Blizzard files copyright infringement suit against alleged StarCraft 2 hackers

I guess it kinda makes sense if you factor in how competitive this game is.

If the hackers hadn't made profit on their hacks, i would actually feel sorry for them. But too bad.

Unrelated, hope i meet Steve jobs today when I go to my interview with Apple’s Corporate office.

This is..a little extreme. I can see banning the players, sure, that makes sense, but sueing the hack makers in court.

Its not like Activision needs money or anything.

@Chazzr

for real. Software is hackable, the solution is never to sue everybody who hacks your software.

I agree users who cheat should be perma-banned --- but while morally questionable, there should be nothing illegal about selling hacks.

pwned

How did Blizzard win 6 million in a prior case against a hacker? Hackers don't have millions of dollars.

This should be interesting. I believe that the people that purchased a product have the right to modify it in the way they want. Somebody that sells a service to aid in that modification should be legitimate. Should a person owning a video game have any less rights than a person owning a car?

I wonder what the hack entailed and do they still have them for salez???

@oxfordfishsalon
Eh, even though I don't agree with it, I could understand breaking EULA but not Copyright infringment.

@Chazzr is it, really? It's bad enough that these programs put a damper in whatever competitive scene there is for SC2; if they're trying to make a buck off of it and encroaches the limits of copyright they deserve whatever punishment that gets handed out.

I'd assume it's much less about any settlement money they can get, and more about sending a message to other would-be hackers.

I know if I personally made a game that was doing really well, and then some people threatened the opinion/experience of the online features/online community which hacks and such, I'd everything I could to make them pay thru their asses.

But that's just me.

while in reality they have a pretty solid case, in the US court system they have to explain and convince idiots wearing dresses (judges) that what they're doing is bad. It seems technology suits almost always fail due to the judges being (I really hate this phrase) "computer illiterate."

Wow, I am really disappointed in Blizzard. This is absolutely ridiculous and I hope Blizzard loses this case, hard. The main reason is that if this flies, this will become a landmark case and hurt computer freedom.

I am 110% for competitive levels of online play being hack-free. I play WoW and SC2 both and I would be pissed as high hell if I knew there were people winning solely because of hacks. Remember the days of HL/CS and the hacks that went rampant? Sure, they pissed me off but I would have been disappointed all the same if Valve went around trying to sue every hacker group.

I am also a 'hacker' (the term has become quite loose and I find it somewhat annoying that it seems to always have a negative connotation). Disassembling and reverse-engineering games is a tedious and fun process. Why should I technically not be able to sell my efforts just as those companies do with their game? Can Microsoft start suing companies for "misusing Windows APIs" and "ruining the reputation and stability of their OS" for companies that produce bad drivers/software? I don't see that happening.

Yet Blizzard should be allowed to sue people who spent time peeking at their software, finding out it works, finding bugs and exploits just because of how they use them? It's Blizzard's fault they exist in the first place, fix them and be done with it. Suing the hackers just makes you look silly and desperate. Too hard to fix them Blizzard? Mad that someone else is making money off your cash cow?

Hacks will be an inevitable part of the game for EVERY game. They will come and go. The key is making them GO and not stay around. They are working with the most solid architecture possible -- a client and server system. The clients only have to know what the server says and the server has the final say in what goes (meaning BNET). Is it really that hard to keep things secure? No, it's really not unless you have a bunch of monkeys programming the game.

At the end of the day computers will ONLY do what they are told, and it does not matter by whom. If the instructions are there, it will be computed. Considering that nearly every file is modifiable and the tools to do so have been around forever, it will continue to happen. It's Blizzard's job to protect their IP, not other people's to "stop looking at it."

There is nothing illegal about reverse engineering something, making something that works alongside it (interoperability) and then selling your product. Especially when you are using absolutely NO code of their's. It's more than likely a simple memory hack or network packet sniffer/proxy. That's Blizzard's issue to fix, not the courts.

We absolutely don't need every company rubbing their palms together as they round up every cheat group and slap lawsuits on them.
/rant

"It's just a game..." no longer is an excuse anymore...

Boo hoo. Don't steal the game and you won't be punished.

my comments don't seem to be working in this thread. I'm afraid I'm going to be getting a triple post soon.

@Chazzr "But we should be allowed to hack our own games so long as only the single player mode is affected. "

Joystiq had an article the other day that had a Blizzard rep or someone like that saying that the hacks actually could affect online as well, which is what worried them. It's definitely not only going to be used on single player if people are paying for it.

Wow, cheaters getting what they deserve. Its shocking to see the principle actually in effect.

Honestly tho EULAs these days sicken me. Your looking down the barrel of seventy five to two hundred pages of lawyerspeak. Dancing around facts in as contrived a manner as they can get away with....

I mean hell it seems to come to mind tho I can't recall from where exactly that somewhere in EU within the past five years. They ruled EULAs were so one sided as to be unenforceable.

Congress should really pass a bill and I propose the name "TL:DR" in which a EULA must be summed up in whole, within two paragraphs, in peoplespeak. Said two paragraphs are as binding if not more so than the EULA itself. For instance if the paragraphs leave out a key portion of the EULA .... it is hence forth invalidated.

But hell if they ever did that and people could easily brows through what they are agreeing to ..... they would probably never hit accept.

That aside I wish Blizzard the best of luck.
and by luck I mean the defendants will most likely not show up or send representation resulting in a de facto victory. From which they will be rewarded monetary damages. That in all likelihood never be able to collect.

hrm yes hackers are annoying in games but sueing?.....from my understanding from the article the games were not pirated just tools used "addon" to the game that breaks the rules online now they being sued.... seriously, blizzard knows that this so called game is popular thats why they do it if this was some random cheep production game they know people will move away and not even pay for the game, well attacking your pay customers like this its no wonder people choose to pirate games EULA these days also shocking you can pay for the game 2day 2morrow they can shut down servers and steal your money and you have no say thanks but no glad i didnt buy this.

Violating the EULA is contract law, not copyright law. If they used/redistributed any of blizzards code of assests as part of the hack that would be a violation of copyright law. The EULA exists specifically because copyright law isn't as restrictive as Blizzard would like. They are NOT the same.

Actually, people will think twice about agreeing to the EULA. If I was a thinking hacker I would not ever install and run my own copy of Starcraft 2. I am guessing there is all sorts of information useful to hacking battlenet being spewed out by Starcraft II that you could dig into with a network sniffer or by checking the memory of a machine running sStarcraft II (from a sepeate debug station that has doesn't have Startcrat II installed on it. You could probably create the hacks without ever agreeing to the EULA, in which case there is no case.

I'm distinctly uncomfortable with using copyright law in this case, I don't think it's what copyright exists for. Unfortunately, the law has not even come close to keeping up with technology or modern corporate strategy. Hence the growing power of EULAs and licenses.

@Chazzr Read Copyright law. "Selling" is the big rub.