[WOW] Glider author lawsuit

[Hachima]

If there were sooooo many botting accounts doesn't that show his little glider program earned them money? Because people that would not normally play, made subscriptions because they could use the botting program. Some people even ran multiple bot accounts at the same time. I don't think people filling out a survey can show a net loss of subscribers by itself.

[chu]

Originally Posted by Surreal

5,000 out of 9,000,000 isnt going to be enough to claim it hurt your business. If it was the number one overriding factor then you would have an argument.

Yes, it is. The magnitude of lost revenue doesn't matter, it matters that it caused it.

[Malakriss]

The question isn't about the finances of the botter subscriptions, Blizzard just has to demonstrate that the existence of the botters has a negative impact on the normal human-controlled population. The goal is to show that they are a detriment to the game and other customers, then calculate the weight of interference and damages to people, done by machines.

Simply paying the subscription fee is not a Do-Whatever-The-Hell-You-Want Card and Blizzard clearly does not have a policy to accept buy offs in order to run multiple automated computer accounts with impunity.

[Rayne]

Originally Posted by Arbitrary

Jurors are not going to connect WoW to professional sports or anything of that seriousness. It is much more likely they will think of cheating in WoW like cheating in solitare, i.e. masturbation.

Gonna have to respectfully disagree here. If the subject were EQ or UO back in the day, i'd say you were right. But WoW is more of a household name than those games ever were. The chance that at least one juror has at least seen or heard of it, or perhaps even knows someone that plays/played is quite likely.

[brekk]

Originally Posted by Rayne

Gonna have to respectfully disagree here. If the subject were EQ or UO back in the day, i'd say you were right. But WoW is more of a household name than those games ever were. The chance that at least one juror has at least seen or heard of it, or perhaps even knows someone that plays/played is quite likely.

Having heard of it, and understanding the inner workings of the game and the detriment a bot can cause on the economy is very different. If they've heard of WoW they likely still think of it as one of those "silly video games" and nothing more.

And i would frankly likely to see the actual number of people quitting solely because of botting. I frankly couldn't care less. In fact they can be entertaining if you find one, trying your hardest to get them killed can be hilarious.

[Arbitrary]

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, please raise your hand if you play any of MMO computer games. How about World of Warcraft? Ah, yes, sir, how much have you played? How many characters do you have? I see, thank you.

(scribble scribble 4 level 70s = strike)

[Surreal]

Originally Posted by chu

Yes, it is. The magnitude of lost revenue doesn't matter, it matters that it caused it.

Ill disagree with you here. You are talking about $74,750 of lost monthly revenue out of $134,550,000 and on that scale that is so insignificant its not even part of the argument.

[Twobit Whore]

It doesn't matter how much it is. It could be a single penny and Blizzard would have a case.

[Kuro]

No, it has to be at least $20.

[Daerath]

Originally Posted by chu

Yes, it is. The magnitude of lost revenue doesn't matter, it matters that it caused it.

That isn't entirely correct. The cause is important, but the impact is no less important. If the damages are not significant, it's likely that the case will never make it to trial. This may be the case with Blizzard's lawsuit as it's coming up on 2 years and the case is still pending.

WoW's phenomenal success will also work against Blizzard in this case because it will be practically impossible to show that the WoW Glider is causing significant damage to the game.

[spronk]

Originally Posted by Malakriss

The question isn't about the finances of the botter subscriptions, Blizzard just has to demonstrate that the existence of the botters has a negative impact on the normal human-controlled population. The goal is to show that they are a detriment to the game and other customers, then calculate the weight of interference and damages to people, done by machines.

Simply paying the subscription fee is not a Do-Whatever-The-Hell-You-Want Card and Blizzard clearly does not have a policy to accept buy offs in order to run multiple automated computer accounts with impunity.

Since when are the actions of end users the responsibility of the software authors? (I will refrain from retarded analogies like cars or guns). The people who bot could be sued by Blizzard (lol wut) for economy exploitation issues, but how the bot author?

In recent years we have seen more of these types of lawsuits against products that are removed/banned based on one malfeasant usage. Thats why dual-usage is always good, so stuff like BitTorrent could be used for pirating music but also distributing new Linux distros; similarly Innerspace could be using for botting but also tiling or resizing game windows. Sadly Glider seems to have only one purpose and I think that'll be its achilles heel.

[Pyros]

Originally Posted by Surreal

Ill disagree with you here. You are talking about $74,750 of lost monthly revenue out of $134,550,000 and on that scale that is so insignificant its not even part of the argument.

While financially it's definitely not an issue(at least if you scale it accordingly), the issue here really is "killing" botting at its source, by condemning people who make bot programs. It'll serve as both a warning for future people who would be tempted to develop a full grown program to bot(you can still bot with other tools, at a lesser extent, or can use less known tools than glider) and as an excuse to their customer base, to say like "look, we actually care and work our ass off to make your gaming environement better".

[chu]

Originally Posted by Surreal

Ill disagree with you here. You are talking about $74,750 of lost monthly revenue out of $134,550,000 and on that scale that is so insignificant its not even part of the argument.

yeah except I'm positive an average user isn't subscribed for 1 month. If it's ~6months multiply that by 75,000 and you've got a very decent settlement sum that's going to devestate any Joe out there that makes these programs.

[Mkopec1]

One can also argue that the botters which are using glide are added revenue as well, offsetting the loss by a large margin. Im sure some would not play if it wasnt for the bot program, adding new life to an old game. Dint he say that 100K bot programs were sold from his website?

[Twobit Whore]

There is no documented statistical evidence to show that people who bought bot programs would not have played without them. There is (presumably) evidence to show that bots were a deciding factor in people quitting. You could argue it all day, but evidence trumps speculation.