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Blizzard Sues Starcraft II Cheat Creators

Posted by Soulskill on from the zerging-with-lawyers dept.

qubezz writes: "TorrentFreak reports that on Monday, Blizzard filed a lawsuit in US District court in California against the programmers behind the popular Starcraft II cheat 'ValiantChaos MapHack.' The complaint seeks relief from 'direct copyright infringement,' 'contributory copyright infringement,' 'vicarious copyright infringement,' 'trafficking in circumvention devices,' etc. The suit seeks the identity of the cheat's programmers, as it fishes for names of John Does 1-10, in addition to an injunction against the software (which remains on sale) and punitive damages. Blizzard claims losses from diminished user experiences, and also that 'when users of the Hacks download, install, and use the Hacks, they directly infringe Blizzard's copyright in StarCraft II, including by creating unauthorized derivative works"."

3 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. Blizzard Shizzard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Suing programmers for their creation is a very bad practice. As code is a form of speech, denying someone a freedom of it is against a democratic constitution.

    I'd like to see Blizzy sued to bankruptcy for this stupidity. But alas, pigs don't fly now do they?

    1. Re:Blizzard Shizzard by gl4ss · · Score: 5, Insightful

      they're just suing since despite tying their game to their servers they still haven't figured out the shit enough to not transmit troop positions or map pieces to the client the client shouldn't know about - and they pretend to be serious about competitive online play.

      (how come the suit is not for people who actually cracked the copy protection??)

      (in other news this would make "unauthorized mods" illegal)

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    2. Re: Blizzard Shizzard by Charliemopps · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's cheating, whether it's in the form of software, or a cash bribe to the refs. I think cheating is worth very little in terms of free speech value.

      Lucky for us, you don't get to decide what is free speech. I hate cheating, and blizzard should definitely do something about it. But trying to control what other people do? No... this is a game. It's not worth harming my constitutional freedoms just so you can be less annoyed.

      Blizzard should handle this in the code. It's not that hard. 10 years ago I remember hearing at a conference about on-line gaming "If their client has the data, they have the data. You cannot trust the client, ever." It's as true now as it was then.