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Back in July 2016, Blizzard filed its lawsuit against Bossland, the company behind several subscription based ‘Buddy Bots' cheats as well as and Overwatch ESP hack. At the time, the company said that Bossland had caused irreparable harm to Blizzard with its cheat business but we didn't know how much money the publisher would be gunning for. Now this week, some new details have come to light surrounding the lawsuit and it turns out that Blizzard wants an $8.5 million payout.
This new tidbit was unveiled in a motion for default judgement against Bossland, which Blizzard Entertainment filed recently. This document essentially requests the minimum statutory copyright damages of $200 per infringement, with each individual cheat sale being counted as an infringement.
Blizzard is arguing that Bossland sold at least 42,818 copies of its cheats in the US, amounting to $8,563,600 worth of copyright infringement. Blizzard is also arguing that its estimates here are leaning on the conservative side as Bossland has testified to selling 118,939 cheats in the US since July 2013. Blizzard is essentially guessing that 36 percent of those sales were for cheats of its own games, including WoW, Overwatch and Diablo III.
Bossland is actually based in Germany and as TorrentFreak points out, already tried to have the case dismissed citing lack of jurisdiction. This tactic ultimately failed, leaving Blizzard open to request a default judgement, which if granted would mean no trial.
In all, the case is somewhat similar to a recent lawsuit Riot Games had filed against a cheat maker. The judge in that case awarded Riot a $10 million payout against a cheat service.
KitGuru Says: Similarly to Riot's recent case, I imagine Blizzard is using this as an opportunity to win a big payout in order to warn other cheat sellers to cease activity. If Blizzard wins a case like this once, there is nothing stopping it from doing it again, which could scare off other cheat subscription providers.
Just throwing this out there but I wonder if I could sue Blizzard for psychological damage caused from being defeated by blatant cheats not being banned. Any lawyers reading want to get in touch? I refuse to believe it’s because I’m not very good at gaming.
Good luck collecting if they win this.
Oh, they know it won’t happen. But with stuff like this, it pays off in the long run. Leaving perma-bans to bots is dangerous, as Turn10 learned the hard way. So they’re spending a lot of money and time banning bottom feeding ass hats that cheat, instead of nerfing Mei and Pharra, buffing Junkrat, adding real 21:9 support, and getting rid of micro-transactions that feel like a s*** stain up an otherwise lovely canvas painting.
Maybe my expectations are high instead of Blizzard’s. Their customer respect is certainly low. BOOSH.
Pleased to see blizzard doing this i hope EA and other developers do the same , game hackers and the people who sell the hacks are killing PC gaming for sure ,Well done blizzard at defending the games players
Before you guys start slating developers like Bossland for producing bots, consider gamers like me who have an injury or disability.
I used to use HonorBuddy (by Bossland) for WOW until players started getting banned. About a year ago I moved to an application called Chimpeon (https://chimpeon.com) to help with my gameplay.
Without Chimpeon I can only play for about 15 minutes before the pain is unbearable. Is that fair? I can’t even make it to the end of a dungeon sometimes let alone a raid without Chimpeon automating some of my actions for me.
Blizzard should look at the broader picture before they start clamping down on developers who produce “bots”. Many gamers like me rely on them for legitimate uses.
Nope I’m sorry but there is never a “legitimate” reason for using a bot, if you can only play for 15 mins at a time then do that and if the pain gets to much get someone else to play for you like I do for my girlfriend
If blizzard let you do it then it sets a precident and everyone will claim what you do.. I empathise with your pain but it’s not an excuse to cheat