cheats – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Stories filed under: "cheats"

from the it's-your-computer dept

One of the reasons that today’s copyright is such a bad fit for the modern digital world is that its roots lie deep in 18th-century law and analogue objects like books. This fact has created a kind of legislative drag that means copyright is always decades behind the latest technological developments. A case in point is the phenomenon of “cheating” in video games. Despite the negative connotations of the name, “cheating” has a remarkably rich and interesting culture. It is about extending the capabilities of a computer game, often through add-on software. That, of course, raises the hackles of companies that sell computer game software; for them, complete control over what a player does is paramount. An important legal dispute in this area, discussed on the Lexology blog, involves Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and Datel Design and Development:

Datel’s plugin enabled players to access a separate menu to skip difficult game sections on Sony’s consoles. This plugin interacted with the game’s variable data stored temporarily in the console’s RAM, avoiding any modification to the game’s original code.

Since it was filed, Sony’s legal action has been bouncing around the German legal system. Sony won initially, but that decision was later overturned. The case then passed up to the German Federal Court of Justice. Recognizing that the dispute raised important questions about copyright protection, the federal court requested an interpretation from the EU’s top legal body, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). As is usual, a preliminary opinion has been offered by one of the CJEU’s Advocates General, in this case Maciej Szpunar. Such opinions are not binding, but often indicate what the court’s thinking might be. The Lexology blog reports that Szpunar made the following important comments:

[His] opinion asserts that manipulating transient data generated during gameplay through third-party software does not infringe copyright according to the EU’s Computer Programs Directive. This distinction between protecting a game’s code and the temporary data it generates is a very significant one for all developers of game-enhancing tools.

The Advocate General also highlighted that the variable values in question are not original works of the game’s author but result from player interactions and game progression, which are unpredictable and dynamic. Since they depend on unforeseeable factors, these values lie beyond the author’s creative control.

If the CJEU agrees with this line of thinking, it would lay down a new and extremely important aspect of copyright in the digital context. It would create a distinction between the software code, whose copyright belongs to its author, and the temporary data that is produced by the user when running that code, which is not. As the Lexology post points out, that could have immediate ramifications for fields outside gaming. For example, it might confirm that plug-ins blocking ads, over which a fierce battle has been waged by a publisher against the idea, as we reported two years ago, would be perfectly legal. More generally:

If the CJEU adopts the Advocate General’s opinion, it could encourage the development and use of game plugins that enhance the player experience without violating copyright laws, potentially fostering greater innovation and user customization in gaming and other software sectors.

Implicitly, what that comment is saying is that currently copyright is an obstacle to innovation and user customization in software. Let’s hope the CJEU agrees with its Advocate General’s opinion, and sets people’s creativity free in this area.

Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon and on Bluesky. Originally posted to Walled Culture.

Filed Under: cheats, cjeu, copyright, eu, maciej szpunar, third-party software, transient data, video games

Bungie Wins Default Judgment Against Danish Cheat Purveyor In Ruling That Encourages More CFAA Abuse

from the well,-'win'-might-be-overstating-things dept

A lawsuit [PDF] against a cheat creator has swung almost completely in Bungie’s direction, mainly thanks to the Danish defendant being unwilling to travel across the pond to defend himself in court. The claims are numerous, ranging from copyright infringement to trademark infringement to CFAA violations to the ever-popular (but rarely successful) RICO.

While Bungie seems willing to fight against bogus DMCA claims that affect its fans, it’s also apparently willing to wield the same law to punish people who sell cheats to other users. This doesn’t always work, but it works well enough that Bungie continues to aggressively protect its products from hacks offered by developers to people unwilling (or unable) to compete on a level playing field.

This case centers on the “Wallhax” cheats for Destiny 2 apparently developed by Canadian company Elite Boss Tech and Denmark resident Daniel Larsen, along with a handful of others Bungie managed to unmask after obtaining a settlement from two defendants last October.

The default judgment awarded here comes with a $16 million price tag. But that number really means nothing. If Bungie was unable to persuade Daniel Larsen to engage in its extraterritorial lawsuit, it’s unlikely it will be able to convince him to hand over millions of dollars in response to this judgment.

Citing the settlements Bungie has already been able to obtain from cooperating defendants, the court pushes forward with the default judgment. The court agrees with pretty much every claim raised by Bungie, including the civil version of RICO most plaintiffs fail to apply as carefully as Bungie does here.

Specifically, Bungie has alleged and provided evidence that Larsen and the enterprise engaged in criminal copyright infringement and money laundering in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1956 and 1957. As to criminal copyright infringement, Bungie must demonstrate that Larsen willfully infringed on a valid copyright for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain. See 17 U.S.C. § 506(a). Here, the allegations and evidence suffice to show that Larsen willfully accessed and utilized Bungie’s Destiny 2 software in order to develop the Wallhax cheat, which directly infringed on Bungie’s two valid copyrights for Larsen’s personal gain. The allegations and evidence are also sufficient to satisfy the predicate act of money laundering. A defendant engages in money laundering under 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(1)(A)(i) when they (1) conduct (or attempt to conduct) (2) a financial transaction, (3) knowing that the property involved in the financial transaction represents the proceeds of some unlawful activity, (4) with the intent to promote the carrying on of specified unlawful activity, and (5) the property was in fact be derived from a specified unlawful activity. 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(1). Bungie has shown that Larsen and the Wallhax enterprise obtained financial proceeds from the sale of the Wallhax cheat, which was the product of criminal copyright infringement.

I haven’t read all the predicate acts for money laundering, but the criminal act suggests actual “laundering” of proceeds to disguise their illegal origin. But it appears I have that all wrong: simply depositing proceeds from crimes into any financial institution is apparently “laundering,” even if no steps are taken to obfuscate the illegal origins of the funds. Weird.

It’s a default judgment so there are no counterarguments to consider. But the judge decides Bungie’s CFAA arguments have enough merit to be carried along with the rest of the allegedly illegal flotsam:

_Bungie has provided sufficient allegations and evidence that Larsen violated the CFAA when he intentionally accessed the Destiny 2 servers to obtain the Destiny 2 software to create the Wallhax cheat without authorization. By doing so, Larsen violated that terms of the LSLA and manipulated key elements of the Destiny 2 software through the Wallhax cheat_…

That’s not very descriptive and nothing in this decision explains what exactly constituted this CFAA violation. For that, we have to go back to Bungie’s amended complaint, which provides some helpful context:

Defendants, acting in concert with users who deploy their cheat software, obtain data from within the Destiny 2 client software’s memory space that the users are not authorized to access – specifically the positional information used in Defendants’ “ESP” display.

In addition, Defendants are fully aware that users who deploy their cheat software do so in violation of the LSLA, and that access to the Destiny 2 client software memory space by such users is entirely unauthorized.

In accessing the Destiny 2 client software’s memory space without authorization, Defendants’ software obtains information from the Destiny 2 system to enable the presentation of the “ESP” display on the users’ computers.

In addition, by accessing the Destiny 2 client software’s memory space without authorization, Defendants’ software takes control of the aiming function of the Destiny 2 client software, enabling the player to fire with perfect accuracy every time.

As a result of this conduct, Defendants’ software endows cheating users with significant advantages not available to players who play the game honestly.

This is all very unfortunate but companies like Bungie have plenty of options to deal with cheaters and cheat purveyors. Violating a user agreement should be grounds for banning or account suspension. But they really shouldn’t be considered violations of the CFAA, even in civil cases. While it’s always fun to pile on charges (we learned it from you, prosecutors! [intense sobbing]), it does very little for the internet at large to treat end user license agreement violations as malicious acts. While the acts alleged here appear to be deliberate circumvention, treating any unexpected (or exploratory) use of software as an illegal act (as the court does here) makes it that much tougher to discover and report security flaws or engage in research that utilizes methods service providers may not expect.

It’s not that Bungie is wrong to deter cheaters and those selling cheats to cheaters. It’s that it had a lot of options to deploy that didn’t bring the oft-abused CFAA into the mix. Bungie was always going to win, especially when the defendant no-showed the entire case. Portraying exploitation of areas left unprotected by Bungie as a criminal act in and of itself does no one any favors.

Filed Under: cfaa, cheats, daniel larsen, default judgment, destiny 2, video games, wallhax
Companies: bungie, elite boss tech

Epic Games' Case Against Teenage Fortnite Cheater Finally Settles

from the cheat-sheet dept

As you may recall, back in 2017 Epic Games went on something of a crusade against cheating in its online hit game Fortnite. While much of Epic’s attention was focused on websites that sold cheating software for the game, the company also set its sights on individuals who were actively promoting the use of cheating software in online videos. One of those Epic sued was a 14 year old who, if I’m being frank, sounds like a bit of a jackass. While the teen, identified in court documents only as “C.R.”, was having his own mother defend him in letters to the judge in the case, he was also then going around uploading still more videos advocating the use of cheating software and taunting Epic Games. Epic’s lawyers defeated the teen’s mother, which, real feather in their cap for that I suppose. And so the trial continued.

Until recently, when, as Epic has done in other cases against underage targets for its litigation, the company and the defendant managed to come to a settlement.

Epic Games has settled a three-year-long lawsuit against a teenage Fortnite player who was accused of using cheats in the game (thanks Law360). C.R., who was 14-years-old at the time of the 2017 lawsuit, was alleged to have been using and advertising Fortnite hacks on his YouTube channel.

The Notice of Voluntary Dismissal doesn’t reveal any details about the settlement, just that Epic, C.R. and his court-appointed guardian have agreed to dismiss all claims and action following the Court’s approval of the settlement agreement.

It is unlikely that any serious money changed hands as part of this. What Epic Games was after was a cessation of advocating of cheating software in order to curb its use. But, still, a three year long case against a large company for a teenager and his family had to come at a massive price tag in legal bills alone. And, frankly, the real question is what the point of this all was? If it was the stomping out of cheating in Fortnite that Epic was after, well, it sure as hell didn’t accomplish that mission.

Hell, it was just over the past summer that cheating in Fortnite tournaments appeared to reach its crises apex.

For the last couple of years, Fortnite has been considered one of the few titles that catches and removes cheaters fairly effectively. However, with cases recently skyrocketing, it seems that a lot of foul play may simply go undetected.

Following Sunday’s fourth and final round of FNCS qualification, Twitter was flooded with posts relating to a player named Kona. They openly used cheats to get through opens and semis, and were only banned after going live on Twitch with the client still onscreen.

So the company went legal on a teenager and his mother to combat cheating, an effort that completely failed. That was really worth all the trouble, Epic?

Filed Under: cheater, cheats, fortnite, fortnite hacks
Companies: epic

from the attack-the-hack dept

For some time now, we’ve noted a troubling trend in the video games industry. That trend would be publishers trying to twist copyright law into a pretzel that allows them sue makers of cheat software for copyright infringement. This novel application of copyright law has been piloted by Blizzard and Epic Games in the past. Both company’s theory of the case for copyright infringement revolves around their games being licensed instead of sold, with the EULA being broken by utilizing cheat software. If the EULA is broken and the cheat-maker still makes use of the game, they do so without a license. Therefore, copyright infringement.

This, of course, is not how copyright law is supposed to work. Instead, the point of the law is to prevent unauthorized copying of the product, which is absolutely not the practical result of what these cheat-makers are doing. And, yet, the trend continues, with Rockstar Games winning a summary judgement in the UK against two individuals who developed cheats for Grand Theft Auto 5.

At the Intellectual Property and Enterprise Court, Rockstar and its parent company Take-Two Interactive filed a complaint against several people connected to the now-defunct “Epsilon” cheat. Epsilon was a so-called ‘mod menu’ which offered players significant advantages. The game companies reportedly shut down the cheat in 2018 and identified five men connected to it. They were accused of copyright infringement by creating and distributing the software.

Three of the five settled with Rockstar out of court. The other two, however, defended themselves by both noting that they included a disclaimer of liability to those making use of their software and that the tools they used to make their cheats are widely and publicly available on the internet. The court didn’t buy either argument and found for Rockstar in summary judgement. The court did likewise on breach of contract (the EULA) and inducement to breach that contract, except on the former for one defendent, who is a minor.

All in all, the court ruled in favor of Rockstar and Take-Two, granting summary judgment for copyright infringement against the two men. This means that the case won’t go to trial.

Both defendants were also accused of (inducement of) breach of contract and breach of contract. The court sided with the game companies here as well, except for the breach of contract claim against one of the two, who was a minor at the time of the offense.

Left unexamined appears to be why any of this is actually copyright infringement to begin with. And, if the court truly thinks it is, why the entire modding ecosystem isn’t suddenly one big cesspool of copyright infringement. The law doesn’t care whether a game is online or not. Either mods are appropriate fodder for copyright law or they are not.

One wonders if companies like Rockstar understand the potential harm they are doing to their industry by going down this road.

Filed Under: cheats, copyright, eula, grand theft auto 5
Companies: rockstar games, take two interactive

Ubisoft Perma-Bans Creator Of Cool, Non-Cheating Tool For 'The Division' Because It Was Made With Cheating Software

from the cluster-bomb-collateral-damage dept

There are lots of ways companies can deal with those who cheat in online video games. We have seen developers and publishers sue those who cheat, we have seen national governments criminalize this kind of cheating, and we even got to see Rockstar’s attempt to force cheaters to only play with other cheaters. While these sorts of efforts vary wildly, the common response from game publishers is to be entirely too ham-fisted in keeping cheaters out of online games. This results in all sorts of problems, ranging from punishing players who weren’t actually cheating to creating all kinds of collateral damage.

One example of the latter recently transpired when the maker of a very cool tool for Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy: The Division found himself permanently banned from the game even though he hadn’t participated in anything resembling cheating at all. First, let’s outline what he created.

Cinematic Tools is a program developed by a Finish physics student named Matti Hietanen to help players take control of in-game cameras for the purposes of capturing interesting footage and images. He’s made the tool for 22 games, from Battlefield 1 to Dark Souls III, to Star Wars: Battlefront II. When the program is running, players can map Hotkeys to things like a free cam mode, timestop, and HUD removal as well as play around with the camera’s depth of field. This means they can unhook the camera from their player, make the sun set, change the weather and snap a great screenshot of the game from an angle that normal players would never see. It can result in beautiful work.

Beautiful isn’t the half of it. The tool is essentially designed to allow players to take cinematic shots in a variety of games, including The Division, which they can then share with the wider world. Put another way, the tool basically allows the fans of these games to show off the fantastic visuals within them from angles that would have otherwise been unavailable. Using the tool, you get artistic in-game shots such as this:

That’s just an example; there are a ton more of these types of shots. Two things are immediately evident when you view the “photos” taken using the tool. First, there are many fans of these games that go to great lengths to add an artistic eye to setting up these shots. A great deal of care has gone into the positioning of the camera, the lighting, and the depth of field settings, all of which are enabled by Cinematic Tools. Second, the visuals in these shots are absolutely stunning and full credit for that aspect of the shots goes to the makers of these games. If these screenshots do anything at all, they highlight the dedication and effort that gamemakers like Ubisoft and the developers they partner with to create mind blowing visuals for these games. It should be seen as an advertisement for these titles, if nothing else.

So why did Hietanen get banned? Well, because of the technology he used to make his application.

Cinematic Tools isn’t designed for cheating, but it was built using things like Cheat Engine, a program that some players use to look for opponents’ information, positions, and aim angles in a multiplayer match. He said he used them in order to dig into the game’s code and find ways to take control of its third-person camera, day and night cycle, and weather effects. All of this breaches the game’s Code of Conduct. Hietanen warns potential users of Cinematic Tools on his website that bans are possible.

Hietanen thinks that its his use of Cheat Engine that got him in trouble and not for his own Cinematic Tools program. “I’ve heard of other people who have gotten banned for using Cheat Engine for screenshotting so that gives me some confidence it isn’t about the Cinematic Tools.” Using Cheat Engine to reverse engineer how a game’s camera works is currently an unavoidable part of how he builds his tools though. He added that while automated bans are expected, he hopes that appeals are at least looked at. “I don’t think that’d be too hard and staying completely silent to banned content creators, no matter how hard they try making contact, really sucks,” Hietanen said. This is the first time he’s ever been banned for life.

This serves to highlight a couple of things. To start, cluster-bomb style cheat blocking is going to create this kind of collateral damage. Period. Full stop. To be fair to Ubisoft, the company didn’t start this war. Those who choose to cheat in its games did. Still, when a company’s anti-piracy measures are so ham-fisted as to not only perma-ban a party that was not cheating, but also one who created a tool that is essentially a tool for advertising the visuals of the game in question, that’s not a good anti-cheating strategy.

The other thing this highlights is that targeting tools and technology that can be used for cheating, but aren’t limited to doing so, will end up causing collateral damage as well. In this case, it’s hard to fault Ubisoft too much. I mean, the name of the program is “Cheat Engine.” Still, it will hopefully be a useful bit of education for Ubisoft to have put a blanket target on that program only to see an innocent and beneficial result of that program caught up in a ban.

Hopefully Ubisoft will see the error in all of this and lift Hietanen’s ban. He’s essentially working for the company’s advertising department for free, after all.

Filed Under: cheats, cinematic tools, matti hietanen, mods, the division
Companies: ubisoft

Epic Sues 14 Year Old It Accuses Of Cheating In Videogames After He Counternotices a DMCA On His YouTube Video

from the what-a-time-to-be-alive dept

We called it. When Blizzard decided several years ago to try to twist copyright law into one hell of a pretzel in the name of going after video game cheaters, we said it was going to open the the door to other developers and publishers abusing the law in the same way. Blizzard’s theory is that using a cheat in its games, particularly in its multiplayer games, was a violation of the EULA and created a copyright violation when the cheater continued to play the game he or she only “licensed.” A deep dive into the actual substance of the copyright claims reveals them to be laughable, except Blizzard is rarely joined in court by its defendants, so no challenge to its pretzel-theory of copyright is ever put forward. Shortly after all of this, Riot Games joined in on this fun, deciding to apply the well-salted pretzel copyright logic to groups making cheats for League of Legends.

And, since it’s not a real party until you have a third, now Epic Games is getting in on the action. And Epic went big for its first go around, deciding to actually sue a fourteen year old child who didn’t make a cheat for Epic’s Fortnite, but simply used a cheat. The fourteen year old was swept up in lawsuits filed against several cheaters for copyright infringement and, by all accounts, this fourteen year old was something of a pain in the ass for Epic.

One of the accused is a young man, who was banned at least 14 times since he started playing. Every time Epic took action, he simply created new accounts under false names and continued to play and cheat at Fortnite. What Epic Games probably didn’t know is that the cheater in question is a minor. The company likely obtained his name via YouTube or elsewhere, without knowing his real age.

This is the danger of suing end users using illicit cheats rather than going after the groups and sites that make those cheats available: kids play games. Kids also, apparently, agree to the very EULA that Epic is asserting triggers copyright infringement through the use of the cheat. Kids also occasionally have awesome moms, who angrily inform the court of all the reasons that this copyright suit is bullshit. The whole letter from the fourteen year old’s mother is worth a read, but here are the most relevant portions.

Please note parental consent was not issued to [my son] to play this free game produced by Epic Games, INC,” the mother writes in her letter.

Epic claims that cheaters cause the company to lose money, but the mother doesn’t buy this since it’s a free game. Instead, she believes that the company is trying to blame her son for its failure to curb cheaters.

“It is my belief that due to their lack of ability to curve cheat codes and others from modifying their game, they are using a 14-year-old child as a scape goat to make an example of him.”

On top of all of this, a lawsuit against a fourteen year old simply for using a cheat for a video game is a public relations nightmare. On the other hand, Epic is in a horrible position. It would look odd to simply drop the suit against the fourteen year old because he’s fourteen and still pursue the suits against the non-minor parties. Either what was done was either copyright infringement or it wasn’t (it wasn’t, but that’s besides the point). The whole thing just looks… petty.

Meanwhile, as pointed out first by Torrentfreak, Epic has responded to the Mom’s letter, which you can read here. The key argument that Epic makes is that it did not violate the law against naming a minor because it didn’t know the kid was only 14 — but then says that the mother’s letter waived the teen’s privacy anyway — and thus asks the court for guidance on whether to ask the court to seal the information (which is already widely distributed) or not.

We did not violate Rule 5.2(a) or Local Civil Rule 17.2 because we did not know when we filed the papers that Defendant was a minor. Although there is an argument that by submitting the Letter to the Court containing Defendant’s name and address, Defendant’s mother waived this protection…. we plan to include only Defendant’s initials or redact his name entirely in all future filings with the Court, including this letter.

This letter is to request the Court’s guidance on whether the Court would like us to file a motion to seal the papers currently on the docekt that include Defendant’s full name, re-file versions of those papers with Defendant’s name redacted, or take any other remedial action.

Of course, another option would be not to abuse copyright law this way. Then Epic wouldn’t have this problem.

Filed Under: cheats, copyright, free to play, streaming, teenagers, video games, videos
Companies: epic

from the you're-not-helping dept

Readers here likely have begun to associate the attempted twisting of copyright law to go after video game cheaters with Blizzard. After all, between its StarCraft and Overwatch properties, the gamemaker has made something of a name for itself by attempting to assert a combination of “you only bought a license” and “breaking the EULA creates a copyright violation” theories into a “we can sue you for hacking our games” legal sandwich. It’s a terribly frustrating thing to watch Blizzard do, as it tries to pretzel copyright law in a way never intended, and typically to achieve little if any legal success by doing so.

Well, everyone knew that Blizzard wouldn’t be pulling this act solo forever, and now we know who the next game company to take up this loser of a strategy will be: Riot Games. Yes, the maker of the popular League of Legends is asserting copyright violations to go after those who create and use cheats and hacks. The complaint specifically targets a cheat called “LeagueSharp,” which apparently allows players to automate aspects of gameplay, including targeting other players and seeing game objects that should be hidden.

“Among other things, L# enables its users to abuse LoL by allowing them to, for example, see hidden information; ‘automate’ gameplay to perform in the game with enhanced or inhuman accuracy; and accumulate levels, experience, and items at a rate that is not possible for a normal human player.”

While this sounds very similar to many of the cheats and hacks that Blizzard has complained about, part of the impetus for this legal action is the popularity surrounding League of Legends eSport tournaments. eSports is becoming quite a thing these days, with viewership numbers that are comparable to viewership of traditional athletic competitions. As we’ve said in the past, cheating in online multiplayer games is at best annoying and at worst truly disruptive to the gaming experience. The stakes only rise when we begin talking about the eSports world, with competitive professionals competing. One can see how analagous to steroids in sports hacks might be in the eSports world. Still, the theories Riot Games trots out to back its copyright claims are nearly identical to Blizzard’s, and those claims don’t become stronger just because eSports is a thing.

It won’t help the makers of the hacks that they appear to have acted in ways that will put them in a negative light.

“Defendants or those working in concert with them disseminated personal and non-public information about a Riot employee, threatened that employee, and posted offensive comments on the employee’s social media. Additionally, knowing that this lawsuit was imminent, Defendants have been quickly and carefully destroying or concealing evidence such as their most incriminating online posts and purporting to hide behind a Peruvian shell corporation created solely for the purpose of evading liability.”

Which may indeed make them assholes, but it does not make them guilty of copyright infringement. The claims by Riot Games still come down to the claim that a violation of a Terms of Use agreement renders a license for the game invalid, meaning copyright infringement, along with a claim that creating a hack for a video game violates the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA. For that last claim to work, Riot Games would need to demonstrate that these specific cheats are lessening the value of the game in general.

Given the insane success that is League of Legends, that might be a tough claim to make. Regardless, this isn’t how copyright was meant to be used and stretching it in this way serves nobody at all.

Filed Under: cheats, copyright, video games
Companies: blizzard, riot games

from the sigh dept

For some reason, gamemaker Blizzard has been totally smitten with the idea of twisting copyright law into an ugly pretzel to sue anyone who makes a hack or cheat for one of its games for some time now. They did this concerning Starcraft, then World of Warcraft, and then Starcraft 2. This lawsuit tactic is starting to become something of a right of passage for Blizzard’s games, but the tactic in question makes little sense. Blizzard’s argument can be roughly translated as: cheats and hacks break the EULA for the game, the game is licensed by the EULA instead of being owned by anyone paying for it, the game does regular copying of code and files while in use, therefore a hack or cheat that breaks the EULA renders all of that routine copying as copyright infringement. While this wrenching of copyright into these kinds of lawsuits has nothing to do with the actual purpose or general application of copyright law, many cheer these moves on, because cheaters within the communal games we play are annoying.

But the ends don’t justify the means, and this kind of twisting of copyright law is dangerous, as we’ve pointed out in the past. Not that that’s stopped Blizzard from utilizing this tactic, of course. In fact, recent Blizzard success Overwatch has become the latest to achieve this right of passage.

While most Overwatch players stick to the rules, there’s also a small group that tries to game the system. By using cheats such as the Watchover Tyrant, they play with an advantage over regular users. Blizzard is not happy with the Overwatch cheat and has filed a lawsuit against the German maker, Bossland GMBH, at a federal court in California. Bossland also sellscheats for various other titles such as World of Warcraft, Diablo 3 and Heroes of the Storm, which are mentioned in the complaint as well.

The game developer accuses the cheat maker of various forms of copyright infringement, unfair competition, and violating the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision. According to Blizzard these bots and cheats also cause millions of dollars in lost sales, as they ruin the games for many legitimate players.

And it might indeed be true that these cheat hacks piss off some Overwatch gamers and might even drive some of them away from the game, costing Blizzard revenue. But, and I cannot stress this enough, that doesn’t suddenly make any of this copyright infringement. To see what lengths Blizzard’s legal team is going to in order to twist this all together, one need look only at the claims the filing makes.

First, it claims that Bossland is committing contributory infringement by offering the hack, because the hack breaks the EULA, which makes accessing the game suddenly fraudulent, and all the routine copying the game does becomes copyright infringement. This, again, relies on the idea that the game is licensed rather than bought, and that breaking the EULA renders the license invalid. This has never been the way copyright has worked in the past.

Second, the filing claims that the hack’s ability to provide a graphical overlay over the regular game is the creation of a derivative work, which is also copyright infringement. Except the overlay isn’t copying any part of the game, nor is it making works expanding on the game. It’s just an overlay, or a HUD.

Only then does the filing accuse Bossland of contractual interference, which is probably the most sound charge in the whole thing. Even then, hacks and cheats have long been a staple of the video game ecosystem, with most gamemakers embracing modding communities, and even embedding cheats within their own games. This has changed somewhat with the rise of online multiplayer games, where these kinds of cheats break the game in some ways, but still, entering into a legal challenge over all of this instead of jumping back into the fray of game development to try to keep the cheaters out seems strange.

And filing all of this in a California court has pretty much everyone, including the folks at Bossland, scratching their heads.

TF spoke with Bossland CEO Zwetan Letschew, who informed us that his company hasn’t received the complaint at its office yet. However, they are no stranger to Blizzard’s legal actions.

“There are over 10 ongoing legal battles in Germany already,” Letschew says, noting that it’s strange that Blizzard decided to take action in the US after all these years. “Now Blizzard wants to try it in the US too. One could ask himself, why now and not back in 2011. Why did Rod Rigole [Blizzard Deputy General Counsel] even bother to fly to Munich and drive with two other lawyers 380 km to Zwickau. Why not just sue us in the US five years ago?”

While Letschew still isn’t convinced that the lawsuit is even real, he doesn’t fear any legal action in the U.S. According to the CEO, a California court has no jurisdiction over his company, as it has no ties with the United States.

It should be noted that much of the time these legal attempts by Blizzard don’t result in wins for its legal team. And that’s not even taking into account the questions of jurisdiction and/or what a California court ruling will result in for a company abroad. I’m a little lost as to why Blizzard is even bothering with this, to be honest.

Filed Under: cheats, copyright, hacking, mods, overwatch
Companies: blizzard

We’ve been here before a few times. Back in 2008, video game giant Blizzard initially won a very dangerous ruling against a World of Warcraft bot maker, saying that if (as most software companies do) the End User License Agreement (EULA) says that you’ve only licensed the product, rather than bought it, then any violation of the EULA can be a violation of copyright law. Copyright expert William Patry, at the time, pointed out how insane such a ruling was:

The critical point is that WoWGilder did not contributorily or vicariously lead to violating any rights granted under the Copyright Act. Unlike speed-up kits, there was no creation of an unauthorized derivative work, nor was a copy made even under the Ninth Circuit’s misinterpretation of RAM copying in the MAI v. Peak case. How one might ask can there be a violation of the Copyright Act if no rights granted under the Act have been violated? Good question.

Thankfully, the Ninth Circuit mostly walked back this ruling (though with a bunch of other problems…), noting (as Patry did in discussing the earlier ruling) that nothing was done that actually violated copyright law. It might violate a contract, but not copyright. This ruling, however, has not stopped Blizzard from continuing to go after bot makers with copyright claims. It went after some Starcraft II cheat creators in 2010. And just last year it went after a few more Starcraft II cheat creators, using the same twisted copyright theory.

And now, as TorrentFreak first pointed out, it’s done so yet again — this time filing a lawsuit against James Enright, who had built up a series of gaming bots for use in World of Warcraft, Diablo and Heroes. And, once again, Blizzard claims that it’s a copyright violation, again arguing that violating the EULA is a form of copyright infringement.

Defendants have infringed, and are continuing to infringe, Blizzard?s copyrights by reproducing, adapting, distributing, and/or authorizing others to reproduce, adapt, and distribute copyrighted elements of the Blizzard Games without authorization, in violation of the Copyright Act

More specifically, Blizzard is trying to make this a copyright claim by saying that he violated the EULA by reverse engineering their games to make his bots work. But that’s not copyright infringement. It further claims that he’s engaged in “tortious interference” because he’s convincing other players to break their EULA’s with his bots.

Now — as in past such stories — it’s quite clear that many people are not happy about the use of cheats and bots in these games. It may be absolutely 100% true that they diminish the gaming experience for others and present a real problem for Blizzard. In all likelihood, they probably do violate the EULA that Blizzard uses on those games that forbids such activities.

But that shouldn’t make it a copyright violation.

Blizzard can go after them for breach of contract. Or it can cut them off from its service. Or it can change how its games work to try to prevent bots. But that doesn’t mean it gets to twist copyright law to use it against something that has absolutely nothing to do with copyright. This seems like yet another case of copyright immigration, where copyright law is used to go after “some bad thing” because it’s such a powerful law with such powerful remedies. Blizzard has been doing this for nearly a decade now, and it’s high time a court told them to knock it off.

Filed Under: bots, cheats, copyright, diablo, eula, james enright, starcraft, world of warcraft
Companies: blizzard