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Blizzard Suing Creators of StarCraft II Hacks
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Rock, Paper, Shotgun:
"Blizzard have taken the extremely peculiar decision to ban players from playing StarCraft II for using cheats in the single-player game. This meant that, despite cheating no one but themselves, they were locked out of playing the single-player game. Which is clearly bonkers. But it's not enough for the developer. Blizzard's lawyers are now setting out to sue those who create cheats. Gamespot reports that the megolithic company is chasing after three developers of hacks for 'destroying' their online game. It definitely will be in violation of the end user agreement, so there's a case. However, it's a certain element of their claim that stands out for attention. They're claiming using the hacks causes people to infringe copyright: 'When users of the Hacks download, install, and use the Hacks, they copy StarCraft II copyrighted content into their computer's RAM in excess of the scope of their limited license, as set forth in the EULA and ToU, and create derivative works of StarCraft II.'"
Blizzard used similar reasoning in their successful lawsuit against the creators of a World of Warcraft bot.
While we do realize that once you buy our games, they become your property, we do reserve the right to terminate your game at any time whenever we feel it is necessary.
Erm, what?
I presume this factors into it, and it's exactly why I don't support their actions.
You see, once upon a time, in the mythic age of the mid-2000's, developers intentionally added cheat codes to their games. Yes, intentionally. No, I'm not pulling your leg, it's true! "But Keatonguy", you ask, befuddled, "Why would they intentionally give people ways to do things in the game without spending untold days of time to unlock it piecemeal?" Well, young poster, because it's fun as hell. Cheating and hacking the RAM of games is where half the replay value of the classics comes from. Tell me, would San Andreas be as fun without flying cars and rioting pedestrians? Have you ever played a PC FPS without using noclip even once? Would we have found all those unused rooms and learned the programming tricks used to make classics like Metroid and The Legend of Zelda work without an Action Replay or a Game Genie?
Now these little things called achievement scores roll around, and if anyone dares to think of getting past a part of the game they don't feel like playing, it's something to be shunned and reviled. Damn kids these days, rabble rabble rabble...
If you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention.
The message I just sent to billing@blizzard.com:
For all the flaws Spore had, it got this one right.
It detected the use of cheats and gave you a very special achievement that blocked out getting any other achievements on that save. Ever.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Starcraft II includes cheat codes. When the codes are in effect the ability to earn the achievements is disabled. The hack in question allows players to cheat and earn the achievements at the same time.
No, because the achievement system isn't optional. If I bought Starcraft II (which I'm not going to, especially now), I'd probably not play it online at all, and if I did, it would just be with a few specific friends. I don't give a fuck about the achievements, I wanna play the game MY way. If I run in to a level that I find incredibly annoying, and I wanna skip it, or I wanna just stomp all over it with some invincible units, it's not any of Blizzard's fucking concern. It wouldn't have been their concern if my friends and I wanted to cheat with each other either, if we used LAN play. The only time it should matter is if we're actually, purposefully, and with intent accessing online multiplayer to play with people who couldn't know whether or not I'm cheating. If you're going to use achievements as a reason to stop people from doing what they want with their game, then that system needs to be optional.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
StarCraft 2 has cheat codes in it, their use just disables achievements until you start a new game or load an old one. Part of the issue is that this guy was using a program that let him cheat while still earning achievements and, according to the comments on the Rock Paper Shotgun article, cheat in the multiplayer too - both of which messes with the ranking system and in turn, causes all kinds of weirdness with their online matchmaking.
Plaintiff: "When users of the Hacks download, install, and use the Hacks, they copy StarCraft II copyrighted content into their computer's RAM in excess of the scope of their limited license, as set forth in the EULA and ToU, and create derivative works of StarCraft II"
Judge: "Mr Player, how do you plead?"
Player: "Innocent, Your Honour. I didn't do it, a virus did."
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
The real problem is that courts tend to automatically accept EULAs as being valid contracts even when they are so one-sides that they should be legally ruled unenforceable. When ruling on similar cases where there is no EULA, the courts have generally found that it is not a copyright violation. For example, the same theory was advanced to argue that a service which offered a DVD-playing program which removed certain scenes from movies (particularly, scenes deemed "offensive") was creating a derivative work from the original movie and thus should not be allowed. The courts ruled that the DVD-playing program was legal. So, basically, the question has only hinged on copyright law, the courts have ruled that it isn't a violation. When there's also an EULA, such as in the cases Blizzard has been involved in, they have consistently ruled in favor of the copyright owner.
Now, there are several reasons why this should be a non-starter. The first is that a copy in RAM should not be considered a fixation, and hence creating one is not a copyright violation. If copying something into RAM is creating a fixation then every CD and DVD player and most newer TVs continually break copyright laws every time they are used since RAM buffers have become ubiquitous. CD and DVD players simply cannot work without copying at least some of the CD or DVD into RAM in the process of playing it (although CDs could get away with as few as 16 bits at a given time). So this shouldn't legally be considered a copy to begin with, but the courts have ruled that it is in several previous cases.
Secondly, the copyright law that if someone owns a copy of a piece of software then they have the right to make the copies of it needed to run it. As a consequence, the idea that a user has to agree to an EULA in order to make the copies needed to run it is ludicrous. And the license agreement itself generally only takes away rights from the user without granting anything in return. As such, it should be considered unenforceable. However, the courts have either tended to ignore that section of copyright law and consider that the license grants you the right to make the needed copies or consider that the sale itself never happened if the medium that was bought contains software. They have ruled, effectively, that if you walk into a store and give money for a shiny disc, that if that disc contains music or movies, you've bought a copy, but if it contains software you've only licensed a copy, which is, to say the least, bizarre. As such, they've rejected arguments in previous cases that the defendants never agreed to the EULA as being irrelevant since they rule that the defendants don't own a copy and hence the relevant section of copyright law is inapplicable.
Now, Blizzard is in a slightly more realistic position from an EULA situation than most companies because they do actually have something to provide the user which the user doesn't already have: access to their on-line play servers, Battlenet. So, if they were to tie it all together in the EULA: you give us back ownership of the physical copy and you relinquish your reverse engineering rights, etc and in return we let you use our servers, then that contract would be enforceable (still lousy, but enforceable). However, in the previous Blizzard games I owned (which doesn't include StarCraft II, so I'm just speculating, someone else probably has more exact information) the EULA itself didn't mention BattleNet, only the game program and BattleNet was covered by a separate agreement you had to agree to in order to get your account. If the same is true here, then the EULA should be unenforceable.
But realistically, the courts never rule EULAs unenforceable, no matter the terms, and they rule that copies of software are licensed, not sold, and they rule that copies in RAM are fixations. So Blizzard will probably win again just like they did last time. They can usually afford the better lawyers and, as a result, they wind up getting the case-law put in place to support what they perceive as their interests and the rest of us get screwed. Woo.
Except Blizzard built cheats into the game for people just like you. They disable achievements, though. So for someone such as yourself, that's perfectly fine. But some people wanted to cheat the game AND the system to unlock achievements and artificially boost their rankings.
While I'm not sure a lawsuit is quite the answer, I do think Blizzard is right to make a big deal about this. A lot of people really like their achievements because... They're achievements! Some are rather hard to get. Blizzard is just making sure that the rewards someone earns aren't diluted by cheaters who make it impossible to determine who legitimately earned something and who just used a trainer.
Lets not forget that these so called "achievements" are nothing more than little blurbs from your computer assuring you that you are not in fact wasting your time and are actually somehow being productive.
but your friends can see your achievement tooooooo...
And your friends can see your pacman high-score at the local arcade. So fucking what.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
You might call me a Blizzard fanboy. I don't consider myself a fanboy of anything, but I think Blizzard has produced nothing but excellent PC games. Not a single bad one. All 7 of the games they released have been fun, well polished, well supported, and ran decently on older hardware. SC2 is really good. I uninstalled it yesterday because the network-centricity of it is pissing me off. I have a fast computer. I should not have to sit and wait for things to load when I hit the custom maps folder icon (on single player), as the custom maps I have already paid and I assume downloaded, should be on my local machine. Instead I wait for it to do whatever network activity it does to monitor me playing a single player custom map. And then beyond that it just gets worse. This is the first time I personally think I agree with the argument that I would be getting a better product if I find a hacked/cracked version of the game that doesn't do all this network garbage when I just want to start the game from my OS, load a map, and play single player.
It would also be nice to be able to change my account name when on multiplayer. Or even better to just let me make up new account names and start with a 0-0 record, so that I can learn other races in the game without lowering my rating with my main race (as I would lose lots of games and get stomped playing zerg for the first time when I am say at the gold or platinum level with protoss.)
The mandatory achievement system is just a piss-poor pretense to try and force online-drm, market segmentation (buy one copy of SC2 for each geographical area, because blizzard says it is entitled to get paid to record achievements on each realm?) and such random marketing "SC2 is so elite, you cannot cheat" restrictions on people, besides forced updates and mandatory participation in a huge marketing data gathering effort (with as many achievements, you know exactly what people played, how much, etc... so you can make predictions about what the smallest possible addition and the highest possible price will be, amongst many other things)
idkfa. "I Don't Kare For Article".
It was only a matter of time before blizzard turned evil...maybe it's because of activision
I get your point, but really, does anyone care about the achievement system? Although I do seem to be the only one who doesn't care about little pretty pictures which have no effect on gameplay.
yea, its in caps. its in caps because i dont know how harder it can be stressed any further. maybe it should have fireworks popping out behind the letters.
...
they ban players, players will use hacks/cracks to play the game they BOUGHT. they sue creators of hacks&cracks, and eventually they will hit a wall in china, or russia, while trying to sue creators of crack/hack # 1231285.
in the end, because of their MORON legal team, they will not only lose A LOT of publicity, and gain hostility from entire internet gaming community, but also will have accomplished making their position harder. i bet just because of this news, there are some people in russia or china already working on some stuff, just for the glory of it
Read radical news here
Most cheating systems aren't actually intended for players. I mean, the developers usually leave them in for players in the end, but they're more generally used for testing.
If you'll notice the claim they're making, it is virtually word for word the claim they used and ultimately won with when suing the developer of the Glider World of Warcraft bot.
I had a feeling this was coming in some form. However banning users who cheat in single player from playing the game at all is ridiculous, Blizzard. I supported your crusade against people who impacted my game-play experience, but single player players? That's just silly, guys.
If you've ever played Starcraft 2 single player, you'll know that you generally authenticate with your Battle.Net account first and are able to chat to your online contacts etc etc. Single player's "achievements" are also integrated and a part of your multiplayer profile, so by using hacks/whatever it's possible to get hard/difficult achievements without actually putting in the hard yards. Play the game before you jump to conclusions!
StarCraft 2 has cheat codes in it, their use just disables achievements until you start a new game or load an old one. Part of the issue is that this guy was using a program that let him cheat while still earning achievements and, according to the comments on the Rock Paper Shotgun article, cheat in the multiplayer too - both of which messes with the ranking system and in turn, causes all kinds of weirdness with their online matchmaking.
But of course news items wouldnt bring hits if they wrote it that way, so distorting the truth just enough to sound likely correct and spamming it around is the rule. Especially if it's bashing on a big company, since they're no angels, most of the people who notice the truth has been bended yet again most likely let it go.
Whether the article was telling half-truths or not, the fact that Activision is behind it tells me all I need to know. This is simply more deception and tricks being pulled by Bobby Kotick to get more money from people. I'm not an avid PC gamer, but Bobby really does have it out for console gamers. I suggest others who are seriously fed up follow suit with Dice and write them a letter asking Bobby if he's happy. This is seriously a low blow from Activision.
Considering the achievement system, they're not cheating only themselves.
Except the achievement system literally has no point, no benefit, and is the most blatant "e-peen" exhibitionism around. It's even less important than the 360 Achievements, which is saying something.
No, this is a rights grab. They're trying to convince a court that you have no right to do anything with the product you bought and paid for, whatsoever, because you're not buying it, you're borrowing it long term for a set fee. It's utter madness. If someone wanted to make the "Game Genie" nowadays, Nintendo would sue them into oblivion and prevent it from ever happening.
This one's easy. "While we do realize that once you buy our cars, they become your property, we do reserve the right to terminate your car at any time whenever we feel it is necessary."
Also, "While we do realize that once we pay for your games, the money becomes your property, we do reserve the right to demand our money back at any time whenever we feel it is necessary."
Back in my day, it just meant that you wouldn't get any support for your unorthodox use of the game. Now they can sue you for millions!
I care about the achievement system.
Actually it would be more accurate to say that the achievement system seems designed for the way I play games that I truly love.
When a game becomes one of my favorites, I want to not just beat it, but master it. Dominate it. I'm not much of one for online multiplayer games, but I do like to find every item, kill every bad guy, beat every level without warps, rescue every hostage, collect every giant coin, and figure out where every secret room is.
The achievement system is great because it gives me more play. I might not have though of trying to beat the level where the bad guy searches the data cores on hard before they search six buildings. But that's an achievement, and it's a nice little artificial benchmark for me to reach.
I beat the single player game in about a week with about 40% of the achievements. Since then I've been playing through the achievements to try and get to 100%. I'm at like 55% now, I think. It's extra fun for the completionist in me.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Unfortunately I think you're right.
while I wholeheartedly support multiplayer games being free of cheats, the suits brought seems on the surface to enable the companies to pretty much put "we own your a**" in their EULA and get it through court. I strongly oppose any such movement. Not because I feel everything should be open sourced to be toyed with as you like, but because when I buy a toaster, what I do with it after the time of purchase may or may not be legal, it may or may not invalidate my warranty, but it's not the MANUFACTURER who decides what I can and cannot use my toaster for, anything I do with MY property is MY responsibility, legally and morally. The same should hold true of immaterial products, like software. I suspect this is why they're trying to make this sound like a simple case of pirating.
Because in essence they're using copyright infringement as the sacrificial lamb, when in reality, no distribution is taking place, and as such cause the company no loss in sales. I dont see how this cannot be a case of simple fair-use. I hope this means that screwed up EULAs will finally die a slow and horrible death, because if they loose the case, that might set a presedence for EULAs being unreasonably strict.
Disclaimer: I have NOT read the indictment, only the article(s), which may or may not be portraying reality in a tinted light.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
This sucks, but it doesn't affect me in the least. Blizzard went on my "evil company" blacklist the day they sued Bnetd.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Eventually we will be forced to play storing data in L1 cache only. L2 could infring some other EULA.
slashwhat?
Was big fan of games produced by the old Blizzard. But once they became Activision, decided to move on. Not a boycott, just seemed the right thing to do. Life is better now.
You see, once upon a time, in the mythic age of the mid-2000's, developers intentionally added cheat codes to their games. Yes, intentionally. No, I'm not pulling your leg, it's true! "But Keatonguy", you ask, befuddled, "Why would they intentionally give people ways to do things in the game without spending untold days of time to unlock it piecemeal?" Well, young poster, because it's fun as hell. Cheating and hacking the RAM of games is where half the replay value of the classics comes from.
One word: Debugging.
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
The point isn't the ban, it's the court action. I don't care if they want to ban people for ToS violations, in fact I welcome it - we all know cheaters ruin online play - but suing and claiming breach of copyright is ridiculous. It's like selling me a book but claiming in the small-print that I only have the right to read it, not to make notes in the margins, and that if I do make notes my legitimate copy of the book suddenly becomes an illegal copy. I'm sorry, I didn't buy a license, I bought a book.
Some of the achievements are linked to the challenge portion of the game. In the challenge part of the game, you learn basic to advanced strategies for playing the game. Although this has no real impact on your gameplay later, it is nice to get something for making your way through the challenges.
There is no point or benefit to playing a video game at all, other than for entertainment value. If the acheivement system increases a player's level of entertainment, then it is just as valid and the rest of the game.
If you don't find it entertaining, that's fair enough, but there are plenty of people that do.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
You guys are way slow on the uptake. I stopped supporting blizzard when they changed focus with Warcraft3 and decided to stick with the same old game mechanics as the previous games. Same bat games, same bat channel.
No, this about lawsuits against people who make tools to mess around with the memory in a machine you own.
In a sane society Blizzard would be laughed out of court.
Cut them off, don't let them use your network, whatever. Lawsuits are a step too far.
Maybe you're not looking hard enough. Sure, this time they're going after cheaters, something we can all get behind because, frankly, cheaters are one of the reasons I largely gave up on multiplayer. However, the way the court action is worded, they could apply this to any mod to the game. You want to create a new fun little mod, you'll have to get an extended license from Blizzard before you can even legally play around with the code. Interested in programming and how the game works and want to poke around under the hood of the product you thought you bought? Tough luck, you just rendered your copy of the game an illegal copy, even though you paid in full, and you're now wide open to a copyright infringement action. That is the cancer here, not banning cheaters, but of course everyone's focus is purely on the cheating aspect and how Blizzard are doing the right thing - which is exactly where they want your focus.
Considering the achievement system (a otherwise useless construct designed to keep people playing via compulsive behavior), they're not cheating anybody.
Or even better to just let me make up new account names and start with a 0-0 record, so that I can learn other races in the game without lowering my rating with my main race (as I would lose lots of games and get stomped playing zerg for the first time when I am say at the gold or platinum level with protoss.)
Does the win-loss record include skirmishes against AI? Because if not, you can train until you can curb-stomp the maximum number of AIs set up on a team against you, and only then try online.
Fuckin A
Play Command HQ online
why buy their games?
hasn't blizzard done enough evil shit over the years to deserve a permanent boycott?
when someone shits in your face you don't beg for more (not unless you have the same fetish Hitler had, that is).
so why buy their stuff? doesn't matter how good (or bad) their games are, by buying their stuff you are contributing to the evil crap they do.
boycott them.
Something to consider in all this is that Blizzard has done relatively well is that it's been relatively successful changing the mindset from 'people buying a game', to 'people buying a license to play a game'. When looked at from that perspective, it makes what they're doing a little bit clearer, as in they're selling access to experience gameplay in an environment they own. If you're coming to play in their house, you get to play by their rules. Perhaps consider it like borrowing a friends toy when you were a kid. If you break his super neat-o toy, you may not be allowed to play with it any more.
Is it just me or the legal world totally and absolutely crazed? What the lawyers of a company like Blizzard have in their heads for ideas like this, shit?
From now on I'm officially considering that lawyers are not intelligent life forms
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Who really cares though?
It's a game.
I play games because they should be fun. I do not play games for profit, nor do I get upset if someone has more achievements, or a greater score than I.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
There is no entertainment value in achievements. It's purely for bragging rights - and bragging about something meaningless.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
And everyone can see Carlos Slim and Bill Gate's "high scores" too: http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/10/billionaires-2010_The-Worlds-Billionaires_Rank.html
They are all just digits in a bunch of computers somewhere. If enough people decide it's real, it's real enough :). If for some reason everyone decides the US dollar is worth nothing, Bill Gates becomes worth a lot less.
Fact is most of what we do is a waste of time. Most of it does not really endure much longer than that Pacman high-score, nor means much more.
A hundred thousand years from now, someone might rate the entire human race's "achievements" by 2010 as "so fucking what".
And 100000 years isn't very long. The "classic" dinosaurs were around for about 160 _million_ years.
Oh COME ON !!!
it's SOLO GAMING for f*ck's sake !
What difference does it make to you if someone cheats in solo ? does it ruin your gaming experience and make you waste some time ? NO.
What do you care ? like you've never used a single cheat code in your entire life ?
Let's take Starcraft 1 as a comparative example.
In SC1 you actually owned the game after purchasing it, which meant that you could cheat in solo, not alter anyone experience, still brag about finishing the campaign in the hardest mod and whatever (although it wouldn't have impressed a lot of people) and everyone was fine with this.
What's the difference here ?
I mean what if I wanna play online but I also wanna see the videos and the story behind the campaign, I just don't have the time to play it so I cheat.
what is wrong with this ?
Ok, so... you like achievements. Awesome. Why does it matter if I get those achievements in a different way than you?
I'd argue it's simply a personal rights issue. If I get a million dollars by working hard and saving my money and someone gets it by winning the lottery, why should I expect the law to fine the person that won the lottery for my personal ego?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I purchased all the original Warcraft series - still have most of the disks.
I purchased the original Diablo several times. Still have two sets of disks.
I have multiple copies of Starcraft/Broodwar.
I have been an avid WoW player.
I will not be purchasing any more Blizzard games.
I will be telling all my friends to avoid Blizzard games.
This is the final straw, Blizzard.
If the draconian crap that goes on in the software industry nowadays was going on "back in the day", some truly awesome "hacks" would never have been created. Hellfire, the Diablo "expansion", for instance, was actually produced by Sierra, not Blizzard. Counterstrike was originally a (rather extensive) modification of Halflife. Punishing creative people who fill the niche market left by holes in the product is stupid, self-destructive, and hurts the entire industry.
This is just another example of how copyrights and software patents are broken, stifling creativity and competition. EULA's are obviously just a way to take your money without delivering anything in return.
Shame on you, Blizzard, for helping to kill your primary source of income. I hope you're happy.
Postscript:
I hope the pirates win. I didn't feel that way previously, but I'm tired of seeing increasing prices for decreasing quality, along with the ridiculous legal battles tying up our court system for the benefit of no one.
Today, Blizzard joined the likes of the RIAA and MPAA in my mind. I hope they starve.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
I can't believe I still recognise that.
...I wanted to cheat with each other either, if we used LAN play.l.
There's no LAN in SC2.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
I don't have any mod points so I will just recommend that parent should not be modded insightful and should instead be modded flamebait.
His opinion is without merit (as many others have pointed out, SCII has cheat codes, just like "the mythic age of the mid-2000's").
It does not contribute anything to the conversation when the first visible post is entirely factual inaccurate.
What is the point to get achievement by cheating ? This is just worthless.
Remember the news a while ago when one korean guy had completed all WoW achievements ? This guys is clearly a nolife, sure, but I respect this because I know (well, I imagine) how much dedication was needed to obtain it. If it had been possible to obtain these achievements by cheating, we would never have been told about this feat.
For your money analogy, if you won your million dollars working hard during your whole life, and the next day you see anybody can have it by just printing bills, I'm quite sure you would be very very unhappy.
I would still like to opt out of any achievement being posted on-line. I do not want any company tracking anything I do. If anything, it only shows just how much time I waste.
They won the cheating on line aspect, which people feel is fair. They'll get their single player lock out wish. I worry about what is next. It goes to show that every inch of "Freedom" needs to be fought for and held on to. They'll want to take that mile soon.
I'm forseeing a class action lawsuit over the single player lockout issue.
There is no point or benefit in anything, other than potential enjoyment.
Seriously. It's not like staying alive itself (or earning a better afterlife, or whatever) has any benefit that doesn't ultimately reduce into "I might enjoy it".
The question is: does it? In my experience, most achievements are given for utterly trivial things (like the "Disciple of Osmos" in Osmos, unlocked by completing the tutorial), so there's no actual sense of achievement to them.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
After 9 years and $100 million+ they're going after people for HACK PATCHES? You MUST be joking.
I think it's clear that both Sony and Blizzard are the new WORST gaming companies ever. I won't buy their shit, and now I don't even want to work for either of them anymore.
Hear me Actiblizzard? Go fuck yourselves.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
but your friends can see your achievement tooooooo...
And your friends can see your pacman high-score at the local arcade. So fucking what.
The difference is the expectation of privacy. If someone sees that I have achieved a "badge" that requires at least 120 hours of play time in a week or requires you to initiate "sex" with both genders, it discloses personal information that one might not want publicized.
I can see the games companies being sued over something like that; perhaps if someone loses their job because a "badge" disclosed certain information.
Thats for most part a myth, while there are exceptions of course, most cheats in the past where intentionally put in by the developers for the player, as it allows them to get a little extra press a few weeks/month after the release when they announce the cheats. Today cheats are frequently a normal part of the game, properly integrated into the game menus and all, so basically just a tool to increase replay value, instead of a hidden secret.
Full debugging and testing functions hardly ever make it into the final game.
Ahh but there are people who play for profit and not for fun. There are leagues and there are competitions. Lots of this is based on online scores, so while YOU may not care much at all I bet you there are a myriad of people out there who are pissed off that some n00b is higher on the ladder than they are by cheating, and there'll also be a handful of players who may find themselves pitched against incorrect opponents as a result of the leader board being messed up.
People should cheat in their own time, heck I cheat games for fun too. But there something to be said when the results will carry over onto Battle.net
If the score and rankings don't match up properly because of cheaters, what's the point with scoring in the first place? Just local scores to beat your own personal records? In Starcraft 2? Give me a break. And "It's a game, so why take it so seriously" is a stupid fallacy. Just because something is for fun and recreation doesn't mean it can't or should not be taken seriously. In games with other players, people expect fairness for all players. It's a basic principle.
What if I run it from a RAM disk? Am I breaking the ULA?
Blizzard Games:
RPM Racing 1991 Never heard of it.
Battle Chess 1992 Bought it. Twice I think.
Battle Chess II 1992 Bought it once as part of a deal. Never played it.
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I 1992 Never played it. Never bought it.
Castles (Amiga port) 1992 Bought it, played it, liked it.
MicroLeague Baseball (Amiga port) 1992 Never heard of it.
Lexie-Cross (Macintosh port) 1992 Never heard of it.
Dvorak on Typing (Macintosh port) 1992 Never heard of it.
The Lost Vikings 1992 Played it once I think. Never bought it.
Rock N' Roll Racing 1993 Never bought it.
Shanghai II: Dragon's Eye 1994 Never heard of it.
Blackthorne 1994 Never heard of it.
The Death and Return of Superman 1994 Never heard of it.
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans 1994 Bought it, played it, liked it.
The Lost Vikings II 1995 Never bought it.
Justice League Task Force 1995 Never heard of it.
Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness 1995 Bought it, played it, liked it.
Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal 1996 Never bought it.
Diablo 1996 Bought it, played it, liked it.
StarCraft 1998 Bought it, played it, liked it.
StarCraft: Brood War 1998 Bought it, played it, liked it.
Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition 1999 Never bought it.
Diablo II 2000 Never bought it.
Diablo II: Lord of Destruction 2001 Never bought it.
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos 2002 Never bought it.
Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne 2003 Never bought it.
World of Warcraft 2004 Never played it, or even tried it, not even once.
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade 2007 Never played it, or even tried it, not even once.
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King 2008 Never played it, or even tried it, not even once.
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty 2010 Highly unlikely to buy it.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm 2010 Highly unlikely to buy it.
Diablo III Under development Highly unlikely to buy it.
StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm Under development Highly unlikely to buy it.
StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void Under development Highly unlikely to buy it.
I think they lost it over 10 years ago. Why anyone still buys anything from them is beyond me. When the games were fun, when they were original, when they were affordable, and when I could "own" the game, yeah, they were quite good. Now though? I'd rather drop some cash for their 10+ year-old-games from a back catalogue than pay for even one month of their MMORPG or fight to install their latest games.
It's the same with most games companies - some good ideas, some really good games, some takeovers and then crap for the rest of their lives.
Some people enjoy competing with their friends and derive great satisfaction from winning games or hitting achievements that their friends cannot. It's just something optional that adds an extra dimension and re-playability to a game.
If cheaters can fraudulently devalue these achievements, why is this hard for so many here to grasp that some people might not be happy about that? Yes it may seem inane and pointless to you in much the same way that a local sports team comprised of people I have never met winning a league seems inane and pointless to me but at least I can try to understand why other people invest time and emotion in such things.
There is absolutely no just cause for a lawsuit under these circumstances. If people can circumvent their current system, they need to add restrictions to prevent it. If someone is able to develop a hack that circumvents their achievement system lock down, then they need to offer that person a job, not set out to ruin their life over it.
Who really cares though?
It's a game.
Works both ways though.
Who really cares that these people are getting sued? They just make cheats for a game.
See how that works out? If the game is unimportant (and any game is intrinsically unimportant to people who don't play it), then it hardly matters to you what the developers are doing against the makers and users of cheats.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
I think the underlying question is 'what benefits do achievements give the player?'
If it is only about e-penis stuff, then who cares?
But if it is like in other games where achievements give you better equipment or allow you to do special things, then yes, hacking them would be bad.
Unless you are in single player though because let's be honest, why not give little Timmy the Nuke if he flipping want's it?
If he wants to ruin his SP experience, then let him.
Where is the sense in achievements for SP anyway? It is like a ranking system for 1-person ping-pong. Whoot, I beat myself 15-nil today.. I ru1e d00d!
I kind of think about the kids that practice stuff at home and think they are the bomb.
Yet if they would go outside and compete (that is 'going online' for us real-worlders) they would probably just bomb.
Thus the achievements they got offline would really mean what they do: nothing!
> If someone wanted to make the "Game Genie" nowadays, Nintendo would sue them into oblivion and prevent it from ever happening.
Funny you say that.
Nintendo DID sue Galoob to try to stop them distributing the Game Genie.
Nintendo LOST.
Very similar "devalues our games" arguments; and Nintendo was the 800-pound legal gorilla back then too, with a 95%+ market share and who one 99%+ of copyright and similar legal cases.
Even so, I don't hold much hope for this case - not because any of the facts are materially different... just because I've lost hope of sanity in anything related to copyrights, patents, or trademarks.
"Having paid Nintendo a fair return, the consumer may experiment with the product and create new variations of play, for personal enjoyment, without creating a derivative work."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Galoob_Toys,_Inc._v._Nintendo_of_America,_Inc.
StarCraft 2 has cheat codes in it, their use just disables achievements until you start a new game or load an old one. Part of the issue is that this guy was using a program that let him cheat while still earning achievements and, according to the comments on the Rock Paper Shotgun article, cheat in the multiplayer too - both of which messes with the ranking system and in turn, causes all kinds of weirdness with their online matchmaking.
pfft... And this is what I think of Achievment Systems.
"The truth points to itself." - Kosh, Babylon5
Who cares about "achievements" anyway?
That completly depends on the game, well done achievements give you a meta-game on top of the game itself, giving you a reason to try different tactics, use specific weapons, explore new areas, avoid to kill anybody and other things that you normally wouldn't do in normal gameplay. The bad achievements on the other side are the ones that just require you to waste tons of times in a game, without requiring changing the way you play at all. And of course there are the achievements that basically boil down to "buy all our DLC".
What is the point to get achievement by cheating ? This is just worthless.
Yeah, but that is not the problem here. If Blizzard would just block or delete the achievements of cheaters, big deal, hardly anybody would care. What they are doing instead is suing the cheat tool builders via dubious EULA based restrictions.
no, because the subject of the article lost his license to play the game when he used a external hack program
GENERATION 24: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
there are people who farmed all achievements already including ones like 1000 wins with a race (including random)
how is that possible? you need at least 3k wins to do that, 6k assuming matchmaking aiming for 50% win ratio?
1. join 4v4 game
2. leave as soon as it starts
3. ?
4. profit
wtf you ask? if your team wins you get a win, so why bother with playing at all. Join as many games as you can, your 50% will get you enough good teammates that you won't be needed and you get 10-20 wins/hr (reportedly they fixed it recently but in the mean time 3v3 and 4v4 devolved into a complete chaos and people were abandoning these game modes in droves)
another example: people throw games to stay in the lowest league only because they can do annoying achievements there faster (no league level requirement) - nooblets can't defend against cheese. One guy is famous for SCV rush at the very beginning and that works good enough against bronze league players.
In such a situation I don't really see any harm in using haxx for achievements when the whole system is already broken by design and gamed left and right.
I don't understand where all the hate is coming from. I love Blizzard for doing this and hated them when they didn't do anything against hackers in Warcraft3 in the end.
Hackers destroyed WC3, a game I played for many years, but in the end every other online game I tried to play online, I got either map hacked, disconnect hacked or crash hacked. Blizzard released a patch, a week later there was a new hack
I still like the game, but it became unplayable, it ruined all the fun.
And now SC2 arrived.
And hacks soon after.
The hacking is not only in the single player game by the way.
I was very sad when I saw the first map hacks arrive in SC2 and encounter the first hackers on the ladder. It was so great to read when they banned a lot of players that used the hacks and even better, they are now targeting the hack developers.
Also don't forget that SC2 is aiming to be more than a game. it's aiming to be the no1 e-sports game.
This week a game from old SC1 legend SlayersBoxer returning in a SC2 tournament, with 80k for the winner, was watched on a stream by more than 700,000 people. No joke.
Mostly Koreans, but more and more people outside Korea start liking E-sports as well. People who don't play the game at all watch the tournaments online and like it a lot. Some youtube commentators, who cast games with english commenting, have more than 100k subscribers.
There are even a few americans and europeans now living in Korea as professional gamers, people who earn their living by playing SC2.
It's becoming pretty big.
I would love it if E-sports got as big worldwide as it is in Korea.
But if that's your goal as a game developer you have to get rid of cheaters, like in any sports.
A football player who's caught on doping gets banned too and they will for sure try to find the provider of the doping and get him in a lawsuit as well.
Anyway, on SC2 fan sites almost everyone approves about Blizzard taking action:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=161168
Just thought it would be good to add this info to the discussion
And your friends can see your pacman high-score at the local arcade. So fucking what.
What's an ar-cad-e?
What's an ar-cad-e?
It's the walkway between stores in a strip mall
Problem: While you play your single player game ONLINE (that is, connected to their servers), its not just a question of "my game". You agree to certain things while connected, and Blizzard has the right to hold you to that (to what extent is another question). Whether or not you think its blatant exhibitionism or not is irrelevant; other people rather like the achievement system (clearly those cheating to get the achievements do), and this breaks that feature for them if it cannot be trusted to be accurate.
If you want to tinker with the game, there IS a "play offline" feature, where achievements cannot be earned; I dont think Blizzard would have much to say about you cheating offline.
Did you learn sophism from an epicurean? Game are not serious things, but legal lawsuits are!
this post contain no useful information, no need to mod it down
Single player games that get achievements ARE using Blizzard's network. Its constantly online as you play unless you choose the "play offline" feature.
So? This is still unenforceable. This is on Blizzards head for creating a system that is legally unprotected, then trying to immorally protect it by frighteningly pushing the bounds of law to cover it.
And your friends can see your pacman high-score at the local arcade. So fucking what.
When was the last time you cheated at Pac-Man at the local arcade?
No, it's not really a myth. Yes, cheats continue to exist past development for the end users and were often an added "bonus", but they weren't originally written explicitly for the users (yes there are exceptions, here). Typically cheats have always been testing tools, save for the goofy user-specific cheats like "Big Head Mode" or games where there's actually a cheat menu built right into the main interface with tons of silly cheats or unlockable cheats.
I'm not talking full blown debug interfaces as you're right; those are rarely left in tact for a number of reasons, but cheats in general were most often created for testers to test the game. I've been in this field for a good number of years now, and this is always how we've operated. In the event we leave cheats in, it's for fun (and sometimes so we can collect information from end users on errors), but we used those cheats ourselves extensively internally throughout development.
There are at least two easy solutions that don't cloud up the legal system and personal rights issues:
1. Block all achievements from found cheaters from appearing online.
2. Make achievements have more flags. I don't know what achievements are in SC2, but let's say there is one to kill 100 widgets. Instead of a blanket, "100 widgets" rule put a minimum time restriction. ("Hey, that's impossible to kill 100 of these in 14 seconds... the rules of the game make that impossible. Achievement denied.")
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
what's the point with scoring in the first place?
That's a question I'd like to know the answer to. Personally, I buy games for fun, and I derive no fun from conflict with other people. Sure, when I was younger it was fun to see my name in a list on screen, but that wears off and I would not come back the next day to make sure it's still there. Also, I wasn't so hung up over it that I would sue someone because they found out that putting a stone on one of the buttons let them fly up the charts easier.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
But does it need legal action? Why not disable the achievements for known cheaters?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I don't play SC2 and never liked their Warcraft/Starcraft series, but I completely understand Blizzard's stance. Certain features of the game were intended to function a certain way with THEIR servers. By bypassing the system, you are in essence modifying the content their servers provide, in this case the Achievements. I'm ok with someone using cheats during single player, as it sometimes does reduce frustration with a product you purchased and it can help make it more enjoyable. Personally, I refrain a majority of the time as long as the game is still enjoyable. But this is clearly a case of people wanting to attain something they truly shouldn't be rewarded with (Achievements). If this helps narrow down the gap of people producing multiplayer hacks, I'm all for Blizzard rooting these people out. I wish Blizzard made FPSs and did the same with people that created Wallhacks, Aimbots, and the like. It is a sad state of affairs when people can't play a multiplayer game honestly and fair.
And that "n00b" will find that competing at that level will not be conducive to fun and will likely be eliminated from any waged competition early on.
I still fail to see the issue here besides that fact that you may have to play an easy game now and then.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Those Bicycle Playing card people are going to sue me out of existence I've been cheating at solitaire for years.
A hundred thousand years from now, someone might rate the entire human race's "achievements" by 2010 as "so fucking what".
"Mostly harmless."
Free Martian Whores!
Everyone is completely up in arms over this and it kills me. The achievements have a much greater impact than most seem to realize. Starcraft morphed into practically a sport in certain places, especially Korea, for example. So cheating the single player game and receiving the achievements is a real issue for Blizzard. They run high level very expensive tournaments that can be, and are being affected by these cheats. Sure it seems to be constrained to the single player campaign but what does that do to the multiplayer community that know they could easily be cheated at any time. Blizzard has to do something about it immediately or risk a lot of backlash from a community that was very much a consideration in the development of the game.
Game are not serious things, but legal lawsuits are!
My intent was to prove the opposite, that games are in fact to be taken seriously and that the "it's just a game" argument is poorly thought out, though I can see why you'd take that the way you did (my post was brief).
But I am going t take issue with the blanket statement that all lawsuits are serious things. Most are anything but serious, except to those directly involved.
A lawsuit is serious when its outcome establishes a broad precedent. A suit that establishes that truth is an absolute defence against libel is a good example of a suit that affects society as a whole. But when a lawsuit falls under a narrowly defined niche, it becomes much less serious for the rest of us. A suit over the fine points of contract law for example does not affect society overmuch, particularly if it doesn't establish any new precedent. And no, most cases are not precedent setting.
There are thousands of suits every year. A handful actually matter to everyone. A slightly larger number matter to people loosely attached to the interested parties. Most don't even matter that much.
On-topic, a lawsuit over the use of third party hack programs for cheating in single player games is niche. It is of interest to the narrowly defined field of video game intellectual property law. It does not establish new precedent about third party hacks more generally, because the precedent is already there (see previous suits by blizzard, such as BNetD).
Ergo, the only people who actually have any reason to care about the outcome of the suit are... the gamers and the game's industry.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
And you'd probably be banned from the arcade if you go around messing with the machines to set your score as the highest.
The main reason that developers intentionally added cheats in their games in days of yore was for marketing reasons. I worked on games where the publishers had various cheats as part of their requirements for the games. Why? Because then our publisher can negotiate favorable / bigger press in exchange for giving specific gaming magazines those cheat codes first.
Just because you don't like achievements doesn't mean they're any less fun or challenging to others. Some were left wanting a little more when they completed the single player game. It is fun to play through the game again without using X unit or Y unit on Z level for a cool new portrait and the added challenge. The last level of the game is an absolute blast on brutal difficulty.
I've said for a long time that the sensible way to fight piracy is to simply sell the product at a price point where people are happy to pay for the convenience of an easy high quality download.
Now i've discovered a new market. People want cheats for SC2. Blizzard should make cheats available and charge some nominal fee to download their cheat program. $2.99. Sure it's more than the free cheats, but it's unlikely to carry trojans, it's easily downloaded through the blizzard downloader you already have, and really who knows more about the inner workings of the game? Some punks with a hex editor or Blizzard?
I am only about 25% joking. When i started typing this i thought it was funny. now i think this idea has real merit.
Who said ONLINE play? They are banning people from Single Player. And you are wrong. You bought a license. If you go to the store and buy a box of Office, and you use Word to write a bad review of Windows 7, you have violated the EULA (which says you are not allowed to criticize Microsoft) and therefore your installation of Office is a copyright violation. You see, though the Copyright Act says you are allowed to make as many copies are are necessary for the intended use of the product, the courts have declared that since "everybody knows" you cannot buy software, only license it, the Copyright Act does not apply because you have made no purchase.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
That's a bad analogy because your book is a static product that by itself doesn't interact with the outside world. Starcraft (never played it) is communicating your skill level to others in the community. Using a cars analogy, imagine if your Corvette communicated it's top speed to the Chevy website for bragging rights among other drivers. But, it's only for *stock* Vettes. You "cheat" the website by installing illegal upgrades like nitrous in your engine, or drill holes in your muffler (I'm not a mechanic, whatever you gearheads do!), then still get your top speed reported.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The guy was also cheating in multiplayer (which the summary somehow manages to leave out). Going up against an opponent who is cheating absolutely, 100% ruins the fun for me. I suspect it ruins the fun for everyone except the cheater in fact. The only thing I see wrong with Blizzard's actions here are the way they are going about it, claiming copyright infringement is very dishonest, I would think there would be a better way to take the guy to court than that (or better yet, detect the hacks and ban him in every way possible).
No... this has nothing to do with privacy. People want the achievements added to their profiles, and are cheating to add them. Why this matters to anyone, I don't know, as the most "useful" items you get from StarCraft 2 achievements are avatar icons and logos which can be placed on your units, logos which are so small I'd swear you'd never see them in a serious game. And SC2 has cheats built in, that disable achievements, so if someone just wants to see the story, they can easily do that. The only reason to cheat with hacks is to either get achievements that one is not good enough to earn legitimately, or to cheat in multiplayer.
Microsoft has had similar problems with their achievement system being cheated as well. Their answer has been deleting all achievements from the people found to be cheating in this way. Banning someone from the game does seem a little harsh in this situation.
What is the difference in results between what gameshark does on consoles and what hacks do on PCs?
no, because the subject of the article lost his license to play the game when he used a external hack program
OK, this is a scary thing. This would effectively allow software vendors to attach copyright infringement penalties to EULA violations. Nevermind if you bought it legally. If you do something that violates the EULA, you have infringed their copyright.
Unfortunately they stop being fun when every other opponent on battle.net has some hack installed, and you do not know if he has "god" vision of your positions or he does not. If I assume they know everything I do, my strategy should change. But then there is a money hack and 100 other hacks that gives them unfair advantage. This really does ruin the game, even if I only play for fun.
It's hard to explain this. Let's say we play an intense game of chess for half an hour, and then I jump my pawn over 3 squares and eat your queen. You say wait, what? It's a hack I have! Did you have fun? Or was it more like 30 mins of your life wasted?
Just because it's a video game doesn't really change the fact that it's shitty to try and move up the ladder illegitimately.
The problem isn't if cheating is good or not, but that Blizzard is removing your rights as a consumer. Think you own what you buy? Nope, Blizzard does and can pull the plug whenever they want. And of course they go want step further and want to disallow that you can even use your computer for your own purposes. Wanna hack a game? Blizzard will send the police and base their claims on dubious EULA that nobody read to begin with.
The proper way to deal with cheating would be to have draconian punishment on official servers (aka block the account), but give the user the freedom to run dedicated servers themselves and do whatever the hell they want and of course keep that online crap away from single player completly.
... a copy in RAM should not be considered a fixation, and hence creating one is not a copyright violation. If copying something into RAM is creating a fixation then every CD and DVD player and most newer TVs continually break copyright laws every time they are used since RAM buffers have become ubiquitous. CD and DVD players simply cannot work without copying at least some of the CD or DVD into RAM in the process of playing it (although CDs could get away with as few as 16 bits at a given time). So this shouldn't legally be considered a copy to begin with, but the courts have ruled that it is in several previous cases ...
This argument probably fails since deriving a properly sized/scaled image from the copyrighted material is the intended use of this material, possibly an "essential step of utilization". The software that does this is also licensed from an industry organization IIRC.
Secondly, the copyright law that if someone owns a copy of a piece of software then they have the right to make the copies of it needed to run it.
The argument also seems to fail on its face. The copy in RAM is allowed as part of normal usage. The datas use by hacking software is not such normal use. I think you would have to make a "fair use" argument, not an "essential step of utilization argument", for the line of thought you are pursuing.
Now, Blizzard is in a slightly more realistic position from an EULA situation than most companies because they do actually have something to provide the user which the user doesn't already have: access to their on-line play servers, Battlenet. So, if they were to tie it all together in the EULA: you give us back ownership of the physical copy and you relinquish your reverse engineering rights, etc and in return we let you use our servers, then that contract would be enforceable (still lousy, but enforceable).
I believe SC2 requires you to connect to Battle.net as part of the post-install authorization process. It is quite different from the older games in this regard.
The achievements in SC2 are literally just e-peen. They give you no benefit over the competition in any way. Most you do is unlock some new avatars to use as the picture your opponents see.
Correct. Judges have already thrown out the Copyright Act. Though the Copyright Act explicitly says that it does not apply to any copies necessary for the intended use of the product, the courts have declared that this clause is unfair to copyright giants, and ignore it.
But hacking/cheating does not constitute the intended use. It is not part of the "essential step of utilization" chain of events. Note that "intended use" is probably defined with respect to the copyright holder's perspective. If it were the user's perspective then it could mean anything, and thereby nothing. The exception to "intended use" would probably be "fair use", good luck getting a court to rule that hacking/cheating is "fair use".
Back in the day of Star Craft 1, you could buy a copy, then give it to your friend, whose computer would crash at some future moment. At that point, many times that friend would then just go out and buy a copy of their own. They already knew they loved the game, so it didn't really seem like to big a jump to throw down the $30 for it. Now, not only does Blizzard want to force you to buy a copy just to play it, they want to claim "we haz all ur base" and demand that you buy another copy of it if at any time during your playing of the original copy you decide to enable a cheat to help you get through a tough level, or play a "dirty" once-through. Well they can fuck off, and keep their cash-sucking time-waster! I'll stick to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. SoC if they are going to be that way about it.
-Oz
Since you obviously didn't get it, I'll spell it out to you: I'm not defending "achievements", I think they are retarded. I think the only thing more retarded than "achievements" is getting huffy when other people get them by cheating. I think that if anyone actually places real value on them, to the point where it becomes necessary to sue people over obtaining them "unfairly", they need to get a fucking life.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
How do people who don't happen to like achievements, but do like cheating in the privacy of their own home, degrade the value that you derive from them? Believe it or not, you are free to continue enjoying your games no matter how many people chose to play them differently.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Blizzard server is their way to enforce copyright. The second someone starts an independent server, nothing will stop me from making 100 copies of the game and give to all my friends.
"Draconian punishment" you speak of has been in place since SC1. Unfortunately, it does not amount to more than the price of the game ($10 for SC1 right now), which turned SC1 into hackfest, and made it less enjoyable to play.
"Ownership" is not the name of the game, they should be sued for mislabeling what they sell.
And that "n00b" will find that competing at that level will not be conducive to fun and will likely be eliminated from any waged competition early on.
Not if he is cheating and no one gets to catch him doing so.
If someone wanted to make the "Game Genie" nowadays, Nintendo would sue them into oblivion and prevent it from ever happening.
Dude... they did. Back in the day when "no one cared"
Sorry, I bought the game, I own my computer's ram - I can use the two in whatever way I see fit. If I want to tell my computer's ram to modify the game, then I'm allowed to do that. If Blizzard wants to ban me from using their servers because my computer's ram holds a modified copy of their game, they are allowed to do that.
But if Blizzard makes it so that I can't use the game I bought with the computer I own, then they have sold me a faulty product. If they intentionally make the game stop working, then that's something along the lines of destruction of property.
And if it doesn't? I should be able to disable it right?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Well said. There's way too much e-peen in the gaming world, and the invasion of multiplayer meta-competition in single-player gameplay is absolutely batshit insane.
That was Blizz's mistake: making single-player gameplay meta-competitive. Not every gamer gives a metric rat's ass about "my score is higher than yours". Forcing that on players is offensive. And suing to protect that is beyond offensive, especially on the basis of a legal principle which, while validated in court, still fails the "common sense" sniff test.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Or cheating in single player doesn't impact anyone's enjoyment other than their own. For instance when I get Starcraft II I will probably end up cheating in single player mode and it won't impact anybody else's game because I'll probably never play a multi-player game. As to why cheat in SP mode and why use some method other than what Blizzard provides it comes down to a couple of reasons. One is time since it can take quite a while to finish some missions that I may not have at the time and replaying a mission over and over again over the course of a few weeks or a month in order to try and complete it can get quite old. The other reason why people might use a second party cheat is to get more control over the game as some cheat programs provide extra cheats that Blizzard didn't provide. For instance I remember many editors for Diablo II that allowed you to modify your hero in any way you wanted. You could create an uber warrior and go soloing in hell mode, or you could create a higher level necromancer and get a chance to try playing one without having to worry about how weak a character it is at the very low levels. None of this carried over to the MP game so it didn't impact anybody's game play but the single player of the game.
Which by itself is one reason I don't get this game. :)
Problem: While you play your single player game ONLINE (that is, connected to their servers), its not just a question of "my game". You agree to certain things while connected, and Blizzard has the right to hold you to that (to what extent is another question).
Which was the exact shape of the anti-mandatory-connection argument in the discussions on this forum when it was announced. Why should Blizzard intrude on single-layer gaming experience? The argument seems to boil down to "because they want to".
Whether or not you think its blatant exhibitionism or not is irrelevant; other people rather like the achievement system (clearly those cheating to get the achievements do), and this breaks that feature for them if it cannot be trusted to be accurate.
It's a "feature" imposed on all players, whether they wish it or not. Whether other people like the achievement system is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is whether I like it, for all values of "I". What the herd wishes should only be imposed on individuals in certain very important situations, and e-peen is absolutely not one of them. (I cannot believe the collectivist, sheeple mindset that has descended onto this culture.)
BTW, this kind of involuntary disclosure of single-person activity on a privately-owned computer verges on "privacy violation", EULA be damned. It should be opt-in from the outset.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
If the cheater is smart enough to "cheat" the system is he playing your (their) game or his own game? Because this whole ordeal can boil down to Blizzard suing over the grounds of making a meta-game (cheating without being caught) out of their meta-game (achievements.)
Both instances of this situation boil down to meta-game scenarios. Neither one has any real affect on the content of the game itself, but upon the competitive nature of said game. One party simply changed the rules and didn't get caught. You are trying to use the law to hurt their fun to help your fun.
Argue all you like about sporting competitions, rules and regulations. If an athlete is caught using steroids, they will be banned from the game... until such time though, people will pay all kinds of recognition and "respect" to this person without further inspection. I guess to me it boils down to blaming the player and not the game.
The real problem is that Blizzard provides this service and can ban anyone at anytime if they are cheating. You agree to use their service without violating their TOS, and upon breaking that agreement you should be shut off. Because Blizzard did not build enough security in their game to catch these cheaters they went outside that realm to get someone else to stop it for them. This is where I have the problem. The idea that suing the cheat creators will stop people from meta-gaming the system is simply stupid.
(Personally, I couldn't care less if people cheat. I simply won't play with them if I find out. None of this really matters to me because I don't play PVP but the argument that the law should stop this is asinine.)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I'd agree that it would be nice to have Blizzard allow private servers. That isn't really the issue here though. The problem is that the hacks used here specifically work around the shut off of achievements while the hacks are being used. So it is a deliberate attempt to up their score and has very little to do with using the software as you please and everything to do with manipulating a scoring system.
Oh if only Blizzard could see all the trainers and hacks i had going (at once) back when Diablo I was popular... They would shit.
Then build in more security for the game... put in cheat detection code and report anything that doesn't follow the designed rules of the game. (ie: If the enemy hits you and you don't take damage... what's up? If you somehow get $1 million in game but there's no "accounts receivable" providing that cash... where did it come from?)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
It depends on how you view copyright. Copyright is also about protecting your artistic vision in your piece, not just about making money. So, if a movie theater buys a copy of my film and then cuts out scenes, I can sue them and force them to stop if I don't want the film to appear in that form. After all, it has my name on it, and it is my work. This seems like their best avenue of attack (and I think it is the one that worked for them before in the other article linked in the slashdot header).
However, I agree that if YOU modify the game (not someone else modifying and reselling it) then I see no harm or foul.
Except this DOES actually matter to those who don't play the game.
I'll give you two reason.
1) Legal
2) Precedent
Case law has a way of making a case one ordinarily would not care about in the slightest suddenly applicable to something that DIRECTLY affects said individual...
Or reasons. Those work too.
Thank you AC for proving my point.
You are why we can't have nice things.
You're right... dinosaurs are so classic!
Sand's overrated... it's just tiny little rocks.
I'm not sure you could call it "Blizzard's mistake." It's not like they invented achievements or anything.
And also, as a person who mostly only plays single-player and some comp-stomps with some friends, I don't recall Blizzard ever 'forcing' it on me that my score was less than somebody else's. Perhaps I've not looked hard enough, but I don't remember seeing even a single-player ladder. And even if it existed, I don't know how that is forced on you any more than any other achievement system. If you go looking for it, it's there.
The problem with hackers is that they are not "an easy game". Since they are cheating they have an unfair advantage and are usually pretty bad about it, too. If they want to cheat their way through single player, all power to them; if they want to play the single player challenges with cheats, that's fine too; hell, if they want to use cheats on custom games I'm all for it. But if they want to play competitively then they have to stick to the rules as much any other competitive activity.
"I see undead people" Warcraft III - Necromancer
The article and summary are alarmist, sensationalised and rather misleading. Firstly it seems that people caught cheating were actually only suspended for around 2 weeks and not actually 'banned'. The legal action was taken against people who were selling cheats designed to modify and in some cases actually destroy the online experience. Note the use of the word sell. So these kids are making money from screwing over honest players.
Personally I hope they nail these dorks to the wall, but in truth normally these cases end up in ever a fine for a company or a police caution at most for individuals, such as in November when a kid was arrested and cautioned for distributing malware designed to hijack Runescape accounts.
Four letters you may hear around here that are rarely heeded, but RTFA!
The legal action was taken against 3 people selling cheats targeting the online version of the game, some of which were purely designed to 'destroy the Starcraft online experience.' Bearing in mind that these guys were making money selling these cheats. If this is not enough, exactly how far would these people need to go before you would actually feel legal action was justified?
There are a number of achievements that are fairly difficult to obtain. Having a record of these feats sitting right there on your Battle.net account is an easy way to show someone "Look! I did something pretty impressive!" But with everyone cheating, the value is gone. There is the personal satisfaction of knowing you obtained it legitimately, but if you show anyone your Battle.net account, they'll just think either you cheated or it's not a big deal since everyone else has the same "achievements." It's the same thing as high scores in the days of yore. Like beating a game without losing a single life. Some people enjoy the challenge and sharing it with friends. Most game networks now have a way to verify that someone actually did something of noteworthy, whether it be an achievement or a trophy.
So yeah, they do nothing for gameplay mechanics. But they do a lot for why people play a game. To ensure ALL aspects of multiplayer, including achievements, are fair, Blizzard HAS to crack down on external cheats, even in single player.
Again, I'd like to reiterate that lawsuits may be a bit extreme. However, I do agree with their strong stance on the matter. People paid for a game and all its features. To have one feature ruined by others cheating and for Blizzard to nothing would be far worse than cracking down on people using external cheats.
Ahh but there are people who play for profit and not for fun. There are leagues and there are competitions. ...
People should cheat in their own time, heck I cheat games for fun too. But there something to be said when the results will carry over onto Battle.net
So a corporations desire to sell to a particular market trumps our ability to use software we've purchased? Lot's of companies are trying to tie software and hardware to online services so they can claim control over the product after it's sold. That doesn't mean corporations can make any rules they like. Using software we own in any manner is not a cheat, it's a basic property right.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
I still fail to see the issue here besides that fact that you may have to play an easy game now and then.
I guess you don't know how multiplayer Starcraft: Brood War was essentially wrecked by map hackers, resource hackers, auto-build hackers, etc.
You take a book you bought and copy a page. Take that copy, white out a few words and put other words in their places, change face to ass or whatever absurdity you please to make the story funny to you. Place that page in the book and read the book, reading that page instead of the one it was copied from.
Blizzard is claiming that's copyright infringement?
Never played it as I don't PVP. I game to have fun, not "fight" with other people.
But again, you seem to argue that Blizzard should have to do nothing but litigate the problem instead of building in validation checks. (IE: hey, this map doesn't have a valid CRC check value, that unit is running too fast, etc.)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Were game assets used in the distributed copy of this app? (I do not see any mention of that in TFA, only that they were selling an application... only that Blizzard is trying the "copy RAM" excuse they used for WoW, but since it's local to the computer, they are not distributing the game... so I see no legal standing as I saw no legal standing in the WoW case.)
I can think of all kinds of ways to "destroy the Starcraft online experience" that don't involve cheats. If you've ever been on XBox Live you'll already know of one.
Legal action would be justified if they sold copies of the game assets, not if they made copies of anything on the machine that the player who bought the copy is on.
To use a car analogy. GM could not sue me if I used my leased car to rob a bank, however, they could sue me if I sold copies of the Chevy Volt.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
If you get an achievement in single player via cheating, you can have your battle.net account and CD key revoked preventing you from playing the game (from what I understand of some of these articles that I'm able to read right now.)
So, even if you play the single player game the way you want, it can force you.
Also, I think the single player achievements are used to determine your space in the multiplayer ladder (which is f'ed up if you ask me.)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
something like esprade
I'm not sure if Blizzards' work this way, but Xbox's achievements are essentially a competitive ranking of sorts. As such, it's arguably equivalent to online cheating. Moreover, the perceived value of the achievements are reduced if there's also a perception of rampant cheating.
I don't know if I necessarily support Blizzard's latest action here, but looking at it from their perspective, you could say that they're simply looking out for the interests of their average, non-cheating customers to keep the achievement playing-field level.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Who really cares though?
It's a game.
I play games because they should be fun. I do not play games for profit, nor do I get upset if someone has more achievements, or a greater score than I.
Blizzard cares. They do, in fact, make their games for profit.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
My question is what happens when these users say that they did not buy the game and therefore did not sign any EULA. If they claim they went to some gaming cafe and designed the application there, no one could be sued if its a EULA thing. The cafe owner could claim he had no idea that this was happening. I agree with going after cheaters and banning them, and also going after the people who create these multiplayer cheats. I do not agree with using RAM and copyright to win this case. If copying anything to RAM is making a derivative work, then we all are guilty of copying this web page's content. I'd like to see Blizzard sue someone who has less than 2GB of RAM on their computer for this. The whole game cannot reside there so there is no possible way you could create a derivative of the game.
It's utter madness. If someone wanted to make the "Game Genie" nowadays, Nintendo would sue them into oblivion and prevent it from ever happening.
Funny you should mention that as Nintendo did sue them and lost. If anything goes right, maybe this lawsuit will turn out the same way.
Yeah, I know, that's why it'd be "if we used." The removal of LAN is pretty much the first reason I decided not to buy the game. I haven't heard anything since then to make me want to buy it. I admit that playing online on battle.net with cheats, friends accepting or not, is completely blizzard's call, and a banning in that case would be acceptable.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
If you want to tinker with the game, there IS a "play offline" feature, where achievements cannot be earned; I dont think Blizzard would have much to say about you cheating offline.
I haven't really played in awhile, but last I had played the "play offline" feature didn't actually allow you to play offline unless you already connect to the blizzard server, and restarting the application removes the offline feature till you connect again. Emailing blizzard support just got me a response saying offline play was not implemented in the game despite the "play offline" message. That and even things like playing games against the AI requires a connection to be able to pull up the map list to play a map you haven't played yet.
I can't imagine people being banned for using the cheats in single player even had much of a desire to be connected to blizzards servers to play in the first place. Blizzard is forcing people to be connected to their servers and seems surprised somehow that people would want to play in ways blizzard didn't intend.
I didn't say that it did matter if you get achievements in a different way than I do. I wasn't making any statement on cheating and morality at all. Just responding to the freedumb2000's question "does anyone care about the achievement system?". They seemed to be asserting that nobody cared about these systems, and I was giving my point of view that I do.
But since you're bringing it up, Normally I don't care if you do things in a different way than I do.
But once you introduce an online ranking system, there is an incentive to cheat, and I agree that a disincentive is necessary to keep things fair. But I think a simple ban from the ranking system would be enough. I don't see why they need to ban you from playing the single player game. That just seems silly.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Ahh but there are people who play for profit and not for fun. There are leagues and there are competitions. Lots of this is based on online scores
They have their own league and competition ladders, otherwise what is the point of having these leagues and competitions if you base them on online scores.
3. ?
Can't you just skip this step?
Who cares?
You catch them cheating in whatever mode, you ban them. Taking people who write the tools to, I will repeat, allow people to mess around with the memory in their own machine, is wrong.
I can just about see how it might be framed as some sort of unlawful hacking if your changes are deliberately trying to mess up Blizzard's network, but it's not a copyright or other IP issue, nor is it reasonable to go after the creators of the cheat hacks.
Do patterns count as cheating? (a pattern is a very precise description of how to win a given level. The PRNG from pacman is seeded with some part of the internal game state, so the game is totally deterministic. Given the low resolution of movements (characters and maps are "blocky" in terms of gameplay), it is possible to determine exactly how to win a level and maximize your score, just by moving the joystick exactly the right way, without even thinking about where pacman is in relation to the ghosts). What about patterns that exploit a certain bug (if pacman and a ghost are in exactly the right positions, it's possible for them to pass through each other)?
$ make available
So why don't they provide a mechanism to disable the achievements and leave offline single-player intact?
$ make available
I fully agree with you and support your comments to the point of affecting only your personal game. I don't think what Blizzard is doing is right. I think they *should* enforce some basics such as booting cheaters off battle.net, or disqualifying their scores or something. I did say people should cheat in their own time.
And that "n00b" will find that competing at that level will not be conducive to fun
Unfortunately the internet is full of people and some of them are just downright arsehole fuckwits who's idea of "fun" is ruining a good game for others.
I take it you've never played a game against someone that after 20 min of solid building, just as you mobilise your army, sells all of his buildings, and moves his unit to stand under your sentry and not fire back. The type of mindset that brings you into cheating in an online competition is similar to this arsehole mindset who's out to ruin it for everyone else.
Again, nothing against cheating. Cheating can be fun, especially at LAN games when everyone is doing it. However doing it facelessly online just to be a prick does affect other people.
Ok, I agree on the very special achievements. They should not be hackable.
Here you have to use skill to gain something.
Although they could be hot-lapped, it might still be something important.
On the other hand, as someone pointed out, there are achievements that only give you another avatar, then it does not make sense.
But then they should reconsider using achievements to gain such stuff.
One could even go so far as to day that Blizzard is indirectly at fault for people behaving the way they do.
Similarly with WoW. If all your 'gameplay' basically just revolves around mindless grinding until you have the right level and then finally do the interesting stuff, people will seek ways to bypass the boring stuff.
If anything Blizzard should take it as critique of their game and improve on it.
f.i. in GuildWars if you just wanted to participate in the Arenas with a lvl 20 char, you could do that with all the stuff you had unlocked at your disposal. But the char was not usable in the PvE part of the game.
Difficult subject.
Personally I think that cheating/hacking SP is fine.
Heck I had a friend who's kids played AoE and he showed them all the cheats so it would not be to hard for them. Yeah, they were really young.
Online is naturally a completely different topic.
let's not get lost on the subject that software is not your property it's only licensed to you (i agree it sucks but it's like that)
And again, all Blizzard has to do is ban these people. There's no sense litigating some programmer writing a program that interfaces with Starcraft.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
There are lots of lawsuits like this that are more of a nuisance or scare tactics then anything else. If you compare a hack to a parody or a quote. You will see that neither are a copyright violation, as they are not selling the authors work. The portions of the EUL need to be valid before they are enforceable, and the company needs to show damages. If the EUL stated that if you share the EUL with your friend penalties are $10,000 is as ridiculous as this claim. If you write a book review of a book, is that a copyright violation? If you black out or highlight sections of a book you bought and wrote in the margins is that a copyright violation (see students/textbooks)? If you buy a cell phone and buy an aftermarket accessory for it, is that patent infringement because it did not come with the phone? The "hacked code" is almost certainly new code and therefore probably not a copyright violation.
Except the achievement system literally has no point, no benefit, and is the most blatant "e-peen" exhibitionism around.
Do you feel the same way about Grammy awards, Emmys, Olympic medals, etc.? They have litereally "no benefit" except their peen exhibitionism, right? Who cares that they actually had to do something to earn it. Should we let people go around creating fraudulent awards and displaying them in public?
*Ethically* I think cheats that activate achievements are a bad thing. Having achievements accurately reflect what a person accomplished is a good thing.
Still, that's a different question than whether Blizzard's lawsuit is the right way to accomplish this. The ends don't justify the means.
There are similar lawsuits going on with console manufacturers blocking or disabling hacked consoles, and with jailbroken cellphones ("destroying the network"). I can think of some pretty nasty results if all these extreme EULA restrictions blocking access to something already paid for are ruled legal.
I am extremely saddened that nobody here, in 4 pages of comments, mentioned StarDraft. I probably fooled around with it (and the hacked StarEdit, and StarGraft) almost as much as I actually played Starcraft 1. I miss Camelot Systems...
Bet they'd get sued like no tomorrow if they were around today. That's just depressing.
Because then somebody would just hack around that.
(...) both of which messes with the ranking system and in turn, causes all kinds of weirdness with their online matchmaking.
Elaboration on this, although most of it has been alluded to in a sibling; This doesn't simply mean that the cheating player gets his hindquarters handed to him by vastly superior players when not cheating, but also that said vastly superior players' enjoyment is curbed because they were looking for someone to give them a challenge, and instead end up with their time wasted in a manner not of their own choosing, i.e. curb-stombing an outclassed opponent when they wanted a genuinely challenging match.
I have not yet bought SCII. I was waiting for things to work themselves out first (like this little tidbit). If Blizzard wants to play these kinds of games on people who aren't really hurting Blizzard (or their profits) in any way, then I will never purchase SCII or any other future Blizzard title. Luckily, I have the discipline to resist buying such games, even when their as cool and as anticipated as SCII. Too bad everyone else doesn't have the same discipline otherwise we could bring Blizzard to their knees and prevent them from doing crap like this. They should have never made their game a broadband internet required concoction anyway. There's too many bad things that can result from that and I want no part of it.
and again I agree with you.
i figured out a while ago that if you're too insightful and not very "popular" you'll be modded down eventually xD
if you're flaming hard but with a popular topic and add some "ok that's flamebait but[..]" you'll get +5 insightful nearly every time
oh the world.
Yeah: Classic :).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpoTwHAVd7w
http://www.virtualapple.org/dinoeggsdisk.html
Would you consider playing chess "fighting" with other people? (i think even chess boxers would be offended by that term)
Utter nonsense. Considering a whole genre was launched from WC3. They offer map editors that specifically encourage you to make mods and mess with the game. It was a huge effort to do it. And you are worried about what they could do. Seriously, the dumbest posts in this thread have been modded up.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
"I play games because they should be fun. I do not play games for profit, nor do I get upset if someone has more achievements, or a greater score than I."
And I don't have fun when the person who I'm playing cheats.