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Blizzard Sues Private Server Company, Awarded $88M
Cali Thalen writes "A private server company, Scapegaming (aka Alyson Reeves), was ordered to pay Blizzard Entertainment over $88 million in damages after losing a lawsuit that was concluded last week. Scapegaming was operating unauthorized World of Warcraft servers and using a micropayment system to collect money from the servers' user base, which according to the lawsuit amounted to just over $3 million. $85 million of that settlement was for statutory damages, and surprisingly only $63,000 in attorney's fees."
God knows Blizzard did not mind private servers before this (because they sucked).
What? Remember Blizzard v. bnetd?
Oh they cared before. Remember BnetD?
That was WAY before Activision. They report their income on different balance sheets; the only effective change in Blizzard mindset was the part where they went public.
Activision has nothing to do with anything they've done recently, and anyone who says otherwise is blaming something they don't like on a company of convinence.
Erm, yes, actually. And this is exactly the sort of thing the law is intended to defend against.
Here we have a case of someone infringing Blizzard's work for the explicit case of making money off it without getting Blizzard's permission. You don't get a more clear cut case than that.
One can argue the statuatory damage claim is outlandish, and it'll likely be reduced on appeal (it always is...), but Alyson here is still going to be on the hook for a decent chunk if $3 mil was brought in.