Blizzard awarded $6 million in damages from WoW bot maker

[Prrkitty]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081001-blizzard-awarded-6-million-in-damages-from-wow-bot-maker.html

Quote: The case Blizzard brought against bot-maker MDY Industries has been going on since 2006, and while a judge ruled in July that MMOGlider infringed on Blizzard's copyrights, the question of whether the bot violates the DMCA is still open. That has not stopped the judge from awarding $6 million in damages in the case.

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Passing this on for those that might be interested.

[MottZilla]

This is retarded. Blizzard makes a huge amount of money off WoW and they are picking on some guy carving out his own living with his Bot program. It's also setting some bullshit precedents by letting them do this.

[Beldaran]

This just in:

Blizzard owns your RAM. You do not. If you do something to your own RAM that Blizzard disapproves of, you have to pay them all of your money.

[Aegix Drakan]

Wait...WHAT? If you USE a bot, it's copyright infringement?

That makes no freaking sense. If you buy a game, then it should BELONG TO YOU. Buying a "liscence" to play a game makes no sense. It's like saying: "Yeah, you paid 60 bucks for the disk and box, but we're only renting it to you"

I can understand them being ticked at people who make bots, but sheesh... you want to go after the newb guy who's just using a bot so he can catch up to his level 9999 friends, and actually have some fun?

Oh, and how the hell is it COPYRIGHT infrigement? You're not pirating the game and mass distributing it, or making a blatant rip off of the game. You're just using a program that allows the game to play on it's own (and you're still paying Blizzard for that month's fee anyway)

What's next? Your future employers can hack into your brain, and if your mind is too dirty, you are automatically turned away?

[Zank_Tripper]

Hmmmm.... this is kind of interesting. It seems to me that Blizzard is trying to say that if you alter WoW in your RAM by running it with a bot, it suddenly becomes a different piece of software which contains unlicensed code copyrighted by Blizzard. From this perspective you are guilty of copyright infringement by running or distributing the altered program. This brings up all kinds of issues with mods, patches, or user-created content within a game.

As far as the license goes, it seems like a really jerk thing to do, but that doesn't mean it should be illegal. Stop playing the game if you aren't okay with never actually owning a copy of it. That's one of the reasons that I don't play.

I also don't believe that bots add to the overall happiness within the game. The one person using a bot might be happier, but the 100 people that he rapes with his newly-gained abilities are probably not. Regardless, that doesn't really make any difference because this is a purely legal issue.

[Beldaran]

I do find it funny that people will pay money to avoid playing a game that they pay money to play. What the hell is that about?

[Rijuhn]

I've never played Wow or any other MMOPRG besides Runescape, and that was years ago. I guess this is an incentive for me to hate Blizzard now.

[Nicholas Steel]

This brings up all kinds of issues with mods, patches, or user-created content within a game.
Not really, so long as you use Blizzard approved modding tools within the agreements of said tools.


Hmmmm.... this is kind of interesting. It seems to me that Blizzard is trying to say that if you alter WoW in your RAM by running it with a bot, it suddenly becomes a different piece of software which contains unlicensed code copyrighted by Blizzard. From this perspective you are guilty of copyright infringement by running or distributing the altered program.That sounds logical. Aegix Drakan, your concept is what Microsoft has been doing with Windows for ages now. You pay for the software, not the medium it is provided on.

[Glitch]

lol, thats so retarded but coming from a WoW player it's awesome they are cracking down on bot programs. That shit ruined D2.

[Archibaldo]

Wait...WHAT? If you USE a bot, it's copyright infringement?

That makes no freaking sense. If you buy a game, then it should BELONG TO YOU. Buying a "liscence" to play a game makes no sense. It's like saying: "Yeah, you paid 60 bucks for the disk and box, but we're only renting it to you"

I can understand them being ticked at people who make bots, but sheesh... you want to go after the newb guy who's just using a bot so he can catch up to his level 9999 friends, and actually have some fun?

Oh, and how the hell is it COPYRIGHT infrigement? You're not pirating the game and mass distributing it, or making a blatant rip off of the game. You're just using a program that allows the game to play on it's own (and you're still paying Blizzard for that month's fee anyway)

What's next? Your future employers can hack into your brain, and if your mind is too dirty, you are automatically turned away?

I'm pretty sure in the ToS, it says bots are illegal. If you don't like it don't play. It's not complicated.

Bots are for noobs any way. If you need a bot to level you deserve to get sued.

[Majora]

So, Getting a bot to do things for you VS wasting literally DAYS/WEEKS/etc. of your life to do it yourself counts as noobish? It may just be me but that sounds illogical.


And Blizzard is just doing what any company with a giant wad of cash does, be a gigantic douchebag.

[Archibaldo]

So, Getting a bot to do things for you VS wasting literally DAYS/WEEKS/etc. of your life to do it yourself counts as noobish? It may just be me but that sounds illogical.


And Blizzard is just doing what any company with a giant wad of cash does, be a gigantic douchebag.

If you feel like you're wasting your life playing WoW than why are you playing?

Getting a bot to play the game for you is noobish. Like what Beldaran said. You're paying money to play, but you want to buy a bot that will play for you? Whats the point of even playing then.

[MottZilla]

The point is that MMORPGs are garbage. Some people do like the aspect of being elite and they will pay money for it. So, rather than waste time playing a retarded MMORPG, they just spend money to do all the retarded part of the game and only spend their time doing whatever is actually fun in the game by being powerful. Sounds to me like THEY ARE the smart ones playing the game. But you know what, I don't give a shit. I just think this sets a bad example and expands the power of corporations to fuck over the little guy.

I like a few of Blizzard's games. But unlike the people that play WoW religiously and suck Blizzard's cock, I have better things to do with my time.

[Majora]

If you feel like you're wasting your life playing WoW than why are you playing?

Getting a bot to play the game for you is noobish. Like what Beldaran said. You're paying money to play, but you want to buy a bot that will play for you? Whats the point of even playing then.

While it's a given that MMO's require work to become powerful (or equivalent, depending on the MMO) so that you can do most of what the game offers (if not all), World of Warcraft is just retarded. I play WoW on private servers where the experience rates are around 15-20x of what the "official" rates are and it feels just right... I actually feel a sense of accomplishment (well, if MMO's actually accomplish anything :P) as opposed to giving up at level 5 because I've been playing for a week commiting genocide to wolves (or whatever weak animal is near the starting point of your race) and getting no where fast. Lemme rephrase: Bots on a game like WoW is almost (ALMOST) necessary if you expect to reach a point where you can actually have some FUN. The fact that you play to play WoW (well, I don't, so :tongue: ) means they can make reaching level 2 cost 4572346951236051251 exp points and you get 1-5 per kill on any monster and you'd still play.

RuneScape, even though its graphics are shitty, is reasonable with the whole levelling thing. even at early levels you can still do a bunch of things, as opposed to WoW where you can't do 95% of things until you reach level 70 (or otherwise the max level).

(I've tried MapleStory and RO, and in my opinion they both suck, in my opinion)

EDIT: And judging by the rep Archi gave me, I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume he's one of those religious players of WoW that suck Blizzard's cock.

EDIT2: And noticing that I only lost a point, I will go laugh out loud without using the acronym for it.

[Archibaldo]

I actually don't play WoW anymore and haven't for a long time. But I've heard that Blizzard has made it retardedly easy to level now, with the refer a friend double level and reducing the amount of experience needed to level between 30 and 40 or something like that. Buying a bot to level for you is the definition of lazy. Leveling is half the fun of playing. It's like playing a game on easy just to see the story. You could do it, but you're a total noob if you do.

People who use bots have no sense of reward for hard work. Blizzard makes end game so awesome because its a reward for being so determined to level all the way. If you need a bot that badly, then maybe video games are not for you.

[Revfan9]

So, Getting a bot to do things for you VS wasting literally DAYS/WEEKS/etc. of your life to do it yourself counts as noobish? It may just be me but that sounds illogical.


And Blizzard is just doing what any company with a giant wad of cash does, be a gigantic douchebag.

There are people who expect non-developer *nix users to write their own device drivers, along with zealots who also think it's n00bish to use X instead of running your system completely out of the shell. The internet is a strange place.

That aside, the only joy that WoW can ever bring you is that feeling of empty satisfaction you get when you tell other WoW users that you've spent more time playing the game than them. So having a bot play the game through the boring, repetitive leveling is cheating that.

[AlexMax]

This will do absolutely nothing. Bot makers aren't only from the USA, they're also from countries who don't give a flying fuck about US rulings, and even with WoWGlider taken out there are still tons of them (http://www.mmowned.com/forums/bots-programs/).

Also, WoW is pretty dumb. I still have an account, but only to keep up with some friends of mine. I've actually given Warhammer Online a spin recently, though, and it basically takes the only fun part of WoW (Battlegrounds and PvP) and focuses the entire game around it and allows you to level from it.

[Samson007]

Good. Game companies need to get rid of these ass holes one at a time. Fucking things up and ruining good games for everyone by letting the lazy ass holes of the world have it all for nothing.

6 mil? Throw it on the pile.

[Majora]

How are the lazy people ruining anything? MMO's (but especially WoW), in regards to leveling and things of that nature, are like trying to walk from one coast of the US to the other. You're complaining about people who get there using cars/trains/planes/etc. to travel. Sure, walking is more rewarding, but that's just it. You're walking for no other purpose than to reach your destination. So instead of doing it the sucker way, be a lazy asshole and save yourself time and frustration (among other things), and actually have the FUN you're (ideally) supposed to have by being powerful. And I don't mean "cheat your way to the maximum level", hell, if you wanna get to level 30-40 in half (or less) the time, do it and then level/play the hard way from there.


Good. Game companies need to get rid of these ass holes one at a time. Fucking things up and ruining good games for everyone by letting the lazy ass holes of the world have it all for nothing.



6 mil? Throw it on the pile.

All the "hard working (retards)" in the end receive the same thing as the lazy assholes: NOTHING BECAUSE IT'S A GAME.

[Archibaldo]

It's the exact same thing as using cheats in a game to get past a hard part. It's noobs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYjL0TYzypc) like you who ruin the video game industry. People who complain about games being too hard and thus they can't finish the story. Besides, it doesn't take months to level to 70, takes about 3 weeks if you know how play the game properly.

[Pryme8]

Another one is still bound to come out...

[Majora]

It's the exact same thing as using cheats in a game to get past a hard part. It's noobs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYjL0TYzypc) like you who ruin the video game industry. People who complain about games being too hard and thus they can't finish the story. Besides, it doesn't take months to level to 70, takes about 3 weeks if you know how play the game properly.

Dear me, I seem to have forgotten about how everyone is born knowing how to play WoW properly.

And your comparison of Bots -> WoW/MMO's to Cheats -> Games is unfair because MMO's are completely different than console (and basically all non-MMO games, be it console or PC/Computer games) games.

Non MMO's are designed to be completed (not necessarily 100%'d, but otherwise final boss/challenge/etc. beaten) within the span of less than a month or so.

MMO's are designed to take at least a month to "complete", complete being in quotes because MMO's can rarely be completed 100%


Using bots (or similar cheating methods) takes the "consuming" out of "Time consuming game", as opposed to just being flat out lazy by using cheats on non-MMO's (unless you've beaten the game already)

EDIT: You're futile attempts to use YouTube are in vain as I am on dial-up and cannot view it.

[Revfan9]

Yeah! We should all write our own damn device drivers!

Noobs don't ruin the industry, it's the elitists who aren't happy unless everyone else in the world has the same warped opinion as them.

[Archibaldo]

Dear me, I seem to have forgotten about how everyone is born knowing how to play WoW properly.

And your comparison of Bots -> WoW/MMO's to Cheats -> Games is unfair because MMO's are completely different than console (and basically all non-MMO games, be it console or PC/Computer games) games.

Different as theres just more to do? Isn't that one of the most important aspects to a game? Lots to do?


Non MMO's are designed to be completed (not necessarily 100%'d, but otherwise final boss/challenge/etc. beaten) within the span of less than a month or so.

Game completion is relative. If you consider beating the last boss "complete" than the equivalent of the last boss in a MMO is the level cap. So if you use cheats to skip half the game to get to the last boss, its the same thing as using a bot to skip all the levels before reaching the level cap. In both games there is still plenty to do after the "last boss". So really MMO's and non-MMO's are the same.


MMO's are designed to take at least a month to "complete", complete being in quotes because MMO's can rarely be completed 100%

Exactly, so if you want to play an MMO, you need to expect to invest time in the game. So if you want a game that lasts a long time, why are you paying to not play it? If you consider playing WoW a "waste of time", then why are you playing?

Wanting to skip all the work to get to the reward is the definition of lazy. If you disagree, then the public school system has failed you.




EDIT: You're futile attempts to use YouTube are in vain as I am on dial-up and cannot view it.

It's not my loss. You're the one suffering with dial-up.



Noobs don't ruin the industry, it's the elitists who aren't happy unless everyone else in the world has the same warped opinion as them.

You mean the opinion that games should be challenging and that they should require some effort to play and time investment to acquire skills. Like the video said, if you want a story read a book or watch a movie. If you want to be challenged and have some real fun, play a game and don't cheat.

[g.iaroos]

The only reason why game companies don't allow bots is because if they don't it ends up as Diablo II. For those of you who have played online and knew the v1.07-v1.09 era, you all know that a lot of people ended up having things like maphack and pindlebots running while they are away. At that point, it's just a bot that runs you through a part over and over to gather items. So far so good.

However, eventually, the flow of items gained by such techniques flooded the market, which will have an effect on the economy of the game. All prices will rise because the rare items acquired by these techniques will be much more common. This has the effect of having legit players unable to buy or trade for these equipements every guy running bots will be so much more richer than him. Eventually, legit people will get tired and leave the game out of frustration or download the bot and do the same thing.

With Diablo II, it was not that much of a problem instantly because it is not pay-per-month, but for pay-per-month MMORPGs, thousands of legit players leaving the game IS an issue.

Bots affect other players, in a way or another, even if it is not easily noticeable.

[Archibaldo]

The only reason why game companies don't allow bots is because if they don't it ends up as Diablo II. For those of you who have played online and knew the v1.07-v1.09 era, you all know that a lot of people ended up having things like maphack and pindlebots running while they are away. At that point, it's just a bot that runs you through a part over and over to gather items. So far so good.

However, eventually, the flow of items gained by such techniques flooded the market, which will have an effect on the economy of the game. All prices will rise because the rare items acquired by these techniques will be much more common. This has the effect of having legit players unable to buy or trade for these equipements every guy running bots will be so much more richer than him. Eventually, legit people will get tired and leave the game out of frustration or download the bot and do the same thing.

With Diablo II, it was not that much of a problem instantly because it is not pay-per-month, but for pay-per-month MMORPGs, thousands of legit players leaving the game IS an issue.

Bots affect other players, in a way or another, even if it is not easily noticeable.


Excellent point.

[MottZilla]

Why would more rare items making them more common make them cost more? More supply/less demand = cheaper product. I see your points though, but personally I think P2P MMORPGs are trash anyway so I couldn't care less. Your reasons also don't give Blizzard the right to stomp on these people like they just did. It's bullshit.

[Archibaldo]

Blizzard is the only company that has the power to take on these bot makers. Other MMO companies are too small or don't have the resources to fight these guys in court. So it's not aright, but an obligation. Bots ruin all the MMO's out there.

[Radium]

If the bot maker made that much or more money off this then he rightly should be sued for it.

[MottZilla]

I doubt he made anywhere close to that much.

I don't see why you guys defend MMORPGs so much. WoW was cool for alittle while cause it was Warcraft, but then it gets boring. I liked Ragnarok Online cause atleast it had some decent original artwork. But generally MMORPGs are dull and boring and I don't give a shit if bots ruin them.

[Pryme8]

just put a player system in that makes it so people can report botters in the action, then have a GM follow them... and once they deduct that it is a bot, perma ban... problem solved

[Revfan9]

As if the GMs (The legitimate ones, not the ones who sit on their ass and ban people to amuse themselves) didn't have enough work to do...

[Nicholas Steel]

1) Blizzard sued the "only" bot that requires paid registration?

2) MottZilla, The average price goes up when lots of people sell lots of high demand products because stores will stop selling low level stuff >.> since there's no real money to be made with it.

if 70% of the player base become millionaires, then you can expect shops to adjust there prices/products to suit the 70% of customers and never accommodate the newbies, normal players.

[Pryme8]

its basic economics... more money... the less its worth....

[Archibaldo]

I doubt he made anywhere close to that much.



Article says he sold something like 100,000 bot programs at $25 a pop. So like 2.5 million. The whole point of taking that much is to prevent the company from having the resources to continue operation and to deter other companies who are thinking about trying to do the same.

[Nicholas Steel]

I fail at explaining, anyways you should all know that by now >: (

[g.iaroos]

Why would more rare items making them more common make them cost more? More supply/less demand = cheaper product. I see your points though, but personally I think P2P MMORPGs are trash anyway so I couldn't care less. Your reasons also don't give Blizzard the right to stomp on these people like they just did. It's bullshit.

Because the economy of a game is not like economy in real life (close but still not). In a game, more and more money keeps spawning because they come from mobs being killed. While botting, a player acquires both money and rare items, so botting also increase tremendously the amount of money available on a server between all players. When a flow of rare items appear it does not lesser their value because everybody who botted has that much money to buy the rare items at their initial value.

The only people of are hurt in this are those who do not bot because they cannot achieve the money income that botters have and thus, cannot follow the economy created by them.

[MottZilla]

I see your point. Greed. I suppose I see it your way then. Everyone should play fair in a MMORPG, but sadly this is never the case.

[Nicholas Steel]

Because the economy of a game is not like economy in real life (close but still not). In a game, more and more money keeps spawning because they come from mobs being killed. While botting, a player acquires both money and rare items, so botting also increase tremendously the amount of money available on a server between all players. When a flow of rare items appear it does not lesser their value because everybody who botted has that much money to buy the rare items at their initial value.

The only people of are hurt in this are those who do not bot because they cannot achieve the money income that botters have and thus, cannot follow the economy created by them.
Yes, this is what I meant, but like I said, I fail at explaining

[Breaker]

Most of your mom's and dad's are at work all day earning the money you're wasting away on playing WOW, so you probably have no understanding of how somebody using a bot can ruin the gaming experience of others that play the game freely of any speed/hack mods to just have fun. The type of modding this guy was doing was allowing people to leave their compute and it would harvest, mine, kill monsters, etc, meanwhile picking up all the gold for it. After playing WOW for 3-4 years and putting in a shit load of hours before quitting, I would never use a bot at the risk of my account getting deleted.

Glitch and I were the top two hunters on our server at one point, in both skill and gear, and we did that without the use of cheating. It felt really good. Then the game became completely boring to me and I lost interest. Not to mention all the BS and drama that went on in most guilds, just like on these forums! =/

I sold my account right before Burning Crusade came out for over 1k and made out quite nicely for a return on my investment of playtime, especially considering I was playing while in highschool and immediately got a job earning enough to live on my own nicely enough. It's really ironic since 6 months later after the burning crusade launched, the same guy I sold it, sold it back to me at a FRACTION of the price later and now my girlfriend and I occasionally play it when we're bored of everything else we own because we work our asses off IRL.

Plus going out with real friends is much more fun than raiding 6pm to 2am on friday and saturday nights. Glitch and I did this for almost a year straight. I lost my sanity. I'm not even sure how he kept his intact.

[AlexMax]

Most of your mom's and dad's are at work all day earning the money you're wasting away on playing WOW, so you probably have no understanding of how somebody using a bot can ruin the gaming experience of others that play the game freely of any speed/hack mods to just have fun.

You're missing the real crux of the issue. Blizzard successfully sued based on the fact that the program aided players in breaching the terms of the EULA.

This essentially means that it is now possible to be liable in a monetary sense for breaking or helping others to break the terms of an End User License Agreement. Have you read the EULA for every piece of software you've ever used. Have you seriously ever asked yourself 'If I break the terms of this agreement, is it worth being sued over?'

The above statement is, of course, a vastly overblown fear. Nobody actually reads EULA's and there are very few people in the world who actually have to worry about being sued over an EULA violation. But how exactly is your gameplay experience better off? Bots don't just come from the US, they come from all over the world and tracking down every last botmaker is, without speculation, impossible. The net effect is: Blizzard's lawyers get a big fat check (money that could have went towards development or hiring more GM's), and there is now greater precident for EULA's being legally binding.

And your end-user experience? Exactly the same. Hope you enjoyed the warm fuzzy feeling you got when Blizzard won in court (if that), because that's about all you're going to get out of it.

[Pryme8]

and one programmer is financially ruined over some bull, which could of been you or me, or anyone with the knowledge and inspiration to try to develop a way to make money for free

[Archibaldo]

Theres a difference between aiding some one to break the EULA and making profit off it.

[Nicholas Steel]

exactly.

[Revfan9]

For once, AlexMax is right. We can bitch about symbolic gestures all we want, but in the end, nothing for us has changed.

[Nicholas Steel]

You're missing the real crux of the issue. Blizzard successfully sued based on the fact that the program aided players in breaching the terms of the EULA.
it breached AND profited from breaching the EULA.

[AtmaWeapon]

and one programmer is financially ruined over some bull, which could of been you or me, or anyone with the knowledge and inspiration to try to develop a way to make money for free
Oh dear merciful heavens now we're victimizing the bot programmer? Have you played an MMO? Let's look at it from the viewpoint of a player of both free and pay-to-play MMOs.

In a free MMO, your most valuable resource is time. A good farmer knows drop rates, money drops, market values, and relative effort of each action. The farmer carefully calculates his every action so that he's yielding the most profit per time unit. This requires careful attention to detail and a dedication to playing the game. For the normal player to make money, he must know of some niche where time spent = profit and then spend time there.

A bot farmer ruins this for the player. The bot farmer loads up multiple accounts, presses a button, then goes to do something else. Time spent is zero. Effort spent is zero. However, the bot farmer then places items on the market. This increases supply, which lessens demand, which lowers the price of the items. Suddenly the people who actually play the game have to step back and recalculate where they should spend their effort. Eventually, the bot farmer notices this as well and moves into the new niche, or perhaps they spread their accounts across multiple niches. Bot farmers introduce higher supply because most game design does not model a player that can play for 24 hours a day. It's cheating, because in the end this player is putting 24 hours per account into the game whereas a hardcore obsessed player can probably peak at 16 if he gets a day off of work. The bot farmer is watching TV, playing other games, or generally doing something else while the normal farmer has no choice but to play the game.

In a pay-to-play MMO, things are still problematic. In this case, a farmer is familiar with the game currency to dollar exchange rate, and typically the goal is to make enough in-game currency to pay for the month of play (I did this in EVE-Online; if you specialized in some skills you'd want anyway, it took maybe 20 hours per month to pay for the month if you could shoot mobs undisturbed/hit good mining systems as soon as they spawned.)

A bot farmer can disrupt this seriously. First, the bot characters are consuming resources non-stop, restricting access to normal players. Second, since they're bots and not real people, they can be first to the superior spawns regardless of what time they appear. Third, bot characters produce more supply than the normal players would, which increases supply and drives prices down. This makes the currency to dollar ratio less favorable and requires normal players to farm more. The increased farming burden increases the perceived cost of the game, and leads to players quitting.

Let's make an analogy to drive it home. You work a shift as a cashier at a gas station. It pays minimum wage, and you spend 8 hours a day doing a menial job. John has a job as a cashier making minimum wage. He hires two monkeys to take his place, and he pays them $0.10/hour worth of bananas. Since he has proxies to do his work, he always signs up for the graveyard shifts and holidays. The monkeys don't care because they're monkeys and hey, free bananas! John's sitting at home playing video games and watching movies. He loses $4.00 per month to the monkeys, but this is less than an hour of work.

The time comes for promotions, and you're sure you'll get them. You've been smiling, and even busted a few thieves. However, corporate notices that your hours are always 8-5 and you've used your sick days for trivial reasons like "a life" and you need to "go to school", meanwhile John's been clocking in daily overtime and works any time he's needed. He doesn't take off for lunch and is never sick. John gets the raise, you get scolded for not following his example. John's so pleased, he hires a third monkey so he can work an extra shift. He also points out that this monkey thinks sinks are toilets and they always go at the end of the sift, so could you handle that please?

John's using bots to gain an unfair advantage. You can't put in as much time as his team of trained monkeys, but to corporate all they see is an extremely dedicated employee that can work superhuman hours without complaint. You end up doing more work for less money because you can't compete with him. (Let's ignore the fact that in real life the company would fire John because immigrants work for less than monkeys and he's wasting company money.)

So yeah, I'm pleased as punch that a bot-writer has to pay a ridiculous amount of money. He's causing problems for a game that's enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of people and you have to be a pretty big dick to do that with a smile on your face, even if you're making good cash. This guy didn't just write a bot and use it to farm things; he sold the bot to other people, in effect making him the boss of a ring of farmers.

I do think this might have serious implications as AlexMax pointed out. There's nothing good about making a precedent for enforcing EULAs.

However, whining about how this poor soul is financially ruined because he wrote a bot is incomplete. It's like whining that some poor man and his elderly mother are facing jail time for buying ads on national television citing nonexistent medical research that their snake-oil pills increase your dick's size (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzyte). Poor, poor criminals.

*edit* I had to change links in a hurry. It turns out my first choice of site about enzyte was an advertisement for a competing product that was backing up its claims with lots of pictures of dicks. Funny, but not appropriate.

[Pryme8]

ohh so appropriate... some of them woulda liked it...

[g.iaroos]

AtmaWeapon kinda extrapolated at bit more on what I said, and I like the analogy. The EULA is simply there to protect themselves and they won't hunt 99.99% of people who break the EULA because their action do not affect anybody. Blizzard does not give a s*** wither or not you lend your account to a friend. The EULA is only there so you can't sue them if you do and you get busted by your "friend".

It is for the same reason that laws like "A pedestrian can only cross streets at a street corner" exists. Nobody gets arrested because he didn't cross the street at a corner, the law only exists so that if a dumbass goes running in the middle of the street, he can't sue the driver for his own lack of common-sense. Same why McDonalds now put "content is hot" on their coffee cups, because somebody actually sued them for not telling them their coffee was hot.

If everybody cared about others and had common sense, laws wouldn't exists.