Blizzard's clear rules against bots seem to be working

Apr 4, 2017 00:05 GMT  ·  By

Blizzard has won a case against German company Bossland which provided players with cheats, hacks, and bots. Given how Bossland failed to represent itself in front of the judge, it's really no surprise it lost the case. 

As a result of the decision, Bossland has to pay Blizzard $8.5 million in damages, and it is prohibited from marketing or selling its products in the United States, TorrentFreak reports.

Blizzard is known for having some strong anti-cheat rules and systems in place. In fact, its cheat protection technology "Warden" is pretty tight and has been quite effective so far. Bossland's hacks, however, bypassed the protection technology and violated the DMCA.

Bossland created cheats and bots for several games signed by Blizzard, including the famous World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone, and Overwatch. Those who chose to pay for whatever cheat-pack they desired would get unfair advantage over the competition, potentially pushing other players to quit the game, and thus losing revenue for Blizzard.

"Blizzard has established a showing of resulting damage or harm because Blizzard expends a substantial amount of money combating the use of the Bossland Hacks to ensure fair game play," the court wrote in its decision.

Hefty price to pay

The court ended up granting Blizzard statutory copyright damages for 42,818 violations within the United States, totaling $8,563,600 plus attorneys' fees of $174,872.

Once more, this decision only affects Blizzard players within the United States, which limits greatly the effect it has on Bossland. In short, all the tools it created, including "Honorbuddy," "Demonbuddy," "Stormbuddy," "Hearthbuddy," and "Watchover Tyrant," are still widely available anywhere else in the world.

Bossland plans to continue battling Blizzard in court because it claims creating bots is not illegal. It remains to be seen whether the decision will be overturned or what effects it will have on future trials between the two.