{"id":5128,"date":"2017-03-23T13:24:46","date_gmt":"2017-03-23T17:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=5128"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:52:55","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:52:55","slug":"do-cheaters-ever-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/do-cheaters-ever-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Cheaters Ever Win? Blizzard Faces Off Against Cheat-Boss Bossland"},"content":{"rendered":"

As long as there have been games, there have been cheaters,<\/a> and video games are no exception. However, when online anonymity<\/a> was introduced to competitive gaming, cheating exploded. Although EULA\u2019s and ToS\u2019s prohibit player cheating, competitive online gaming is plagued with hacks (which make the game easier to win) and bots (which play the game for you). Third parties profit from commandeering the developer\u2019s IP<\/a> to create and then sell these cheating tools and drive honest players away from purchasing or subscribing to the developer\u2019s game. To combat cheating, developers must dual-wield cheat-detection software and, when necessary, the law.
\nVideo game giant Blizzard<\/a>, behind titles like World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch, has been waging legal war<\/a> with cheat-boss Bossland<\/a> for years. As outlined by Blizzard\u2019s most recent suit<\/a>, Bossland\u2019s cheats allow players \u201cto accumulate in-game experience and resources at a faster-than-normal rate, manipulate the in-game economy to the player\u2019s advantage, and unfairly defeat opponents.\u201d The Overwatch cheat, \u201cWatchover Tyrant,\u201d reads game data to generate a visual representation of gameplay revealing the position, distance, health, and name of all competitors. This is much more than peeking playing split-screen on your favorite first-person-shooter.
\nBlizzard accuses Bossland of (1) trafficking technologies that circumvent anti-cheating technology, (2) unlawfully accessing, copying, and reverse engineering Blizzard\u2019s code, and (3) intentionally interfering with Blizzard\u2019s EULA, all with the effect of causing and continuing to cause massive and irreparable harm to Blizzard. Bossland\u2019s website proudly proclaims in it\u2019s legal information section that Botting is not against any law.<\/a>
\nAfter trying and failing to have the California case dismissed due to lack of jurisdiction<\/a> over Germany-based Bossland, Bossland \u201cskipped its turn,\u201d and defaulted instead of defend their conduct. Thus, on March 13th<\/sup>, Blizzard entered a motion for default judgement<\/a>.
\nWith its strategic default, Bossland attempts to avoid discovery, hide the scope of its conduct and revenues, and render any default judgement unenforceable in Germany. Without the benefit of discovery, Blizzard is unable to calculate actual damages and is thus seeking the minimum awardable statutory damages of $200 per infringement, for 42,818 downloads. Bossland counts 118,939 downloads of its product in the United States since July of 2013, and Blizzard argues that 36%, or 42,818, is a modest estimate of sales of products for use with Blizzard Games. This calculation amounts to $8,563,600.
\nBossland plans to appeal<\/a> the motion to dismiss once the default judgment is served, maintaining that the US courts have no jurisdiction. For now, Blizzard will continue in its quest to \u201cprovide an equal and fair playing field for everyone,\u201d and cheating players will be banned<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As long as there have been games, there have been cheaters, and video games are no exception. However, when online anonymity was introduced to competitive gaming, cheating exploded. Although EULA\u2019s and ToS\u2019s prohibit player cheating, competitive online gaming is plagued with hacks (which make the game easier to win) and bots (which play the game …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5129,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5128"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7085,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5128\/revisions\/7085"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}