Blizzard wins a 7 million dollar lawsuit against a bot company

[Barnabas]

Actually I'd say the opposite. Name any other game that after 10 years is still running.

I'll bite and it's an mmo. Final Fantasy XI is still active.

[pateuvasiliu]

Won't help at all, more/new will come they have definitely made shitloads of money and more than 7 million.

And blizzard should get rid of bots entirely instead of letting them be there for 5 years ++

They already made trial accounts mute to everyone that has the game.

If you talk in /say Retail accounts can't see your posts. Only way is to somehow convince them to add you via simple emotes ( since they can't see custom emotes either ).

[Barnabas]

Wtf? I think Blizzard should be the one paying them, as they got to ban thousands of accounts, and at least 90% of them created a new account, making Blizzard EARN money, not lose it.

Sure, bots damage economy, but it doesn't cause any damages to Blizzard. Afaik no one has quit the game because of bots have made materials cheap in the auction house. On the contrary, I've read that many people have started playing again due to bots making items more accessible in the auction house on some low pop realms.

But I do understand PVP bots and why PVPrs would quit because of them.

But it's a good thing they act against bots. If only we could get rid of those 300 bots farming Botanica still. ._.

So Blizzard should pay for the legal fees out of the money from people that got banned and bought the game again? That's just not how lawsuits work. What is the point in taking another business to court that damages your business without any punitive damages?

[Galaddriel]

Says something about the state of the game when players would rather use a bot to play it then actually playing it. But eh, $7 million is nothing to sneeze at, looks like blizz has found a new revenues stream :P

[Toraak]

Go farm herbs and ore in Valley of the Four Winds for 4-8 hours a day for 1 month. I mean every day, no skipping. Come back to me at the end and tell me how rubbish it is. Please.

If this is what you did to attract the attention of the gms, and this is all you were doing in game (no dungeons, pvp, quests, raids, nothing) then I don't think it is a low threshold for botting. Because that looks very much like botting behaviour.

Now, I know Blizz can have a quick trigger on some stuff. A guildmate of mine who enjoys working the AH and as such has a bunch of gold offered a gold incentive for downing a raid boss we were having some trouble with. Basically, he offered 30K gold on a random roll to the group if we got the boss down on the next pull. Which we did, and he transferred the 30K to the winner of the roll. The next day he found his account locked as he was suspected of selling the gold. It was all straightened out, but Blizz did act fast to lock him down.

[Agnar]

If this is what you did to attract the attention of the gms, and this is all you were doing in game (no dungeons, pvp, quests, raids, nothing) then I don't think it is a low threshold for botting. Because that looks very much like botting behaviour.

Now, I know Blizz can have a quick trigger on some stuff. A guildmate of mine who enjoys working the AH and as such has a bunch of gold offered a gold incentive for downing a raid boss we were having some trouble with. Basically, he offered 30K gold on a random roll to the group if we got the boss down on the next pull. Which we did, and he transferred the 30K to the winner of the roll. The next day he found his account locked as he was suspected of selling the gold. It was all straightened out, but Blizz did act fast to lock him down.

I pvp'd, did lfr, and heroics. Also ganked people who tried to steal my herbs and ore in the Skyrange of VotFW constantly seeing how it was a PvP server. Didn't know bots could do all that at once let alone waste time to gank people and whisper people of my own faction who get mad when I beat them to a trillium ore deposit or golden lotus. I pissed off a lot of people who probably reported me nonstop cause I was always there farming and ganking people trying to outfarm me.

Also already had the "Insane" title so obviously farming is not hard for me. I enjoy it.

[Toraak]

I pvp'd, did lfr, and heroics. Also ganked people who tried to steal my herbs and ore in the Skyrange of VotFW constantly seeing how it was a PvP server. Didn't know bots could do all that at once let alone waste time to gank people and whisper people of my own faction who get mad when I beat them to a trillium ore deposit or golden lotus. I pissed off a lot of people who probably reported me nonstop cause I was always there farming and ganking people trying to outfarm me.

Also already had the "Insane" title so obviously farming is not hard for me. I enjoy it.

If you were doing all that, then yeah - banning for botting makes no sense. Especially the ganking I suppose - it proves that there is a person doing the farming, not a bot.

[Pejo]

Says something about the state of the game when players would rather use a bot to play it then actually playing it. But eh, $7 million is nothing to sneeze at, looks like blizz has found a new revenues stream :P

People have been botting ever since Vanilla, so don't even start this shit. Do you not remember the posts they made when they shut down hundreds of thousands of accounts in waves for botting? People botted their way to 60 all the time, AV had a ton of bots that would just run to mid, fishing bot was extremely popular. So in other words, spread your shit elsewhere.

[Grubjuice]

cost of doing business

[Deficineiron]

It costs Blizzard more money, I'd say, to have a team to handle the complaints, a team to investigate the bots, and employees to devise ways against them than they ever make from the bot itself.

I am not sure this is true. Bots buy boxes (35-80 bucks right there), time cards/time (if they survive 30 days), etc. if there are (arbitrary number), 100k bots in west, thats 1.5m a month in subs + several million more in boxes that were bot at some point in the past. when they do banwaves, they have been known to time digital sale discounts/combos as well. they are well aware of the business side of this.

the other side of this dynamic (at least for gather-botting) is that there is apparently a huge demand from players for gold which they pay for with cash. That mentality honestly baffles me, but that doesn't mean it isn't true.

[Schroedinger]

And the 7 millions will be invested into people, who will make sure there are no bots in the actual game.

Oh wait, the sheep pay anyway, never mind.. lets PARTY!!!!!

[Bad Ashe]

just playing devils advocate here, but imo blizz is doing this the wrong way.

these companies have every right to make and sell their products, blizz should persecute the users, not the providers.
if these bots are so obvious, then the accounts using them should be easily flagged and closed. end of story.
its the WoW users who enter into an agreement to play WoW on blizz servers. not the bot designers.

[Thelxi]

Won't make a difference in the slightest. For us players that is, I am sure Blizzard's bank will notice the dollars.

[Deja Thoris]

just playing devils advocate here, but imo blizz is doing this the wrong way.

these companies have every right to make and sell their products, blizz should persecute the users, not the providers.
if these bots are so obvious, then the accounts using them should be easily flagged and closed. end of story.
its the WoW users who enter into an agreement to play WoW on blizz servers. not the bot designers.

That's not devils advocate, that's just stupid.
1) It's easier to go after one software company than potentially 10's of thousands of users.
2) Users are only violating the ToS. The makers of the software are profiting from misuse of a Blizz product. Its a much easier case to win.

[Lochton]

Blizzard was too soft, in my opinion.

Glad that they are taking the fight up still, but the ways of laws around the world slows the fight down. But I would say, if they were to shut something down, then they should crush them completely. 7.000.000 dollars are just too little, they should have tried to be more brutal - demand way more. I mean, heck, this company still have their servers. They should be able to take as much as they want to deconstruct the botting industry.

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just playing devils advocate here, but imo blizz is doing this the wrong way.

these companies have every right to make and sell their products, blizz should persecute the users, not the providers.
if these bots are so obvious, then the accounts using them should be easily flagged and closed. end of story.
its the WoW users who enter into an agreement to play WoW on blizz servers. not the bot designers.

It is the sides of both, the programmers and the users. Both these sides are the problem to it all. One side offers the tools and the other uses them. One wouldn't be without the other, there wouldn't be made bots if people didn't want them and people wouldn't use them if they weren't there.

Just the ancient reason like buying gold. There wouldn't be gold sellers if there wasn't a demand for it, and there wouldn't be a demand for it if there wasn't a service offering it.

[endersblade]

How unfortunate. I used PG for as long as it was free on the Mac, and SB for a few months. PG was hands down the best one I've ever seen. Ah well. There is still a laundry list of bots out there that Blizzard can't even touch, so I'm not worried.

Also, for the record, taking down bots on a legal scale is something completely new and uncharted in the legal world, something that pretty much only Blizzard has done, and Blizzard is taking full advantage of it. Blizzard is basically hand writing the rules involved as they go along, and the legal system is just taking it as-is. I think this is total BS, and something should be done about it. Especially if you look back at the legal documents for the other bots they've taken to court, anyone with half a brain cell can clearly see that Blizzard feeds the Judge line after line of complete bullshit, but the Judge doesn't know any better and just assumes that, since Blizzard is a big company full of computer geeks, they know what they're talking about.

[Lochton]

How unfortunate. I used PG for as long as it was free on the Mac, and SB for a few months. PG was hands down the best one I've ever seen. Ah well. There is still a laundry list of bots out there that Blizzard can't even touch, so I'm not worried.

Also, for the record, taking down bots on a legal scale is something completely new and uncharted in the legal world, something that pretty much only Blizzard has done, and Blizzard is taking full advantage of it. Blizzard is basically hand writing the rules involved as they go along, and the legal system is just taking it as-is. I think this is total BS, and something should be done about it. Especially if you look back at the legal documents for the other bots they've taken to court, anyone with half a brain cell can clearly see that Blizzard feeds the Judge line after line of complete bullshit, but the Judge doesn't know any better and just assumes that, since Blizzard is a big company full of computer geeks, they know what they're talking about.

Because Blizzard has taken to the point of caring about the case, so I wouldn't complain. If it takes notes of handwritten rules to shut down companies that offers this service, as well as accounts using them - then go ahead.

It is a new field within the legal system, that is why someone has to step up and actually fill in the blanks.

[Deleted]

Hopefully this discourages other bot companies

Hope so. Pretty annoying to play with or against bots.

[KCguy]

I find it even more perplexing that the company is allowed to accept donations to help with their legal fees. I mean, the statement they used to defend themselves is asinine enough, but to be allowed to accept donations for legal fees when their company was promoting illegal things to begin with, yeesh.

[Deleted]

How unfortunate. I used PG for as long as it was free on the Mac, and SB for a few months. PG was hands down the best one I've ever seen. Ah well. There is still a laundry list of bots out there that Blizzard can't even touch, so I'm not worried.

Why do you bot?