World of Warcraft Bot Maker Suffers Crushing Defeat

[Andy Chalk]

World of Warcraft Bot Maker Suffers Crushing Defeat

Ceiling Fan Software is facing a $7 million judgment after losing a legal battle with Blizzard over its World of Warcraft bots.

Score another one for the big guy, as Blizzard has prevailed against another maker of bots that automate World of Warcraft. Blizzard won a summary judgment against Ceiling Fan Software in September after a judge ruled that "the uncontroverted evidence establishes all elements of Blizzard's breach of contract claim against the individual Defendants." The judge also agreed to issue a permanent injunction against the company, following submissions from both Blizzard and Ceiling Fan on its terms.

That injunction was issued earlier this week, ordering Ceiling Fan Software to permanently halt the sale and support of its bot and forbidding it from transferring any part of the software to any entity other than Blizzard. The court also issue a whopping $7 million judgment against the company, which posted a message on its website apologizing to users for no longer being able to offer its products.

"After more than 2 years of legal battles with Blizzard Entertainment to both pursue our right to operate and our customer's right to play WoW as they choose, we did not prevail in the suit and have been ordered by the United States District Court in California to cease our operation," the message states. Ceiling Fan is also now soliciting donations to help cover its legal fees.

The order granting Blizzard's summary judgment is available here [http://legal.ceilingfansoftware.com/docs/147%20Order%20Granting%20Blizzard%27s%20Motion%20for%20Summary%20judgment%20and%20Denying%20Defendants%27%20Motion%20for%20Summary%20Judgment%20%282013-09-24%29.pdf].

Source: Ceiling Fan Software [http://legal.ceilingfansoftware.com/]


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[Sean951]

How dare that big meany Blizzard try and ensure people follow the rules when playing a multiplayer game. Those jerks.

 

[Zeren]

I give it a week before the bot code is "leaked" and a spike of bots swarm WoW.

 

[Athinira]

How dare that big meany Blizzard try and ensure people follow the rules when playing a multiplayer game. Those jerks.

Whether you like cheating or not (most people don't, obviously), this is still a rather controversial subject.

Consider that a judgement like this can be used as a basis for limiting/prohibiting ALL software development of third-party addons/plugins for games or other software (not talking the standard WoW addons here), and it's in fact a rather large limitation.

In Denmark, we actually have paragraph in our Copyright law that ensures us the right to develop software that works with other software, including the right to reverse engineer the parts of the software necessary for us to make our own software work. Over here, Blizzard would have lost that lawsuit

 

[Makabriel]

I give it a week before the bot code is "leaked" and a spike of bots swarm WoW.

A "Leak" could mean more than just a 7 mill judgement. Blizz knows their code so they'll know a leak and it circles back to CFS

 

[TwoSidesOneCoin]

Damn the whole "trial" took two years to complete? Must have been a good legal team on both sides to keep it going that long, or blizzard played the whole "Lets keep delaying the case and run them out of money so they can't keep their case going" power move.

Also, with subscription numbers dropping by the thousands or millions, whatever the case may be, can't this be seen as a negative for blizzard? Maybe I'm over thinking it.

 

[Sean951]

Third party software is one thing, but having a bot qualifies as "cheating" at WoW. While having an addon/mod is one thing, having one that damages the game for other players is quite another, and this clearly damages the game for others. It wrecks the economy and degrades the experience of other people trying to farm. It would be interesting to see how that case would play out in Denmark though.

I give it a week before the bot code is "leaked" and a spike of bots swarm WoW.

If it was, I would imagine that either Blizzard would see the people at the company utterly ruined or they would face criminal charges for failing to comply with a court order.

 

[Abomination]

If they made bots specifically for World of Warcraft then I can see this being a serious problem.

Now if they made a bot program and released a World of Warcraft "template" on to the net that needed to work in conjunction with it - not selling of course, just leave it out there like a subtitle file for a video clip - it'd be a lot harder to prosecute.

From what I understand they were making World of Warcraft bots specifically designed to breach the terms of service of World of Warcraft and were selling them for profit.

Zero sympathy. It's a multiplayer game.

How dare that big meany Blizzard try and ensure people follow the rules when playing a multiplayer game. Those jerks.

Whether you like cheating or not (most people don't, obviously), this is still a rather controversial subject.

Consider that a judgement like this can be used as a basis for limiting/prohibiting ALL software development of third-party addons/plugins for games or other software (not talking the standard WoW addons here), and it's in fact a rather large limitation.

In Denmark, we actually have paragraph in our Copyright law that ensures us the right to develop software that works with other software, including the right to reverse engineer the parts of the software necessary for us to make our own software work. Over here, Blizzard would have lost that lawsuit

On the flip side I can completely understand the appeal of bots and I would argue for their use being allowed... if only the use of bots didn't give someone an unfair advantage over other players by denying other players access to resources or reducing their team's chance of winning in a battleground. If your bot does something that doesn't affect another player I'd be all for it, but when it goes against the spirit of the game and experience that OTHERS pay for I would hope the courts of Denmark take that into account as a deciding factor.

 

[Zachery Gaskins]

We here in America take fairness in sports and entertainment very seriously (i.e. steroids in baseball, etc.)

If only we were this concerned about fairness in things that actually affect people's quality of life...

 

[Athinira]

Third party software is one thing, but having a bot qualifies as "cheating" at WoW. While having an addon/mod is one thing, having one that damages the game for other players is quite another, and this clearly damages the game for others. It wrecks the economy and degrades the experience of other people trying to farm. It would be interesting to see how that case would play out in Denmark though.

Rather irrelevant. In Denmark you have to prove (and by that i really mean prove) actual damages in order to be eligable for compensation. Since most people who get banned in WoW buy their accounts back (which is why Blizzard does 'banwaves' rather than banning people all the time - it increases the chance of them buying the game again, and gives them a reason to post positive publicity). So no, it wouldn't really be interesting to see. Our legal system is much more simple than in the states, and this is a very cut and clear example where it's about as straigth as it gets

If your bot does something that doesn't affect another player I'd be all for it, but when it goes against the spirit of the game and experience that OTHERS pay for I would hope the courts of Denmark take that into account as a deciding factor.

They won't. As mentioned above, very cut and clear case of a consumer right here (or, software-developer right since it concerns software). As long as the software doesn't circumvent any copy-protection, and isn't being used to make a similar/duplicate program, it's a cut and clear case. Blizzard needs to prove actual damages to be eligable for anything in a civil suit. Simply arguing that "Bots are ruining the experience" isn't gonna cut it, because those are Blizzards rules to enforce, not the courts.

Spoiler: Ninja edit

On that note, software that enables play on private servers would still be illegal, because it circumvents copy-protection (having a WoW-account), and it facilitates operation that is similar to the original software which was reverse-engineered/circumvented, in this case the WoW server software

The first thing you said actually reminds me of the AutoTravel addon in WoW. Before patch 1.6, addons used to be able to initiate movement, so someone made an addon called AutoTravel. You would set waypoints, and the addon could navigate by those, including automatically mounting. You could also name the waypoints, so if you had several waypoints called "Mailbox", you could have an addon with a macro that said "/at goto Mailbox", and it would automatically find the closest mailbox to you. I'm still sad they removed that addon (although it probably wouldn't be much use with flying mounts) - good times in vanilla, thanks for the nostalgia trip

 

[JaceArveduin]

Bots... I can think of nothing positive that is associated with their use, with the exception of the user of said bot being able to gain things they didn't play for.

 

[Nokturos]

Good on Blizzard. Crap like that needs to get stomped out.

 

[Seventh Actuality]

Good fucking riddance. Bots screw up the in-game economy and ruin pre-90 battlegrounds, one of my favourite parts of the game.

 

[Frost27]

I give it a week before the bot code is "leaked" and a spike of bots swarm WoW.

More likely Blizzard will repurpose the code and start selling power level bot packages at a premium.

"Catch up to your friends faster!!"

 

[Ninmecu]

Can't say I've never used a bot out of curiosity.(Literally, the longest I've had a bot run for was 60 seconds and at that, it performed extremely poorly. It was more efficient to do it myself.) However, I've never really accepted that bots as a whole are a detriment and give an unfair advantage. Fact is, doing it yourself is faster/more efficient if you do it right. Unless the bot is extremely well coded, you're at a deficit, not a gain. It really kindof boils back down to the whole debate regarding Pokemon and Action Replay codes being used to create "perfect" pokemon instead of the hours and hours it takes to breed merely 1 (one) not quite perfect and the months it could take to breed a "perfect" then having to repeat that over 6 "pokemon" for competetive play. But, that's neither here nor there. My issue, is with the 7,000,000$. Is that in legal fees or is it a fine? If it's legal fees-Fine, that's fair, they need to be recompensed for the time and energy spent debating it in open court. If it's a fine-No, that's not cool. You cannot properly gauge how much or how little impact this one software groups "bots" did or did not do to the World of Warcraft as a whole. It isn't like they were creating a way of bypassing Battle.Net security and making false accounts that were being spoofed and played on legitimate servers. They were making automated methods of playing an online game with no tangible consequences. I'll be the first to admit, I take pride in my characters, I take pride in my achievements. It pisses me off knowing I'm "working" hard at a game and others are just cheating their way into finance and making headway on a raiding schedule that I never get to be a part of, but this is taking it a bit too far.

 

[ffs-dontcare]

Definitely rooting for Blizzard on this one. Gold sellers/buyers, script kiddies and people running bots are a cancer in this MMO and need to be catapulted out of the game as fast as they can possibly catch them.

Also, I love that the bot makers are trying to play the self-righteous indignation card.

 

[Albino Boo]

How dare that big meany Blizzard try and ensure people follow the rules when playing a multiplayer game. Those jerks.

Whether you like cheating or not (most people don't, obviously), this is still a rather controversial subject.

Consider that a judgement like this can be used as a basis for limiting/prohibiting ALL software development of third-party addons/plugins for games or other software (not talking the standard WoW addons here), and it's in fact a rather large limitation.

In Denmark, we actually have paragraph in our Copyright law that ensures us the right to develop software that works with other software, including the right to reverse engineer the parts of the software necessary for us to make our own software work. Over here, Blizzard would have lost that lawsuit

For start they did not sue for breach of copyright but for breach of contract. Ceiling fan accepted that contract when they bought their copies of wow. Blizzard have proved breach of contract and even under Danish Law you can't profit from an illegal act, any and all monies taken will go to Blizzard. I would suggest reading the article before going on about Danish copyright provisions because they are not pertinent to the case.

I give it a week before the bot code is "leaked" and a spike of bots swarm WoW.

From the judgment against ceiling fan

4. Defendants, and all persons under Defendants? direction, supervision,
and/or control are prohibited from transferring or assigning the Software or its
source code, to any individual or entity other than Blizzard, including by making
available or uploading the software to Google Code, or otherwise ?open sourcing?
the source code for the Software.

If the code gets leaked, the directors of ceiling fan are personally liable and could face fines and jail time for contempt of court. Blizzard would also be legally entitled to pursue case against the personal assets of the directors.

 

[pezofdoom]

Whether you like cheating or not (most people don't, obviously), this is still a rather controversial subject.

Consider that a judgement like this can be used as a basis for limiting/prohibiting ALL software development of third-party addons/plugins for games or other software (not talking the standard WoW addons here), and it's in fact a rather large limitation.

Bots today, FRAPS tomorrow?

I could see that happening, sadly. Suddenly if you want to record video of your game play, you need the Blizzard combo recorder plus codec ($20 USD). Anyone caught recording on anything else will have their account banned.

Someone tries to argue the point *Points to bot case*


"But sir, it wasn't hurting your game," you might argue.

"Sure it is, look at how low our sales of the Blizzard game recorder is, but how many let's play videos are on youtube on our latest game," replies the lawyers, "Everyone one of those should have been a sale."

 

[Ferisar]

I give it a week before the bot code is "leaked" and a spike of bots swarm WoW.

More likely Blizzard will repurpose the code and start selling power level bot packages at a premium.

"Catch up to your friends faster!!"

Yeah that TOTALLY sounds like something they'll do.

-eyesrolledupsohighglowingorbsreplacethem-

OT:
Yay. Bots suck. It's pretty one-sided from the player's perspective I feel like. Less so in the legal circles, but I'm not part of them.

 

[lancar]

I may not play WoW anymore, but just knowing that a company that made money off those bots is dying horribly makes the world a brighter place for me.