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Blizzard Awarded $6M Damages From MMOGlider
dw604 writes "The makers of MMOGlider have been found in breach of the World of Warcraft terms of service and are forced to pay Blizzard $6M in damages." There's a lot of sticky issues on this one. Mostly I'm amazed that MMOGlider had that kind of cash.
Mostly I'm amazed that MMOGlider had that kind of cash.
MMOGlider is the application, MDY would be the holder of the finances. After scanning the article, it seems that he is estimated to have sold 100,000 copies at $25 a pop resulting in $2.5 million ... then you have all the costs of hosting and developing and lawyering and all that.
And as the bottom of the article says:
The case is due to go to court again in January 2009 when the remaining issues in the legal conflict look likely to be settled.
At issue will be whether MDY broke the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act and whether Mr Donnelly will have to pay the damages from his own pocket.
And there you have it, in all likelihood they are not sitting on $6 million. As the article says, it's a good thing MDY won its arguments about the 'damages' their program caused to Blizzard otherwise they would be looking at $12 or $18 million settlements.
... but what's different now? So another player has more gold or resources, it's a tiny leg up in that game as the best items are won in PVP or require meticulous PVE to acquire.
...
And there's your sticky issue, what exactly are the damages. I hate this because if I know it's happening, it ruins WoW for me. But on the other hand, does it really ruin the game if someone magically goes from 1 to 70 in two weeks without working for it? I might be jaded that I had to put in hours of muscle distrophying arthritis inducing clicking to get there
The stickiest issue is that a lot of us are conflicted. It pisses us off that WoW is a little less fair but on the surface this was a guy who avoided all technical attempts Blizzard tried to thwart him in a great game of cat & mouse. In the end, he could claim he was just selling software that users happened to use to violate Blizzard's TOS and EULA with. I've heard the same arguments about BitTorrent and would probably side with the software makers in this case
I guess for me 'sticky' isn't a good description of it. No, there are two core ideologies which are conflicting here. The gamer in me says that games should be as fair as possible. WoW is already naturally flawed to some degree in this way and it is Blizzard's responsibility to keep the playing field level. MMOGlider upsets this 'fairness' and destroys the inherent fun in the game. On the other side of the issue he was just a guy writing software and selling it. I could throw him in with the likes of spammers and botnet masters but it was just a legitimate client program running on a paying user's machine.
Add to this what we've suffered through from Blizzard including rootkits and unfounded bans and it's an issue that strikes very close to home.
My work here is dung.
They might not have a penny to them. That has no relation to the award made by the court.
World of Warcraft - A game so fun that people pay for programs to play it for them.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Maybe they just used their own application to farm some more gold. Just a thought.
I Heart Sorting Networks
World of Warcraft - A game so fun that people pay for programs to play it for them.
You're telling me! I can't wait for World of World of Warcraft to come out! I'm going to roll a 90 lb famished Chinese man working for pennies an hour!
My work here is dung.
is that WoW killed this for the wrong reasons.
The ability to set this to run completely unattended? BAD. I totally agree that botting is no good, it's killed a lot of MMO's.
However, the ability to set this up to do ordinary tasks for users who have disabilities would be GOOD. It would enlarge the potential WoW audience. I'm not saying make it fine as-is, I'm saying that a "semi-unattended" setup where people playing the game just set up and monitor their macros isn't any worse than the normal mode of play (hell, wasn't that the entire control system of Final Fantasy 12?).
A lot of potential WoW players (potential gamers in general, actually) have problems. Someone who has partial paralysis or has had a hand/arm amputated has trouble using the standard game controllers. Now think about the game systems that get around this. If you've got two good legs, you can do DDR or Wii Fit without arms. If you only have one good arm, you can use the Wiimote and at least 50% of the Wii's games (though you still can't play Zelda). On the other hand, if you go near the Xbox360 or PS3, you're pretty much fucked.
Older titles didn't have this problem. If you have one hand, or even one of those face-stick setups with a single button, you can play Space Quest, King's Quest, and probably map the joystick to play single-button arcade games. If you have a working thumb and two fingers, you can get a two-button joystick and play NES titles.
Do I really care if someone who has disability problems, or even carpal tunnel, is able to set off macros to do the same thing I would do in multiple steps? Not really. I can still group with them, or play the game without them.
For some reason, however, the WoW designers don't want disabled gamers playing their game. They have ignored REPEATED entreaties from the disabled community to program in ways to make it feasible for disabled gamers to play. For quite a few, programs like WoW Glider were the fix. This is just one more symptom of the gaming industry not getting it when it comes to making their titles and systems accessible.
I i had a real robot ( no i dont mean biped humanoid ) that would be able to play for me using a mouse, screen and a keyboard .. they would sue the company that made the robot ?
And its not that far fetched, as a hardware you need just a camera watching the TV, and two inputs to PS2 and USB ports on my puter ..
So where do they draw the line ?
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