Blizzard Wins $8.6 Million Judgment Against Cheat Maker Bossland

ffronw

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Oct 24, 2013
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Blizzard Wins $8.6 Million Judgment Against Cheat Maker Bossland

//cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/1382/1382625.jpgGerman cheat and bot maker Bossland has been ordered by a California court to pay Blizzard nearly $8.6 million in damages.

Blizzard has always taken an active stance against those who create cheats for its games, as we saw with StarCraft 2 cheats again in 2014 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/104448-]. Now Blizzard has won a California court case against Bossland, the German developer of cheats and bots for a number of Blizzard games, including World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, and Overwatch.

Blizzard has been fighting Bossland in courts in the US, UK, and Germany for quite some time. Blizzard recently received favorable judgments in the UK and Germany as well. UK residents who attempt to visit Bossland's website are blocked, and instead see a message that explains that selling its software 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."

In the California case, Blizzard argued that "The Bossland hacks destroy the integrity of the Blizzard games, thereby alienating and frustrating legitimate players and diverting revenue from Blizzard to defendants." Blizzard also stated that Bossland had reverse-engineered its software and altered games without permission.

Although Bossland had attempted to get the case thrown out, it did not appear to defend itself in the California case, and the court found for Blizzard. The court then ordered Bossland to pay $8,563,600 in statutory copyright damages for 42,818 violations, and further ordered it to pay $174,872 in attorney fees. In addition, Bossland is prohibited from marketing or selling any of its cheat software in the United States.

Bossland CEO Zwetan Letschew had previously told TorrentFreak [https://torrentfreak.com/blizzard-beats-cheat-maker-wins-85-million-copyright-damages-170403/] that the company planned to continue the fight in the courts once the default judgment was filed in California. It remains to be seen how future court cases will go, but for now, you can expect that Bossland products won't be sold in the US.

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008Zulu_v1legacy

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Sep 6, 2009
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Poor little untalented players will now actually have to practice to get good at the game. Or ragequit, and find something else to play/cheat at.

Kudos to Blizzard.
 

King_Julian

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008Zulu said:
Poor little untalented players will now actually have to practice to get good at the game. Or ragequit, and find something else to play/cheat at.

Kudos to Blizzard.
I wish this were true......but they will find another way to cheat and continue being untalented.


I wonder, how wealthy is bossland, i know nothing about them, i mean will this ruin them or will they pay it and continue doing what they do?
 

Pyrian

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Jul 8, 2011
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King_Julian said:
...i mean will this ruin them or will they pay it and continue doing what they do?
I don't think it's about the money, strictly speaking. Blizzard wants to block the product; they're using the court orders to take down Bossland's websites. Compensation is secondary, and Blizzard pointedly did not seek any extra money.
 

MeatMachine

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May 31, 2011
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I am a little concerned about the potential consequences of this case setting a precedent that can eventually be used a little too harshly against people like modders and fan-project developers, but as far as cheaters and cheating software developers go... those wretched little diarrhea squirts should suffer no end to litigation if you ask me. I just wish Valve devoted as much effort as Blizzard does to combat the cheating termites that are eating away at my favorite Steam games.