MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
World of Warcraft and Overwatch developer Blizzard has won a US lawsuit against bot maker Bossland.
The German company has been ordered to pay Blizzard $8.6m having been found guilty of nearly 43,000 counts of copyright infringement. Bossland had tried to have the case dismissed but chose not to defend itself in court, TorrentFreak reports.
Bossland’s products grant players access to various cheats that Blizzard successfully argued destroy the integrity of the Blizzard games, thereby alienating and frustrating legitimate players and diverting revenue from Blizzard to defendants”.
Added the court documents: Bossland materially contributes to infringement by creating the Bossland Hacks, making the Bossland Hacks available to the public, instructing users how to install and operate the Bossland Hacks, and enabling users to use the software to create derivative works.
Players of the Blizzard Games lodge complaints against cheating players, which has caused users to grow dissatisfied with the Blizzard Games and cease playing. Accordingly, the in-game cheating also harms Blizzard’s goodwill and reputation.”
Bossland later told the BBC that it was discussing with our lawyers how to continue” and deciding if an appeal to the declined motion to dismiss is worth trying”.
Blizzard has previously failed in its efforts to sue Bossland in Germany, although successful action in the UK means that any Brits attempting to access it site are greeted with the following message:
On 16th March 2017, Bossland GmbH, and its directors Mr Zwetan Letschew and Mr Patrick Kirk admitted, in and for the purposes of proceedings before the High Court of England and Wales, that the sale of its software which it sells as Honorbuddy, Gatherbuddy, Demonbuddy, Hearthbuddy, Stormbuddy and Watchover Tyrant, to any person resident in the United Kingdom, constitutes an infringement of Blizzard’s intellectual property rights and an inducement to players of Blizzard’s games to breach their agreements with Blizzard. Accordingly, Bossland and its directors are no longer permitted to advertise or offer for sale such software to UK residents.”
