Blizzard sues Starcraft 2 cheat-makers.

[Rydian]

Blizzard last week filed suit in the Los Angeles US District Court against three programmers, accusing them of creating and selling hacks for Starcraft II in violation of the end-user license agreement, Battle.net terms of use, and copyright law.
[...]
Blizzard is accusing the trio of multiple counts of copyright infringement, and demanding damages and disgorgement of any profits reaped by the distribution and sale of the hacks. The company also accuse the defendants of inducing others to infringe on their copyright, saying, "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." [/p]

source

Updated source.

 

[Rubbie]

intresting

 

[sdnoob]

woah, doesn't pay to cheat, does it?

 

[Amak]

hmmm... don't most (if not all) cheats just modify memory offsets etc. ? how can those be copyrighted? smells like a fear campaign, to me.

 

[Kwartel]

this won't work out, since there are so many cheaters! how would you sue them all?

intresting

how do you mean spam

 

[DeMoN]

well either way blizzard has enough money to lose this case. they're just doing this to scare other would-be hackers.

 

[Bladexdsl]

serves them right

if only nintendo did this to the cheating mk fags

 

[keine]

i think this is ridiculous. companies should not have the right to sue people for simply tinkering w/ the system. if blizzard doesn't want people to cheat....why didn't they lock up their system tight? its their own fault, where is their security team? better yet if they don't want people to mess w/ their procuct....then why did they put it out there? "oh! but its the experience, they are ruining the system." ever since trophies and gamerscore, rankings....things have gotten out of control. now companies seem to have some right over how you are intended to use their product. "no, you can't dance naked in mmo x, it destroys the experience" the idea that a person can destroy a controlled "experience" is very hard to comprehend.
no developers, you can no longer put cheat codes into your games, because we have ass hats who treasure their gamerscore.....and where would they be, if someone cheated their gamerscore. protecting the "experience" for people who are 10 out of 5million on the leaderboards. wouldn't want their experience to be disrupted. wtf! people?
it's like blizzard suing for people who run around naked in wow because they destroy the "experience." give me a f'ing break.
why should a company have control over how people interact in their system.
how can you copyright and protect a community? a space?
i'm gonna get lamblasted for my views, but oh well.
if i don't want to cheat, i get a group of friends together have a lan party....and nobody cheats. this overlord protecting the space/community/experience and suing anyone who gets out of line, is absolute trash.
edit: however we don't have lan parties anymore.....precisely because of this system. did you see lan? in sc2? no? why? because of this "protected iron rule experience trash/garbage" effectively taking away one of the best aspects of the game.
this type of tactics and fear mongering dictation and rule, should stop people from using products from a company so set on domination and lock/key type.

whats next? you can't mod, cause we never wanted the game to be experienced like that?
and fyi, i don't give a flying f, about gamerscore/trophies/leaderboards/rankings/ladders/etc. if i want to cheat on single player, i do. however, i don't cheat online because it torques people off. however this reason alone does not give developers the right to iron fist us.

 

[Sterling]

lol... suing cheaters... they should lose the case. if there are cheaters using exploits that can't be fixed using a spot patch, then they deserve to lose the case. if you can't make a base to a game right, then sue the people who modified the stuff instead of fixing the code and redistribute the game, then... you should not have even made the game.

 

[antwill]

this won't work out, since there are so many cheaters! how would you sue them all?

intresting

how do you mean spam

they're not suing the cheaters, they're suing the cheat makers...

 

[Delta517]

it's a nice way showing people not to fuck around making hacks and stuff, but isn't this going a little to far?

 

[431unknown]

i saw this and was just like wtf. how can they sue for cheating and it's not like they forced the others that used their cheats to use them.

 

[Sterling]

this won't work out, since there are so many cheaters! how would you sue them all?

intresting

how do you mean spam

they're not suing the cheaters, they're suing the cheat makers...

yea, suing the makers isn't suing cheaters at all? they probably tested them in game, so that would also make them cheaters too.

 

[DarkWay]

okay so you're saying, they shouldn't scare of these wannabe hackers off and have all the legit players have their online gaming experience ruined by some prat that needs to cheat in a game to accomplish anything?
which in turn will ruin the sales ratings of the game because nobody but hackers and cheaters will want to play the game online, in which these days is a major factor when buying a game.

congratrulations you make a whole lot of sense! /clap

 

[Mesiskope]

cheat on my wayward son.

 

[Sephxus]

fuck cheaters. i've been saying that my whole life, and i will be saying in it 'till the day i die. fuck cheaters.

 

[Sterling]

okay so you're saying, they shouldn't scare of these wannabe hackers off and have all the legit players have their online gaming experience ruined by some prat that needs to cheat in a game to accomplish anything?
which in turn will ruin the sales ratings of the game because nobody but hackers and cheaters will want to play the game online, in which these days is a major factor when buying a game.

congratrulations you make a whole lot of sense! /clap

no, we are pointing out that they are suing these people for money to keep cheaters out. now that they have made the fact that the game is hackable, there will be more attempts, and i guess more law suits. you do know they are owned by moneyvision right? why sue for the moneyz instead of patching? to cover their asses, that's why.

 

[keine]

okay so you're saying, they shouldn't scare of these wannabe hackers off and have all the legit players have their online gaming experience ruined by some prat that needs to cheat in a game to accomplish anything?
which in turn will ruin the sales ratings of the game because nobody but hackers and cheaters will want to play the game online, in which these days is a major factor when buying a game.

that sounds nice. i vote yes!

(i find the prats to be the monkeys hoarding their gamerscore/rankings/trophies and feeling special about it.)
as long as we are throwing the term "prats" around.

why don't you control you're own! experience. have a lan party...instead of gaming w/ a bunch of total random strangers. how do you have any control over them or what they can/will/want to do? how is that even right?
i say, let em cheat, and destroy this whole controlled experience garbage, hoarding of leaderboard rankings etc.

 

[Rydian]

i can understand a lawsuit to scare hackers of online games away. nobody likes when somebody else is cheating, it can ruin the fun.

however, this i don't agree with.

blizzard also say that distribution of the programs in question encourage users to violate blizzard's copyrights.

"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."

i think that's just part of the suit as an attempt to make sure it's successful.

 

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

this reminds me of the "game genie" debacle in the '80s. but they are not entirely comparable, given the absence of online multiplayer back then.

i don't see anything productive about blizzard's actions. in the interests of their intellectual property, they are adopting brutal measures. it sounds like they would have to establish that computer hacking would effectively drive down their sales of starcraft ii, which i imagine would be hard to prove, if not impossible. this is to say nothing of the possibility of simply releasing a correction patch. but i freely admit i have no knowledge of copyright law except the bare rudiments.

they're going after a molehill by use of a mountain; they're using litigation against the creation of cheat codes for computer software. there's no point in defending blizzard. if by chance they do succeed in expropriating the cheat creators, it is only because the draconian logic of intellectual property has effectively expropriated the rights of the consumer.

edits 1 & 2: grammar. and typos.