Blizzard in legal battle with bot-maker
Blizzard, the studio behind such games as Heroes of The Storm and World Of Warcraft, have vowed to "aggressively defend" their games ahead of their legal confrontation with alleged cheating company.This news comes after Blizzard recently felt German company Bossland were allowing players of their games to cheat whilst using Bosslands "buddy-bot" system. Blizzard felt that this was something worthy of a lawsuit and in turn have decided to take legal action.
Blizzard, the studio behind such games as Heroes of The Storm and World Of Warcraft, have vowed to “aggressively defend” their games ahead of their legal confrontation with alleged cheating company.
This news comes after Blizzard recently felt German company Bossland were allowing players of their games to cheat whilst using Bosslands “buddy-bot” system. Blizzard felt that this was something worthy of a lawsuit and in turn have decided to take legal action.
TorrentFreak have reported that Blizzard were approached by a freelancer who then was offered a deal in return for codes regarding Bosslands Heroes of The Storm bot.
In a recent statement Bossland CEO Zwetan Letschew discussed his feelings towards the topic. “Today Blizzard acted in a manner as shady as possible for a multi-billion-dollar corporation,” said Letschew. “We were informed that the deal compelled [the freelancer James Enright AKA “Apoc”] to submit the entire source code of Stormbuddy, which is actually the intellectual property of Bossland GmbH, to Blizzard.”
“Blizzard now possesses the whole Stormbuddy source code, there was no permission given by Bossland GmbH, nor were we contacted by Activision Blizzard, nor had Apoc the rights to give out our intellectual property.”
In response to the situation Bossland have currently stopped sales of their Stormbuddy. However the bots for other games shall still remain available for purchase. Bossland intend to sue Blizzard relatively soon in relation to the companies deal with the aforementioned freelancer.
Blizzard recently responded to the isue via Kotaku. “Bossland’s entire business is based in cheating, and the use of their bots negatively impacts our global player community,” said the Blizzard representative. “That’s why we do not tolerate cheating in our games, and it’s why our players overwhelmingly support that policy. We’ve already won numerous cases against Bossland in Germany, and despite their tactics to delay the ongoing proceedings and the related repercussions, we’re confident that the court system will continue to validate our claims and ultimately stop the distribution of these cheating bots”.
“We’ll continue to aggressively defend our games and services, within the bounds of the law, in an effort to provide the best possible experience for our players. We want to use this as an opportunity to remind players who might not be aware–using bots, such as those distributed by Bossland, to automate gameplay in our games will result in a loss of access to those games.”