As if the previous lawsuits brought against its users wasn’t enough indication, three more hackers found themselves on Blizzard’s bad side, legally speaking. The software giant filed suit in a District Court of Los Angeles against programmers who allegedly created and sold hacks to Starcraft II. The company has already permanently banned over 5,000 cheating players (their relevance to the specific suit has yet to be called in as relevant evidence) from Battle.net access.
The litigation specifically targets Canadians “Permaphrost” and “Cranix”, as well as the Peruvian owner of the handle “Linuxawesome”. The charges include multiple forms of copyright infringement, both directly from the targeted hackers and indirectly by those purchasing and operating their hacks.
“Just days after the release of StarCraft II, Defendants already had developed, marketed, and distributed to the public a variety of hacks and cheats designed to modify (and in fact destroy) the StarCraft II online game experience,” said the company in the filing.
“In fact, on the very day that StarCraft II was released, representatives of the hacks Web site advised members of the public that ‘our staff is already planning new releases for this game,'” continues the lawsuit.
“The harm to Blizzard from Defendants’ conduct is immediate, massive and irreparable,” continues the suite. “By distributing the Hacks to the public, Defendants cause serious harm to the value of StarCraft II. Among other things, Defendants irreparably harm the ability of Blizzard’s legitimate customers (i.e. those who purchase and use unmodified games) to enjoy and participate in the competitive online experience.”
“That, in turn, causes users to grow dissatisfied with the game, lose interest in the game, and communicate that dissatisfaction, thereby resulting in lost sales of the game or ‘add-on’ packs and expansions thereto,” says the suit.
Irreparably (massively at that) is a pretty big statement to use and one I don’t completely agree with in this case. That said, I stopped playing online FPS’s competitively after my high school years because I didn’t want to deal with the hacking world that completely engulfs it. It literally became how good your hacks were compared to others and how well you masked the fact you were using them from observers.
WC3 has hackers. In fact all PC RTS’s and FPS’s have them. Has WC3 failed? How about its expansion The Frozen Throne? Of course not, and the games have continued to sell well for YEARS. Same with the ORIGINAL StarCraft. To say that such a notion is massive and irreparable when most all PC gamers are aware of the persistent threat of hacks is pretty extreme.
I understand this is all legal talk and a way of strengthening ones case.
Still, if they didn’t want us to accept it, they would run all games server side and stream data from their end only so that you couldn’t actually see through fog-of-war. That would cost an affordable, yet pretty penny on their end. It would end the hacking problem. It’s easier to do too since they have set up the game to be bound to regions of the world. Would create a better product for everyone, and in the grand scheme of things (thanks to WoW) wouldn’t do much to their profits.
Down with hackers and hack users though…granted nine more will just take the place of these three.
I wonder how much Activision had its hand in this suit? Activision is probably also behind the no LAN in SCII offline (just to curb piracy so they can get more money).
I would just prefer Blizzard to ban the cheaters, but a suit is just too much, as they are not losing any money with these hacks.
The thing is they claim they are…and they probably are. Though the amount lost due to hacking (because people quit and didn’t get expansions) has got to be extremely low based on my experiences with PC online gaming. People that quit because of the occasional hacker are people that were likely going to quit anyway. Most of these people are “noobs,” at the given game and likely aren’t the slightest bit aware they are being hacked against in most cases.
SC2 is set up with a ladder system. If you’re map hacking, odds are you’re going to be platinum/diamond. The people with the highest rate of quitting are hardly affected. Those that are tend to be skilled players that have dealt with hackers before they ever played SC2. Again, the whole “claim” of this lawsuit TO ME seems grossly exaggerated. I want hackers gone, but this isn’t the way to do it. If they really want them gone, they need to take the steps to do what is needed to eliminate the ability for map hacks to work.
Trying to get money from or putting hackers into jail does NOTHING to stop the problem, and never will. Just look at drugs/crime. Though, doing this doesn’t necessarily “hurt” the problem.
There is no money in Bnet. It is free, unless you are talking about the premium game maps, which I won’t buy out of Bnet principle (maps should be free for all to enjoy, as that is how it was in the beginning). That or you are talking about add revenue. Still, the Hacking doesn’t make Blizzard lose money one bit, they are just trying to get them on breaking the EULA so they can ban the account, and make the hackers go and buy a new copy to create a new account seeing as how only one game can be registered per account. And yes, their lawsuit is most definitely over exaggerated, and I hope whoever oversees this case sees that.
I too want hackers gone, but I know that will never happen.