News Blizzard sues private WoW server operator

Well we are Lucky that the ACTA is not yet accepted worldwide it only in negotiation procedure and it should come to a conclusion/agreement by 2010 November which mean if they accept the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement it will protect basically all mmo / video game / music artist /

and may do serious damage to google/youtube profit as million of video get banned by DMCA that would work in concert with ACTA even if they showed you 10 minute of ad that wouldn't allow them

if a such agreement come to a therm i couldn't tell if anyone within the Europe union / North america will be Able to Acess P2p Service without being sent to The court for pay a over 11K for being criminal to have over 600-5000 illegal mp3 / 10-20 illegal video game that where counterfeit / 10-100 illegal movie that where Counterfeit

so basically if anything that is Counterfeit Found in ur Hard Drive / Memory Stick / SDHC card When Passing a Control zone such as The Frontier Between USA / Canada and they want to scan ur hardware to find illegal thing

they Legally as the same power as a police officer who found you with drug so needless to say you're a lost cause if they found you with that and that you try to pledge innocence

So ScapeGaming will either win the cause for now or being forced to pay lower charge i doubt they gonna just charge the company 84M+ if it don't have that money it would be logic if the company ad 200-300M but who as that ?

 

it's how it is calculated based on the value of wow, which is high since wow is a high profit game making the content "good will" extremely high.


no one said it was high when intel got fined any who they will settle it and file bankruptcy which blizz will call it a loss, you can't force someone to pay for something they don't have beside jail time. hence gfc and declaring bankruptcy

 

Somehow i think paypals seller protection wont cover this.

 

For anyone wondering where the software came for the private server, it's independently developed. The core is written by one team and the database and scripts are written by other teams. As it's the database and scripts that actually contain the infringing material (they duplicate the actual game mechanics and contain the data for spawns/quests/items/etc) the core is perfectly legal, protected under the reverse-engineering laws, but only as long as you have never actually used the WoW client yourself or some other way signed yourself up to the EULA that prohibits you from reverse-engineering WoW.

A friend of mine plays on a public unofficial server that has it's own devs and she swears by it. It's considerably behind Blizzard's releases in terms of game content and suffers from some of the usual problems - poor line-of-sight mapping, things falling through the floor, incomplete quests, missing spawns, bugged talents and spells - but DAMN if they haven't got Naxx scripted almost *perfectly*, it's actually feasible to end-game raid there and only ever have to deal with relatively minor bugs.

So cue the Blizzard pwnhammer any moment now

 

As I said earlier, even Blizzard would take 3+ years to get 85.4 mil out of 427000 users.

Now, taking into consideration that
1. that was the maximum user base ever (i.e: actual average user base is much lower)
2. not everyone who played on that server would play on blizzard's official one if it wasn't available
3. the company probably made very little profit

I think a fine of 10mil would be more than enough.

 

they were selling leveling up and items is why blizzard has clammped down on them nothing else.

blizzard will let you run a private server as long as you dont charge for it

naxx scripted we are in 2010 now not 2009. for most people playing 9+ months behind is pointless. escpially when you can 1 s hot the bosses using gm powers if you choose too

blizzard wants the company to go bankrupt. Look at the steps taking to stamp out gold selling in the last 2 years.

blizzard can sue them for what they want and they really have no defence. As soon as you sell items or level up your in trouble

 

its not about how much they made, its about how much Blizzard lost due to them running the illegal servers.

 

I bet that they'll just end up in court again because theres no way they'll be able to pay that off.

 

I think this is perfectly fair. If you want to make money running an MMO then develop an MMO and run it, or buy the rights to somebody elses MMO and run that. Or get sued to death, in the corporate sense. The level of compensation involved is pretty huge, but Blizzard won't get the whole amount, or want it, the offending company will be bankrupted, Blizzard will take what it can, and life will go on. I'm not a big fan of WoW, I think it is a giant sink hole into which millions of hours of effort, concentration and talent have been poured for absolutely zero benefit to the world, but you can't go around ripping off people's tech then charging other people to use it.

 

My point is that there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that Blizzard lost $88 million due to them running unlicensed servers.

I'm not sure that what they were doing technically qualifies as charging people for Blizzards tech. IMO what money they made was barely enough to cover the cost of hosting the servers.

Put another way, if someone installs an OS you already own on your computer and they charge you 50 bucks, that is not charging you for someone else's tech, it's charging you for their time and costs.

 

If you're willing to accept that 3 million is still barely enough to cover costs, then why do you advocate an amount which is still more than they can cover? 10 million or 80 million, either one puts them out of business for good. Blizzard quite likely expects to see very little money from this affair, they just want to crush all these illegal private servers. ScapeGaming will pay out what little money they have and go bankrupt either way.

 

They are just following the music industries lead. Soon they will sue player who have bought the game and play on private servers. Add to that there Real ID and the need to give them your real address is the reason why I am not buying Starcraft II. There is no legitimate reason why a games company needs my personal data for any reason they should be happy with my money.

Or do you like having to give you postcode at the corner shop when you got to the till.
It's already required in the USA!

 

Am i missing something here - if there is no subscription, where does the revenue come from? Presumably Blizzard got all the revenue from the original game sales?

*edit* Ah, never mind i see the bit about levelling up etc.

Well, if they offering something that Blizzard didn't... Personally i don't see the point of 'pay to play' subscription based games anyway.

 

I always give them the code for Ketchikan, Alaska

 

I can't believe some people are comparing this to the heavy handed approach of the music industry. No, actually I can.

Spot on.

 

A big point is being missed by most who says that there's no problem with this other than these guys charging for use of the server.

They're in trouble for charging for intellectual property that's not theirs. That's why 85 million is correct and justified. The 3 million in revenue received by ScapeGaming is obviously Blizzard's - can't sell something that's not yours.

The 85 million? Just as justified. It's never going to be paid. Blizzard may see a small percentage of it, but I highly doubt that. The reason for the "inflated value" is because WoW is so gosh darn popular. The value of their copyright is extremely high. If there aren't high penalties for copyright infringement, that encourages others to infringe on Blizzard's rights to its own content. Specifically, companies more powerful with better lawyers than ScapeGaming - something no one wants to see happen. It would cheapen game content, lessening the overall quality of games being made.

The 85 million helps to establish a value for Blizzard's hard work - if you're gonna try and rip off Blizzard, you'd better be prepared to face the consequences.

In short: It's not about bleeding these poor folks for 85 million - it's about valuing a clear case of copyright infringement so as to discourage it from happening again. Blizzard's copyright isn't worth less just because the company ripping it off isn't as big.

 

OMG I can't believe some people are bitching about the ratio of the "punishment" to the revenue from the crime. What was the ratio? About thirty? So that's the same ratio as getting caught stealing a £10 DVD and getting stung with a £300 fine and no jailtime... doesn't sound that unfair to me.

If someone willfully stole something worth £10 from me, I'd be a bit peeved if they got away only a small fine.

Yeah 88 mil is a lot of money, but what did they expect going against the WOW machine. I bet the decision makers have protected themselves behind the company and have been paying themselves a pretty fine wage.

They would have known it would end like this.

 

Greetings!

Thats the general concept.
"They" will just disappear and serve as an example to others.

 

Like everyone else has already said, there making an example of them.

But seriously ppl are still playing WoW?

 

My point was that, IMO, it is not clear that Scapegaming was seeking commercial revenue for Blizzard's Intelectual Property, beyond what it required to offer users the alternative experience.

Maybe someone from BT or CPC has some idea of how much it would have cost them to purchase and run the servers?

I'm just not sure that this has been correctly classified as a commercial endeavour, rather than a private, non-profit one.