Evony Hacker Slapped With $300,000 Judgment

[MurderousToaster]

While he certainly should be punished, even $300,000 seems a tad steep for these crimes. Wouldn't, to the average hacker non-billionaire, a fine of say $20,000 - $50,000 would be well within the realms of an effective dissuasion. They're not going to see this money and it sounds as though the $300,000 could be enough to ruin a good proportion of his life. I don't know if the punishment here fits the crime.

Also Evony is cancerous bilge.

And do you expect the company to state "No wait, $300,000 is a bit to much. We'll take $50,000." No, they didn't make the judgement, the court did.

Well, the company that made Evony tried to charge $825,000. The court more than cut it in half for him.

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

a good case should be that these "games" make people like zombies for their level of addiction.

 

[fulano]

Will Holland go to jal for this? 'Cause that guy has no money to cover that huge expense. He just plain does not.

 

[samsonguy920]

It's hardly a big deal. If he's that badly off, he can just declare bankruptcy and the whole thing (and any other debts he's incurred!) just goes away

Along with any significant assets he owns free and clear, like a car or such, which would be auctioned off. I highly doubt he is dirt poor to have the equipment needed to do what he did.
All the same, I have to wonder, why hack your way into a crap game like Evony? Was he hoping that tits were really in there?
Seriously, he could have used his abilities for bigger fish or even made an Evony clone and made legit money off of that.
If he can honestly prove he has no assets or savings to pay a fraction of that judgement, he probably won't even have to declare bankruptcy. But he has to prove it first. All things considered, this idiot had it coming.

 

[KeyMaster45]

If he'd even simply shown up in court, and tried to deal with the charges on his own, without legal council there's no way the judge would have issued this order no matter how well the Evony lawyers made their case.

Except he did show up in court.

He said he couldn't afford a lawyer, showed up to court in "sweats," and says he's "barely surviving" off of the income he made from his illegitimate Evony activities.

As we can see he showed up despite not having a lawyer and pretty much told them "I have no way to defend myself because I'm piss broke and my illegal activities were barely keeping me above homelessness"

So yeah, kinda makes the rest of what you said moot.

 

[The Rockerfly]

On what grounds? They lost no revenue, they lost no other users and they managed to keep the value of their company so, where on earth do they think the money is from? Granted he made money from a bot but if he's barely managing on that amount and since econy hasn't been going on for very long, I doubt it would be valued at $300,000.

If this works, Jagex can sue half their users for bots and selling their crap to other members

 

[Neverhoodian]

Evony? Isn't that the game with tasteless ads of women practically falling out of skimpy outfits?

While the hacker's activities warranted some sort of action, $300,000 seems rather excessive. If I was in their shoes I'd settle for $5,000 and a lifetime ban from the game.

 

[JdaS]

News to me. That someone is actually playing this shit, that is. Cheating even.

 

[dkyros]

While he certainly should be punished, even $300,000 seems a tad steep for these crimes. Wouldn't, to the average hacker non-billionaire, a fine of say $20,000 - $50,000 would be well within the realms of an effective dissuasion. They're not going to see this money and it sounds as though the $300,000 could be enough to ruin a good proportion of his life. I don't know if the punishment here fits the crime.

Also Evony is cancerous bilge.

And do you expect the company to state "No wait, $300,000 is a bit to much. We'll take $50,000." No, they didn't make the judgement, the court did.

Well, the company that made Evony tried to charge $825,000. The court more than cut it in half for him.

Yeah but half of an insurmountable amount of money is still an insurmountable amount of money.

 

[Enkidu88]

This is what the Appellate court is for

Yeah, except you really can't appeal a summary judgment. I mean he basically refused mount any response to the claims, and decided to ignore the court case, and this is the result. He's fucked.

Wow, wasn't aware he didn't even try to fight the thing in court. My opinion has changed, the guy was an utter moron.

 

[tomvw]

How on earth does Evony even have a legitimate claim, their game has content stripped straight from AoE and Civ. That, and it's designed to rip you off at every turn, and it probably contains malware, and it sucks, etc...
Then again, this Holland guy sounds like a complete dumbass. He probably could've won this, if he'd bothered to make a decent court-appearance.

 

[Hungry Donner]

I don't understand why he didn't have a public defender.

Running an unauthorized server is complete idiocy but the amount he owes is equally stupid. Whatever money he brought in, before expenses, should be given to Evony and I don't see anything wrong with a fine to reflect hacking them and exploiting their source code, but 300k is ridiculous.

 

[Verlander]

Fuck, that's loads of moolah. Maybe that's how browser based games earn their money?

Seriously though, I'm torn here. I don't like people like this guy trying to rip off other people, but at the same time, he's gonna be paying that shit back for the rest of his life.

 

[Canid117]

It's hardly a big deal. If he's that badly off, he can just declare bankruptcy and the whole thing (and any other debts he's incurred!) just goes away

Not quite how bankruptcy works.

And can I sue the creators of Evony for false advertising and spyware? I think $825,000 sounds like a reasonable amount.

 

[ALPHATT]

Will Holland go to jal for this? 'Cause that guy has no money to cover that huge expense. He just plain does not.

I beleive you have to do that if you can't pay up, although I know next to nothing about these things, either way, messing with companies is getting pretty dangerous if they can slap copyright infrignment on the crime you are done.

 

[OutforEC]

I don't understand why he didn't have a public defender.

Not 100%, but I believe public defenders are only used in criminal, not civil, cases.

 

[Bobbity]

I can understand why they did it, but Evony's pretty much screwed this guy for the rest of his life now. He's going to be in debt even on his deathbed, now.

Couldn't they have slapped a smaller fine and a serious warning on him, before going all the way?

 

[Hungry Donner]

I don't understand why he didn't have a public defender.

Not 100%, but I believe public defenders are only used in criminal, not civil, cases.

Ah, now that you mention it that does sound familiar. Given the amount of money involved I was thinking felony v. misdemeanor rather than criminal v. civil.

 

[nugarin]

Pfft. evony - bastards technically stole money from me.
It was getting really tedious so I did do some autofarming - my acct was closed, but they still took out subscription payment for the next month after 24H - forgot to cancel the paypal subscription on time. All attempts at refund were fobbed off and Paypal dispute went nowhere, Evony claimed digital goods, Paypal automatically resolved in their favour. Of course, the fact that I could no way no how received these goods, so I was basically defrauded fell on deaf ears.

Disclaimer: This is how I personally percieve the company and the resolution of the dispute between me and evony.