Blizzard Sues StarCraft II Hackers
Blizzard is going after the three programmers behind the StarCraft II hacks.
Last week Blizzard filed suit in the Los Angeles US District Court against three programmers accused of creating and selling hacks for StarCraft II.
Blizzard kicked off October by suspending or banning around 5,000 gamers from its just-released sci-fi RTS StarCraft II for using hacks, thus violating Blizzard's end-user license agreement. Now the developer is going after "Permaphrost," "Cranix," and "Linuxawesome" for allegedly developing and selling tools for StarCraft II hacks. According to the lawsuit, the three programmers have violated copyright law, Battle.net terms of use, and the end-user license agreement.
"Just days after the release of StarCraft II, Defendants already had developed, marketed, and distributed to the public a variety of hacks and cheats designed to modify (and in fact destroy) the StarCraft II online game experience," the company claims in the lawsuit. "In fact, on the very day that StarCraft II was released, representatives of the hacks Web site advised members of the public that 'our staff is already planning new releases for this game.'"
The three defendants now face multiple accounts of copyright infringement. Blizzard is seeking damages and disgorgement of any profits made by the sale of the StarCraft II hacks. The company also alleges that the programmers are inducing players to infringe on Blizzard's copyright by loading StarCraft II copyrighted content into the system RAM and creating derivative works.
"The harm to Blizzard from Defendants' conduct is immediate, massive and irreparable," the lawsuit claims. "By distributing the Hacks to the public, Defendants cause serious harm to the value of StarCraft II. Among other things, Defendants irreparably harm the ability of Blizzard's legitimate customers (i.e. those who purchase and use unmodified games) to enjoy and participate in the competitive online experience. That, in turn, causes users to grow dissatisfied with the game, lose interest in the game, and communicate that dissatisfaction, thereby resulting in lost sales of the game or 'add-on' packs and expansions thereto."
According to the suit, Permaphrost and Cranix reside in Canada whereas Linuxawesome resides in Peru. The suit demands that the hack programs be pulled from hosts located anywhere within the courts jurisdiction. The suit also lists other alleged hackers including "Wiggley," "Zynastor," and "Dark Mage."
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Sure, they deserve it, but the problem with hacks is the free ones, not the ones people pay for. (although most people that hack would probably just pirate them anyway...) Going after people who are trying to sell hacks (trying being the operative word) is a lot more likely to result in success than just suing over an EULA anyway.
Personally, I have a lot more problem with everyone following the exact same build pattern in sc2 than the hackers, neither one is fun to play against but only one of them gets banned occasionally.
Could they also sue the makers of programs and hacks for diablo 2, and possibly all the sites which advertise in every single game you play with bots??
@daveyboy
They tried that, but the d2 hack programmers don't charge for them, so blizzard only has the EULA to rely on, which doesn't make a strong enough case (not to mention the several unfixed text-editor hacks like farcast, which people do themselves). As for the bots/stores, their legal claim is that they sell "finders rights", and thats a big enough loophole for them to go on. JSP gets around it by claiming it only profits from donations, and the fact that the donations eventually result in both advertising revenue and physical revenue based out of d2 isnt legally a problem. I'm sure they could probably attack the stores for piracy though, since every one of them uses a key generator to create all of their bots, and thus each store is likely liable for several thousand pirated copies of d2.
LAST game I ever bought from Blizzard. Ever. If I can't use the game how I like in SINGLE player, wtf?!
The funny thing is that you are not buying a copy of the game, you are paying the right to use it under their terms and conditions, that's not selling, that's renting.
60 bucks? for a game that's almost like SC1 with graphics that look like a 5 years old game? I can't play my own designed maps without passing through blizzard? can I choose myself the race I want to use or it's up to them too?