Blizzard Wins Legal Battle Against WoW Bot Company 285
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.
Bottable == boring IMO (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Re:Bottable == boring IMO (Score:2, Insightful)
What, and expect people to think while playing?
Re:Bottable == boring IMO (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this insightful?
Botting is almost exclusively used for currency/rep/etc farming. It has nothing to do with "gameplay". And whether you personally think WOW end game content is complex enough is irrelevant because botters cannot run end game raids or many other forms of content undermining your whole argument.
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.
This small part of the game content IS simplistic and CAN be botted. It is a hurdle/challenge/time sink/test of your endurance to overcome to advance your character. I, like most, HATE grinding with a vengeance. But I NEVER played WOW for the grind, I played in spite of it.
As a side note:
I multibox WOW (5 chars) for the additional challenge. (and believe me it is a LOT more of a challenge) I would now never play another MMO without being able to multibox because they are all too easy.
So I even agree with the idea of MMOs being way too easy to play - but still disagree with your post.
Re:We beat them because the EU has no DMCA (Score:2, Insightful)
Blizzard originally sued bot companies based on copyright. Now, they're suing based on violations of the EULA (end user license agreement) and TOS (terms of service). Bots violate both, plain and simple. Your company might get sued again, if Europeans laws support EULAs and TOSs.
Re:Can't open source it? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
forbidden to open-source ? (Score:4, Insightful)
now that's messed up. although the source code could always be "stolen"...
Re: We beat them because the EU has no DMCA (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably because Blizzard's ToS is written specifically to make such software difficult to write.
To be blunt, they don't like competition.
Re: We beat them because the EU has no DMCA (Score:4, Insightful)
"Your botting software is nothing but run-of-the-mill malware"
Umm, no. Run of the mill malware by definition is acting without the informed consent of the user. This botting software is running at the will of the user. So the comparison is utterly specious.
"Why is it so hard to write addon software that conforms to Blizz's ToS?"
Why is it so hard for Blizzard to write a system that does not effectively penalise those who obey their rules?
Now I have years of experience running multiplayer online games and I appreciate as you may not that the answer is actually quite complicated. It's not a trivial thing to do, but then again, Blizzard has raked in enormous sums of cash on this game, more than enough to have done it right and many times over. It's an enormous profit-centre and like all the big companies these days it seems to believe that it has a divine right to maintain that profit without working for it. They would rather write unenforceable rules and invoke state force as a bandaid than try to fix the problem because it's cheaper - at least for them, at least in the short term.
The state shouldnt allow itself to be used in this way, however.
Re:Can't open source it? (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re: forbidden from transferring or open-sourcing? (Score:0, Insightful)
Only in the US where the ruling was made surely. Is it enforceable elsewhere in the world?
Maybe not, but that does not help American companies/citizens, unless they can afford to move out of the USA and not go back.
Re:Can't open source it? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Bottable == boring IMO (Score:5, Insightful)
" Gold farmers do it for cash."
Exactly. And Gold farmers in China are not easily impressed by US law.
I botted hard (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re: forbidden from transferring or open-sourcing? (Score:4, Insightful)
They don't want to ban users. It drives away paying customers.
Re: forbidden from transferring or open-sourcing? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Bad analogy is bad (Score:4, Insightful)
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.