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Blizzard Wins Legal Battle Against WoW Bot Company
New submitter gamersunited writes with news of Blizzard Entertainment's defeat of another company that created bot software to automate World of Warcraft characters. Ceiling Fan Software faces a judgment of $7 million, and must disable any active licenses for the software. They're also forbidden from transferring or open-sourcing the bot software, and from facilitating its continued use in any way. The court order (PDF) follows more than two years of legal wrangling. Blizzard won a similar judgment a few years ago against another bot company called MDY Industries, which created the popular Glider bot.
Only in the US where the ruling was made surely.
Is it enforceable elsewhere in the world?
If the gameplay is so simplistic that its bottable, then it's pretty boring to me. Studies have shown NP-hard problems are more fun, because they benefit from our natural ability to quickly choose a good path even if it isn't the absolute best. These kinds of challenges are harder to write bots for. So stop make your games less mindlessly boring and it's a win win for everyone.
"blizzard can just patch the vulnerability" It's not a vulnerability AFAIK. The bots act on behalf of the player, doing the same things players are able to do. No exploits involved. When you run them 24/7 though then they make alot more progress than a player would playing just a few hours a day.
is label it an aid for disabled players. Get ADA, Blizzard won't stand a chance.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why bother writing bots? Just play Progress Quest.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Blizzard sued my company in Germany and we are still trading. The reason is that Americans can't avoid the broad restrictions of the DMCA while Europeans are able to work within existing copyright and trademark law. The DMCA is simply a way of closing creative American companies so the business is done from overseas.
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
I think he means for the bot.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Their game relies on an ever growing "grind" of repetitive and simplistic tasks to progress.
No it does not. Repetitive simplistic tasks are one way of obtaining the resources (gold, experience, item tokens, ...), but they are far from being the primary way. In fact the only reason WoW is still as popular as it is, is because unlike almost every other MMO released since 2004, it is NOT a grindfest.
Experience points come from quest chains in the open world and in instanced dungeons, and those quest chains have an actual story that unfolds as you play. Gold is obtained as reward from quests, and looted from monsters, same as gear. Item tokens are rewarded by defeating dungeon and raid bosses, which require a team, and a strategy.
You can argue that it's too easy or boring for your tastes, but you can not say it is a grinding-based MMO.
now that's messed up. although the source code could always be "stolen"...
Rich
If you think World of Warcraft is a grindfest you obviously never played Final Fantasy XI.
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As a fan of MMO's since about 2000, I can safely say that EVERY MMO I've ever played, from then, to now, has had some form of botting or automating mindless grinding activities.
Every MMO has them. There's no stopping them, it kind of reminds of the same sort of silly arms race spammers have against spam filtering software.
Anyway, I think what MMO companies should do, it just make their own botting software and sell it to people like the rest of their products. Level the playing field. Every MMO has bots, so open the flood gates, let anyone have bots, make some money as well.
You can argue that it's too easy or boring for your tastes, but you can not say it is a grinding-based MMO.
But you can argue that reward per hour, grinding is more efficient than doing challenging content in terms of the in game rewards.
I used to play EQ1, you could go and do a real dungeon crawl with a group, and fight yellows and low reds. And it was genuinely fun. Lose control of aggro, or run into someone elses train though and you died. The necro would summon our corpes out, and our cleric would rez us... we'd re-equip and go in for another run. It was great fun.
BUT
You made more ingame currency, and gained more XP by joing to a known camp and grinding.
At 15-20th level ("back in the day") you could walk into Blackburrow and head down to the bottom... and that was challenging and fun. But the gnolls were pretty poor, and the risk of death (and associated "downtime") was high.
Or you could go to Highhold Pass, and fight a particular camping spot there. The drops were reliably better, the stream of creatures to kill was constant, and if things got out of hand you were just steps away from a zone line. You made more money, and gained more xp, easier, and faster, with less risk.
You didn't have to "grind", but most players did. Because the game actively rewarded them better in everything but "fun" by doing so. And it turns out the majority of players will sacrifice "fun" for "progress" for reasons that I truly find baffling.
WoW and other MMORPGs, and even many single player RPGs are the same, hell even stuff like diablo -- how many diablo 2 players just spent hours doing "Hill Runs" repeatedly for xp, over and over again because it was the easiest and safest place to get loot and xp?
American judges seem to think they are gods and give the strangest orders. In more civilised countries the law describes what a judge can and cannot order.
Running repetitive and simplistic quests can be just as much of a grind as any other type of grind.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
So fix the (broken) gameplay mechanic that allows bot users to have an advantage.
Having to 'grind' at mindless / meaningless tasks in game in order to play the interesting parts of the game is just bad game design - it disrespects the player's time and money. It's a transparent attempt to increase subscriber revenue. Get rid of the grind and you eliminate the incentive to use a bot in the first place.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Bots are an awesome addition to the game in my opinion. It allows you to enjoy the fun parts of the game while not having to deal with all the monotonous portions needed to attain said fun. I didn't feel like having a serving l second full time job by playing wow. Bots make that possible.
Because you're one of those people who've been shouting "WoW is dying!" since 2004?
How is that different from anyone else who makes and sells a product?
Then they aren't judges, are they?
Judges, judge based on criteria that can not put put into law. Tying judges to specific and strict rules has turned out very bad for American system.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
In other words, they don't need to openly publish the source code to release it... they can just openly publish the methods that were utilized, and let other developers write their own bots in the language of their own choosing.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
And why do bots exist? Because "grinding" is the only way to gain large amounts of currency in a short amount of time. Gold farmers do it for cash. Players do it to shortcut themselves to the top and to avoid grinding.
Amen brother! But more specifically:
Bots exist because blizzard has created a market by writing software that wastes people's time. If they really wanted to put an end to botting, they would fix their crappy game so people don't have to engage in repetitive pointless tasks to max reputations and get cash. If the pointless grinds are removed, then there is less economic incentive to have to bot. If gold is easy to acquire, there isn't any value in buying it from a gold farmer.
They can go lawyer all over anyone who writes this software, but it costs a lot less to write a bot (in terms of time and resources) than it takes to sue someone out of existence. If the authors properly incorporated, then they can file for a new LLC for about $100, and be back in business by Friday. So, Blizzard == a pack of drooling idiots.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
They haven't broken any law. This is a civil suit.
I accept that Blizzard is an entertainment company. I like that they put effort into protecting the game experience of their customers. I don't even play and I appreciate that a company will go to court and fight to ensure that the service they offer be as fair as they can make it. If I was at a golf course and someone was messing up the carefully maintained surface with ATVs, I'd be happy when the course owners banned them. If I was playing competitive online solitarie and someone found a way to have a computer make their moves for them rather than play fairly, I'd be happy when they were banned.
I'm okay with a judge saying that you cannot break the terms of service (which I assume they did.) Up to that point, I feel like we're in agreement.
However, the software I build myself on my own computer is mine and I believe I have a right to use it on my computer, or sell it or open source it as a basic free speech right. So long as what I do on my machine or contracts I enter into that allow other people to use the software doesn't interact with Blizzard, my rights should be protected. I haven't read the TOS of WoW, but I doubt there is any clause that says anything like "by agreeing to this, you also give us rights to anything you create which might be related to the service we offer."
That's where the ATV and solitare analogies don't make sense. If you wanted those analogies to be fair, you'd have to say that the ATVs were custom built for golf and those ATVs should be banned everywhere forever by law because they were used on one golf course. If I made a cheat friendly solitaire program, and used it to cheat, it is reasonable to ban me from using it on specific systems where the TOS disallow it, but to say that the program I wrote is itself illegal and can never be used, sold or given to anyone because it broke the rules on one system; that's just wrong.
I honestly hope that this judgement gets thrown out on an appeal or someone "hacks" into the computers of the developers and makes it open source, distributed from a server not under the jurisdiction of this court. I don't say that because I think the bots shouldn't be banned by Blizzard, I think they should be. I think the court would be reasonable to say that using them is breaking the TOS and anyone doing so is subject to the terms they've agreed to in order to use Blizzard's servers. However, I think that banning the sale or open sourcing of software that someone creates which is an original work is morally and ethically wrong and I hope that for that reason, that part of the judgment will be overturned or clearly demonstrated to be worthless.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Best as I can figure, WoW is still at least 4 times as big, so "most" would be quite the overstatement.
Learn to love Alaska
Isn't blocking the release of the source akin to blocking free speech?
The things being botted in Wow are akin to simply moving all your pawns forward and taking any pieces you can happen to take in the process. Wow bots do not play even close to "half-way well." Wow bots brute force the absolute easiest parts of the game with minor or no combat in the most inefficient manner possible for marginal gain because that's all they're good for.
But apparently, WoW is designed in such a manner, that the *END RESULT* of such brain-dead-stupid bots is so big, that Blizzard needs to unleash every available lawyers to launch them against bot-makers, because bot-makers ruin the experience of every other users.
The point *you failed* to see is that, if something as stupid as a brainless gold-farming bot is completely disruptive to the game, maybe the game itself isn't that much good.
Indeed, where are the hordes of "pawn-advancing" stupid bots swamping chess tournaments and ruining the experience of every other player? Answer: there aren't.
Because actual chess is a game much more complex where brainless bots are completely useless and where actual intelligence is a requirement for a good game.
Meanwhile, WoW has a significant part of its gameplay which rather dumb grinding. Blizzard designed a game were simple mindless tasks play a significant role, and then they complain that users are using bots to automate said dumb tasks?!
There exists no wow bots that can play like a player could, and there likely never will due to the complexity involved in such a task and no one willing to work it out.
Then make a game more dependant on this kind of complex play where the grinding isn't that much an impact and :
- you'll get less bots because of a lower incentive to build them
- you'll get less players complaining about the ruined gameplay, because the farming/mining won't impact the game that much.
In fact: Even build some level of botting in you game, so that the player get less annoyed by the most boring part, and have your game designed around the higher level task where player find actual fun and challenge.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Subscriber Definition: World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.
No one is going to prison here either. They're being sued in civil court and made to pay damages and stop making a product. Why do you think that doesn't happen to any other product maker? Gun manufacturers were being sued so often (and in most cases so frivolously) that Congress passed a law in 2005 immunizing them from many types of suits. Knife manufacturers are sued too.
If they want to prevent people from using bots, maybe they should END THE EFFING GRINDING. Seriously. What kind of entertainment company thinks people are entertained by repeatedly clicking a set of actions in the same place over and over again?
You want bots to stop being made? Stop making games that people don't want to have to drudge through.