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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.
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
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.
As someone who used to play WoW. I can say that WoW, as most MMORPG's, has many difficult problems to solve in the game. Bots do simple mindless farming, they do not play every aspect of the game or compete against other players in PvP. I ran across a few bots while playing and I can say that they were easy to screw with. You could kill them or you could just kill what they were going to kill, and confuse the software a quite bit.
If the gameplay is so simplistic that its bottable, then it's pretty boring to me.
Ever played Fallout, Morrowind, or Skyrim on Xbox/PS3? You level up the sneak attribute by sneaking around which is basically crouching around and walking. People exploited this by putting rubber bands around the controller so the character would continuously crouch walk into a corner. That gameplay mechanic is pretty simplistic yet those games are amazing to play.
" Gold farmers do it for cash."
Exactly. And Gold farmers in China are not easily impressed by US law.
So... they're playing WoW?
Put it this way: Blizzard is an entertainment company. They have a lot of paying customers who play their game 'by the rules' and enjoy doing so. It is less entertaining for their players/customers if there are other people manipulating the game with automated functionality.
If someone showed up at a bowling alley, entered in a tournament, and just ran down the lane and kicked over the pins, a bowling alley operator would be similarly justified in throwing them out.
People who actually play WoW find bots annoying.
If your form of enjoyment is hacking other people's games, why not show up at golf courses with All Terrain Vehicles? It's certainly more extreme. If you like cheating and coding, perhaps write a solitaire game that cheats for you.