Poll: It's really time to stop supporting Blizzard

[Chewster]

Now can we please get away from the legal aspects of this discussion? Please?

I realize we're on the same side of this argument but if I can disagree I think we should be focusing on the legal aspects of this discussion.

We could argue with Blizzard about doing what's right, treating people fairly and such but it wouldn't do any good. Like all businesses they're only interested in their short term quarterly gains, morality doesn't come into it. However, the law and the amount of financial damage that can be inflicted on a business through it, is really the only leverage we have on a company so vast.

While your right that most of us don't have the coin to challenge them, it never hurts to challenge the legality of it. Lawyers, especially young ambitious ones, are always looking to increase their notoriety, to win the really big cases. If they do it pro bono, all the better, good PR. Or who knows, with enough noise you might attract someone with deeper pockets who could challenge Blizzard.

Really, the legal aspects of this argument are all that we have going for us.

Certainly it plays into it. No denying this. But I am not sure of how relevant it is in this industry. Historically, it didn't matter too much, aside from piracy, but that is something completely different.

Let me explain: modding has always been a contentious issue, but it was more or less tolerated because the threat of not being able to control your game in its entirety was balanced out by the potential innovation that was seen (a lot of modders were hired on as level designers, back in the day) and the goodwill it created within the gaming community. In sum: even though they had the power to crack down, they didn't do it. Not so now, at least in this initial stage, unless enough people complain. The likely outcome is that they wouldn't change the EULA, but merely back away and offer some manner of half-assed apology. So I am not even sure it is worth fighting on the legal front, but that is just my opinion. I'm sure you know all this history anyway.

Anyway, I was more annoyed that people keep saying "but...but...but...the trainers are illegal" and then standing smugly to the side, as though that brilliant argument has now toppled anything everyone can throw at Blizzard. It doesn't matter. The legality of it is only partially relevant to the discussion of if what they are doing is right. Legally, it is. In other aspects, not ad historically, it has been tolerated and should be in the future if this industry wants to go anywhere. Which I guess is some of my overall point.

Yeah, I don't know, I'm tired. I need to sleep.

 

[Pilkingtube]

I have a sneaking suspicion that your poll requires the 'I just don't like Blizzard anyway and never buy their games' as I can almost guarantee that about 70% of those people who agreed to boycott Blizzard aren't actually Blizzard customers.

Anyway, yes I agree it is a bit harsh, but there is probably an EULA for single player, that or there is no way for their system to detect which part of the game you are cheating. How about just not cheating?

 

[Sam Eskenazi]

I love how there's so many people siding with BLizzard for... some reason. It's absolutely crazy to adopt sucha policy in the first place: in no way should a single player cheating be banned for risk of influence over the multiplayer; as long as the trainer doesn't affect multiplayer, then there's no problem.

If I want to fucking play my game the way I want to play it, I bloody well will.

 

[Enkidu88]

Just like in law, you can't allow yourself to only see this as an isolated case applicable only to Blizzard

Actually, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what law is based upon; citing different cases and their rulings and draw comparisons to reason with the jury that the ruling should be similar. But do go on...

I'm still getting a feeling of overt hostility here. No need to take this personally.

Anyway, your right that sentence wasn't worded really well. What I meant was, in law when a judge makes a ruling it doesn't just affect that one incident, it speaks to the law as a whole. When the EULA stuck down on second hand sales, it didn't just apply to that one game, it applied to every EULA everywhere (well at least in the US). By comparison I was suggesting that you not simply look at the small picture, not just Blizzard and Starcraft II, but to the industry as a whole.

No, Blizzard stood up for themselves and their community when they were in the right. They've stopped cheaters who are using a very perilous and easily exploitable third-party cheating system after handing out all the tools players needed to cheat anyway. The player base slapped them in the face and scoffed at them, so Blizzard dropped the hammer and told them that they went too far this time. Now the kids are crying because they didn't expect it? Please...

Right is very subjective term, and as such I've been trying to approach this from a legal standpoint. It's equally easy to say that they were in the wrong for basically robbing people of 60$ for playing a game how they wanted to play it when they weren't doing anything illegal online. And if you'll allow your anger to subside for a moment you'll see were not crying over this, as I said I don't even own this game, rather we're voicing our concerns over what could be the start of a very bad trend in the video game market. This is like DRM taken to the extreme, not only can you not play the game without first registering and logging online, but if you play any other way than what they've specified your banned. That's a draconian measure if I've ever seen one. And you know what the sad part is, is that this isn't going to stop the cheaters from cheating anymore than it stops pirates from pirating games.

People who want to cheat online will find a way to do it, and mass bans of people who were cheating in singleplayer will likely create a bunch of angry people who now want to grief multiplayer if only to spite Blizzard.

So as you can see, it's easy to see where this is coming from. You don't own the story within the book and have the ability to edit it as you please , you own the right to read it, as it had been written. You don't own the ability to copy and edit the movie you just bought, you own the ability to watch it whenever you wish, as it was made. You don't own the ability to modify the game mechanics as you see fit, you own the ability to play that game as it had been programed!

But even I like a good mod once in awhile. When a game has no modding capabilities, nor cheating capabilities, then you have to start questioning how ethical it is to demonize your player base for doing so by themselves. Yes, companies have full rights to say it's wrong, even if they don't have the full selection of backed up arguments that Blizzard has, but as time has proven, the less modding capabilities a game has inbred into it, the less developers tend to care if you use third-party software to modify something.

The issue at hand, however, is that Blizzard has handed out modification tools and cheat codes and people are still using trainers, which leads to the obvious conclusion of "they're getting something else out of this..." That's what's wrong with all of this!

Regarding the bold statement: Yes, actually I do. I can edit it, rewrite, and even skip whole chapters if it suits my fancy. I just can't sell it as my own afterward. Copyright law doesn't speak to what you can do in the privacy of your own home, just what happens outside of it. I can edit Gladiator on windows movie maker to make it look like Yahtzee is Maximus slaying the Emperor with a giant sword the size of an aircraft carrier. But I can't sell it as my own. By the same token, I should be able to modify a game and play it in the privacy of my own home without any interference. The only thing that would prevent me from doing so is the EULA, whose legality I've clearly challenged, and the dictatorial controls blizzard have over the singleplayer portion of the game.

And still, is it beyond Blizzard's control to determine if the trainers are being used in multi or singleplayer. Steam has handled the conundrum of cheating achievements quite nicely, why can't blizzard?

 

[HellsingerAngel]

Now can we please get away from the legal aspects of this discussion? Please?

Not really, because the entire discussion about this is about legality over an intellectual property. The entire basis upon which Blizzard is doing this is because people are trying to do illegal things within their game and have total rights to kick them off. That is a legal issue. But for your sake, I'll attempt to focus more so on the philisophical side of the large question.

Trainers certainly have the ability to do that in the multi player realm. Which is why I find it odd that they are doing it to those using it in single player. What relevance does mucking around in the single player using a trainer have on the multi player? Aside from the achievements, which can be disabled, what advantage does a trainer grant in the multi player world, if people can't use them there anyway?

First off, whether you like it or not, achievements have become the new snapshot you send into Nintendo Power to get your badass Mario 3 t-shirt. They're a symbol of gamer pride at how good you are at a particular game. This is why some games are seen as black marks on a person's record (see Avatar The Last Airbender: The Burning Earth for the 360) and some games are held in high regards because of the sheer difficulty of getting all the achievements. Boosting is seen as dirty by some, not so much by others. However, boosting requires skill, where as a trainer can net you achievement score within minutes with minimal effort. Because of how the trainers are set up and how SC2 is set up, Blizzard felt it better to make an example out of the current cheaters to nip the problem in the bud. You know what? Tough. Again, you cheated and you pay for it. Simple as that.

Now, achievements are pretty much the only thing you can gain from a multiplayer aspect if you play only single player games with this trianer on. Now, while I personally believe that is enough (I hold GS in high regards and think it's a great way to show your pride in how you game) there are some that simply don't think it's all that important. So now we get into the part where people say "why not just block multiplayer" or "just lock achievements for them". This is harder than it looks. I've built very small and very simple games within Visual Basics and even those have thousands of lines of coding. A game as complex as StarCraft 2, I can't even imagine how much code there would be to go through just to flick one number from a 1 to a 0 if User mods the game, let alone stringing some code together to shut off multiplayer for them. Why not, say, get rid of them all instead because dealing with a few thousand accounts is much easier, especially when they're all cheating against our EULA anyway, right?

The fact is, it's not worth the time to edit a small portion of code stuck within millions and billions of lines of coding for people who don't want to play fair in the first place. Blizzard can comfortably just sit on their laurels and point out that they gave you the exact tools they used to make the game and plenty of cheat codes to go with it. These cheaters are cheating Blizzard after they helped give them the tools to do what they wanted in the first place. It comes down to the fact that if the tools to cheat are already there, there must be something else these people are gaining out of it, and the only two possible options are: cheating in multiplayer and cheating achievements. Whether you care or not, some people are concerned about their gamer score, some people want to have a fair fight everytime they play and some people just don't like cheaters milling about.

Training is leagues away from modding in the sense you're talking about (or at least which I hope you are) in that these people are changing the source code of the game to cheat, rather than creating a different game mode. Blizzard has given each and every person the tools in which they used to create the entire game, albeit in a fancy GUI, but all the same tools none the less. They even placed a selection of cheat codes themselves, because Blizzard does like to keep things light hearted and know people want to muck about every so often. The problem is that people took advantage of that freedom and now Blizzard has told them it's not right. It's another case of gamers thinking they have every right in the world and we just simply don't. There are lines and situations like these make it all the more apparent that we crossed them. When a company gives you the nuts and bolts of a game, to edit it in anyway you please and you go ahead and just tear into the very source code of the game, tweak it and then boot the game up, not only is that insulting, but it's illegal, which in my mind makes it morally wrong as well.

If you want to go deeper than that, sadly, you're treading law again. Why can't we just have the complete freedom to edit anything we want? Well, because that would compromise the integrity of the artist(s) and when does it become your work instead of theirs? What's stopping you from cutting Blizzard out of the picture and taking all the creadit, despite using their source engine for the game? It's all copywrite stuff and really it's fairly black and white to me. Either you created it or you need to give credit where credit is due. Blizzard has just simplified that, among many other features in the map editor, so that they get their due credit while everyone can mess around with whatever they want to inside the game's engine.

 

[The Furbinator]

It's understandable considering they could have been abusing the trainer to get incredibly difficult achievements, while it's questionable whether or not they deserve a permanent ban, suspensions seem more than reasonable.

 

[ShwimShwam]

How the fuck has this thread reached 10 pages?

The fact that Blizzard has implemented in-game cheat codes for almost every, if not all, RTS game they've ever made really shows how people just want to whine about something that is essentially nothing. People caught using trainers have no fucking excuse at all, and people defending them have even less. They chose to go out of their way to obtain cheats that are already accessible in the game.

Anyone blaming Blizzard for the whole "OMG, SINGLE PLAYER, DO WHATEVER YOU WANT" thing don't really have an argument, because the cheats pretty much let you do that without letting you get nerd points. Godmode sound like a cheat you might want? You're a dumbass, but it's in there. You want minerals / vespene 'cause you suck at macro? It's in there. I'm pretty sure that there are cheats that let you skip missions entirely, if any previous Blizzard games are any indication.

Really, for all the self-righteous tools on this forum, most of you are kind of bad at it.

'kay, thanks.

 

[Karathos]

How the fuck has this thread reached 10 pages?

The fact that Blizzard has implemented in-game cheat codes for almost every, if not all, RTS game they've ever made really shows how people just want to whine about something that is essentially nothing. People caught using trainers have no fucking excuse at all, and people defending them have even less. They chose to go out of their way to obtain cheats that are already accessible in the game.

Anyone blaming Blizzard for the whole "OMG, SINGLE PLAYER, DO WHATEVER YOU WANT" thing don't really have an argument, because the cheats pretty much let you do that without letting you get nerd points. Godmode sound like a cheat you might want? You're a dumbass, but it's in there. You want minerals / vespene 'cause you suck at macro? It's in there. I'm pretty sure that there are cheats that let you skip missions entirely, if any previous Blizzard games are any indication.

Really, for all the self-righteous tools on this forum, most of you are kind of bad at it.

'kay, thanks.

I was just about to write a reply - but then I read this. And all I can say is "THIS, THIS. A THOUSAND TIMES THIS!". There are cheats in the game itself, that disable achievements. When you buy their game, you agree to their rules. You break their rules, and you get punished.

If this was Valve, you'd be getting a lifetime VAC ban, which pretty much means no Steam games ever again, on that account. Cheaters and/or people defending said cheaters - get over yourselves and/or get a grip.

 

[HellsingerAngel]

Anyway, your right that sentence wasn't worded really well. What I meant was, in law when a judge makes a ruling it doesn't just affect that one incident, it speaks to the law as a whole. When the EULA stuck down on second hand sales, it didn't just apply to that one game, it applied to every EULA everywhere (well at least in the US). By comparison I was suggesting that you not simply look at the small picture, not just Blizzard and Starcraft II, but to the industry as a whole.

The industry as a whole isn't in question here. This discussion was started on Blizzard and if it ends on the industry, so be it. Right now, I've been talking about the bad press Blizzard has been getting and as far as I can tell (aside from a few tangents) so have you. One bone picked at a time.

Right is very subjective term, and as such I've been trying to approach this from a legal standpoint. It's equally easy to say that they were in the wrong for basically robbing people of 60$ for playing a game how they wanted to play it when they weren't doing anything illegal online. And if you'll allow your anger to subside for a moment you'll see were not crying over this, as I said I don't even own this game, rather we're voicing our concerns over what could be the start of a very bad trend in the video game market. This is like DRM taken to the extreme, not only can you not play the game without first registering and logging online, but if you play any other way than what they've specified your banned. That's a draconian measure if I've ever seen one. And you know what the sad part is, is that this isn't going to stop the cheaters from cheating anymore than it stops pirates from pirating games.

If there's one thing I dislike about people who play video games, it's their ability to jump to conclusions. Just because Blizzard does it, doesn't mean everyone else will. They have the high ground in this case. If someone tries to do it and doesn't have the glorious map editor and cheat codes already within their game, rise up and take that evil on. Hell, I'll support you 100%, but you're getting up in arms about nothing. Wasting energy on hypotheticals is the worst way to waste it.

People who want to cheat online will find a way to do it, and mass bans of people who were cheating in singleplayer will likely create a bunch of angry people who now want to grief multiplayer if only to spite Blizzard.

And so that means they should just be allowed to cheat? A lot of highschool students want to use steroids to attract the eyes of scouts to be drafted into a hockey/football/basketball/baseball team, but that's wrong too. A lot of people would love to confer with the person next to them on the SATs, but that's wrong too. As much as you believe that "modding" is a matter of principal, I believe "not cheating beyond what the creators give you" is a matter of principal.

Regarding the bold statement: Yes, actually I do. I can edit it, rewrite, and even skip whole chapters if it suits my fancy. I just can't sell it as my own afterward. Copyright law doesn't speak to what you can do in the privacy of your own home, just what happens outside of it. I can edit Gladiator on windows movie maker to make it look like Yahtzee is Maximus slaying the Emperor with a giant sword the size of an aircraft carrier. But I can't sell it as my own. By the same token, I should be able to modify a game and play it in the privacy of my own home without any interference. The only thing that would prevent me from doing so is the EULA, whose legality I've clearly challenged, and the dictatorial controls blizzard have over the singleplayer portion of the game.

And still, is it beyond Blizzard's control to determine if the trainers are being used in multi or singleplayer. Steam has handled the conundrum of cheating achievements quite nicely, why can't blizzard?

Actually, no you can't. Copywrite protects three things:

1) The right to copy your work
2) The right to distribute your work
3) The right to edit/adapt your work

To the case of your example, unfortunately it's invalid because the work is satire, which is exempt from copywrite. However, if you were to dub over every line that Leonidus speaks in the movie with your own voice acting, that would be copywrite infringement, regardless if you copied it onto DVDs and sold it or not.

Now, is someone going to come kick down your door and arrest you for it? Probably not. It's a very draconian ruling of what copywrite is and we're still very jumbled as to how this can be delt with on a medium such as the internet, somewhere that has no juristiction, with such a rule in place. It still exists, however, whether it's used or not.

Even then, that's not the point. The point is that it's against the ToS Blizzard has on every game they own. They reserve the right to ban you from online content if they see you cheating, which is exactly what they've done. Sure, if those owners can find a way to activate offline mode without authenticating with the Blizzard servers, all the power to them, but they've paid the price for doing something they knew was wrong. When someone does something wrong, they are to be punished. That's just how life is.

 

[AbsoluteVirtue18]

I have said it once and I shall restate it for this thread:

Cheaters and those who break the rules deserve to be punished.

 

[Chewster]

Not really, because the entire discussion about this is about legality over an intellectual property. The entire basis upon which Blizzard is doing this is because people are trying to do illegal things within their game and have total rights to kick them off. That is a legal issue. But for your sake, I'll attempt to focus more so on the philisophical side of the large question.

I really just meant that I know it is illegal. It being illegal is not relevant though, as the law, and copyright especially, is not really applied fairly these days. Thus the Lessig. You'd do well to read a bit of him. He's quite reasonable.

First off, whether you like it or not, achievements have become the new snapshot you send into Nintendo Power to get your badass Mario 3 t-shirt. They're a symbol of gamer pride at how good you are at a particular game. This is why some games are seen as black marks on a person's record (see Avatar The Last Airbender: The Burning Earth for the 360) and some games are held in high regards because of the sheer difficulty of getting all the achievements. Boosting is seen as dirty by some, not so much by others. However, boosting requires skill, where as a trainer can net you achievement score within minutes with minimal effort. Because of how the trainers are set up and how SC2 is set up, Blizzard felt it better to make an example out of the current cheaters to nip the problem in the bud. You know what? Tough. Again, you cheated and you pay for it. Simple as that.

What was the point of all this? I didn't once say that achievements are not important or relevant, so I'm not sure where this is coming from. In any case, they could easily have come up with a way to disable them. If Valve can do it, as has been pointed out, I'm sure Blizzard could have. Leading us to...

Now, achievements are pretty much the only thing you can gain from a multiplayer aspect if you play only single player games with this trianer on. Now, while I personally believe that is enough (I hold GS in high regards and think it's a great way to show your pride in how you game) there are some that simply don't think it's all that important. So now we get into the part where people say "why not just block multiplayer" or "just lock achievements for them". This is harder than it looks. I've built very small and very simple games within Visual Basics and even those have thousands of lines of coding. A game as complex as StarCraft 2, I can't even imagine how much code there would be to go through just to flick one number from a 1 to a 0 if User mods the game, let alone stringing some code together to shut off multiplayer for them. Why not, say, get rid of them all instead because dealing with a few thousand accounts is much easier, especially when they're all cheating against our EULA anyway, right?

So they shouldn't do it because it is too much work? Really? That is your argument?

Good thing they don't take this philosophy with their actual games or we'd be having a whole other discussion right now.

Honestly, I don't even know what to say to this. They're a corporation and they have tons of resources, and I'm supposed to feel bad that them taking care of some of their customers is going to take slightly more time and money?

The fact is, it's not worth the time to edit a small portion of code stuck within millions and billions of lines of coding for people who don't want to play fair in the first place. Blizzard can comfortably just sit on their laurels and point out that they gave you the exact tools they used to make the game and plenty of cheat codes to go with it. These cheaters are cheating Blizzard after they helped give them the tools to do what they wanted in the first place. It comes down to the fact that if the tools to cheat are already there, there must be something else these people are gaining out of it, and the only two possible options are: cheating in multiplayer and cheating achievements. Whether you care or not, some people are concerned about their gamer score, some people want to have a fair fight everytime they play and some people just don't like cheaters milling about.

You seem to have some amazing assumptions about those using trainers. Here is a hint: not all of them are doing it to try and win. You seem to think that people either fit into one category or another. Here is another hint: people are complicated. If both the above categories (cheating in multi player, cheating for achievements) are blocked and people still use trainers, then I guess you'd be wrong. Your assumptions really are absurd.

And where on Earth do you get the idea that anyone is cheating Blizzard out of anything at all? These people are not pirates. They didn't steal the game and they are not even really changing the game code (even if they were, they aren't selling it or anything) so your assessment that Blizzard is being cheated is outright false.

Training is leagues away from modding in the sense you're talking about (or at least which I hope you are) in that these people are changing the source code of the game to cheat, rather than creating a different game mode. Blizzard has given each and every person the tools in which they used to create the entire game, albeit in a fancy GUI, but all the same tools none the less. They even placed a selection of cheat codes themselves, because Blizzard does like to keep things light hearted and know people want to muck about every so often. The problem is that people took advantage of that freedom and now Blizzard has told them it's not right. It's another case of gamers thinking they have every right in the world and we just simply don't. There are lines and situations like these make it all the more apparent that we crossed them. When a company gives you the nuts and bolts of a game, to edit it in anyway you please and you go ahead and just tear into the very source code of the game, tweak it and then boot the game up, not only is that insulting, but it's illegal, which in my mind makes it morally wrong as well.

Yeah. The law is always morally right. Jim Crow was totally cool and Thomas Rice was a great ol' entertainer. Seriously though, all you've done is re-iterate the same points again, albeit in a more verbose manner.

As such, I will again state: limited freedom is not proper freedom. Further, this industry was founded on a relatively free system of information exchange and creativity and that Blizzard is now trying to fight that is not really a good thing.

I get that there is a game editor, but because it has limitations we are not allowed to "edit it in anyway [we] please". And how is wanting to tinker insulting to Blizzard? Wanting to understand the underlying mechanics of the game, to get the hard work that was put in and to try and do something interesting with that is insulting to you? You're offended by some rather odd stuff then. I dare say, most people would find it flattering.

If you want to go deeper than that, sadly, you're treading law again. Why can't we just have the complete freedom to edit anything we want? Well, because that would compromise the integrity of the artist(s) and when does it become your work instead of theirs? What's stopping you from cutting Blizzard out of the picture and taking all the creadit, despite using their source engine for the game? It's all copywrite stuff and really it's fairly black and white to me. Either you created it or you need to give credit where credit is due. Blizzard has just simplified that, among many other features in the map editor, so that they get their due credit while everyone can mess around with whatever they want to inside the game's engine.

They actually have laws to determine when a work is derivative and when it isn't. Funny, that. And to what end would be stripping all the credits out the game work towards, exactly? Unless you're a pirate (and we're not talking about piracy here) it would serve no purpose, as (I would hope) most people you show it to would have, at the very least, some sort of suspicion that you're not quite that talented.

Back on track though: People that defend corporations when they act rash or out of line are people I will never understand. I am sorry if this sounds condescending but it strikes me as absolutely bizarre that anyone would want to stand up for a group that quite clearly does not give a rats ass end about any of us. Like I'm supposed to feel sorry for Blizzard if a few people try and use their product for something other then its intended use, with no desire to steal or make money from it and it having no discernible effect on them or the gaming community. Seriously man, this line of reasoning makes no sense.

Like, oh noes! Innovation! People using things in a manner not intended! What a shock, it has only been happening for centuries. Sure, trainers are different then modding, but baby steps for some. If someone wants to mess around with the single player in that manner, it does no harm to Blizzard or the gaming community if they do. Ergo, they make no sense and this is either a power grab, or them just being lazy, as you pointed out above.

Like I said, read that Lessig book I posted. Copyright is no longer black and white at all, as creativity and the artistic process is much more complicated then a black and white outlook will allow for.

Sorry if I come across as a bit of a dick, but your post did miss a lot of what I said previously (or else you intentionally ignored it, perish the thought). I am tired right now, so sorry for being an asshole I guess. And uhh...it's copyright, copywrite is something different, not to be a pedantic twit or anything

 

[Zao-Lat]

I almost regret buying it.
I got the collectors edition but if I had got the normal one I would be really pissed.
Once Again, the legitimate user pays the price more than once...
Blizzard used to be a really nice company before Activison bought it...

 

[agrandstudent]

I'm very confused on what these "training" programs did that couldn't have been done in the SC2 map editor? Why couldn't this cheating website just release maps that had all of the same features for ai skirmishes? And everything advertised in their trainer could be done with the in game cheats during the campaign except for increasing the kills of a unit which does nothing. I see no reason to have used the training program and break the EULA. The people who did so deserve what they got for being to lazy to type out the cheats provided by blizzard.

 

[Merkavar]

EULA is an agreement. this should be a wake up call for everyone to no just click accept on them any more.

lol

 

[CynicalMarcus]

http://www.cheathappens.com/article_blizzardbans.asp
I'm sure you all have seen this by now but for those of you who haven't get a look at what those bastards are trying to get away with now. I'm calling for an escapist wide boycott on everything Blizzard.

Now, WHO'S WITH ME!!!

Nobody with half a brain cell, that's for sure.

 

[Flames66]

I already stopped supporting Blizzard when I found out SC2 lacked LAN support and required a BNET account. This nonsense is just reason to continue not supporting them.

I haven't bought a blizzard game since I used to play WoW. Since I went cold turkey from that, I just haven't seen anything by them that interests me. I am not boycotting them out of principal, just because I don't play the type of games they make.

 

[Enkidu88]

Actually, no you can't. Copywrite protects three things:

1) The right to copy your work
2) The right to distribute your work
3) The right to edit/adapt your work

To the case of your example, unfortunately it's invalid because the work is satire, which is exempt from copywrite. However, if you were to dub over every line that Leonidus speaks in the movie with your own voice acting, that would be copywrite infringement, regardless if you copied it onto DVDs and sold it or not.

Now, is someone going to come kick down your door and arrest you for it? Probably not. It's a very draconian ruling of what copywrite is and we're still very jumbled as to how this can be delt with on a medium such as the internet, somewhere that has no juristiction, with such a rule in place. It still exists, however, whether it's used or not.

Even then, that's not the point. The point is that it's against the ToS Blizzard has on every game they own. They reserve the right to ban you from online content if they see you cheating, which is exactly what they've done. Sure, if those owners can find a way to activate offline mode without authenticating with the Blizzard servers, all the power to them, but they've paid the price for doing something they knew was wrong. When someone does something wrong, they are to be punished. That's just how life is.

That all applies to the sale and distribution of the work, it doesn't say anything as to what happens once you own it and bring it home. I can edit the entire Harry Potter series in my own home, bring J.K. Rowling herself over here and show it to her face and there'd be nothing she could do. She can't sue me over anything, because I haven't attempted to distribute or sell those works. The same can be said of any product bought except software. Why is it altering the game at home isn't allowed? I can even tinker around with the Hardware till my heart's content, all it does is void the warranty, why is the software suddenly special? Maybe they should have warranty on games, you alter it, you don't get any tech support. I could live with that, and in fact I think some EULA's even have such a clause, but before the era of all games being connected to the internet never had a way of checking.

Your argument basically all rests on the EULA and their ToS, but as I've already stated that agreement is already on shaky ground.

But hopefully you're right and I'm just making a mountain out a zergling hive. Blizzard may be the only one to ever do this, and if so I'm glad, but it never hurts to raise awareness of an minor issue before it becomes a major one. Perhaps, if all sides find an equitable solution in the beginning we can avoid a lot of ugliness down the road. So better to open a debate about it now, and perhaps voice our concerns to the industry at large, than wait until it devolves into a massive fight between consumers and the industry. Perhaps Blizzard will acknowledge they went too far and limit the bans to multiplayer only, and if not well than at least they know we're concerned over this course of events. Keeping concerns quite doesn't do anything except delay the inevitable.

 

[Dogstile]

I'm guessing most of you guys on the first couple pages didn't read the article. Cheating in single player. How the hell does that warrant them disabling your game? It's /single player/.

EULA is an agreement. this should be a wake up call for everyone to no just click accept on them any more.

lol

What, that form you agree to /after/ you buy the game.

It loses most legal rights right there for doing that.

 

[spartan117cxvii]

I see where this is going. Ban a player for using a GameShark for his Gameboy. Makes no sense.

 

[polygon]

I seriously can't believe anyone here actually agrees that the customer who paid money for their own purchase should get it disabled remotely because they wanted to have fun with it. I hope none of you never used a Gameshark or a Game Genie when you were a kid, or you rightfully deserve to get your consoles thrown into a fire by your own logic.

I cannot click a thread without being disgusted by the people in this forum, it's astounding.