of WOW a few years back. The next day, Blizzard banned my account and did not refund my $60. I personally felt robbed. So I hope the creator of Glider really wins this. I actually went back and bought WOW somewhat recently and leveled by myself to 45, but now I am hitting the grind and I cant bear to log in anymore.
In light of all this, I may just start running Glider again. If I get banned, oh well, Ill just stop playing permanently. But for people like me who want to just be able to PvP an hour or two night, Glider is a God send.
Somehow the statement for me depends on wrong and right.
"wrong target" for me means, that morally, the creator should not be blamed for creating a piece of software which can help you in a specifical task, even if this task may be unmoral.
it is like suing weapons producers for making wars. of course on a high-moral ground, we can debate this otherwise, but with high-moral ground i mean idealistic morality, which has more to do with world-view and beliefs.
so of course, strategically it is the right target to catch the dealer of something illegal. if it IS illegal.
otherwise, you HAVE TO catch the customers, which are the USERS of the program.
you can't destroy cigarette companies, to free all smokers, because nicotine is legal.
on the other hand, you have to catch the dealer of pot, because pot is illegal.
for legal stuff (even wow) the customers are responsible for USING them. blizzard claims bots play longer, but maybe somebody has, whatever, disabilities and is very fond of his bot program, because it helps him catching up with his friends - and he does not let the bot run longer, than he plays. so we see, it depends on the usage of the tool, the tool is not used to attack the server and is not performing illegal tasks per se (maybe it does, but from what i see it does not, or blizzard would sue for other reasons)
this makes the programmer morally the wrong target. and also legally the wrong target.
if blizzard succeeds in this, it may be fair on high-moral ground, but absolutely injust in terms of justice for all the other developers on the world creating little tools.
it is of course the right target strategically (and i think you meant that), but this again will make the whole move "evil", since they DO attack the wrong target (legally, morally), even if their motives and anger may be understandable in some way (high-moral).
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Some precedence supports the proposition that an information service can post terms of use that forbid or regulate bots.
Benjamin Wright, Dallas, Texas, benjaminwright.us