StarCraft II Hack Creators Being Sued by Blizzard
posted Friday Oct 22, 2010 by Nicholas DiMeo
Earlier this month, Blizzard decided to start Halloween early, by spooking all of their StarCraft II players with bans and suspensions on 5,000 accounts that were cheating or modifying the game to get an edge. A week later, the company also decided to attack the people in charge of creating cheat programs for the game.
Well, last week Blizzard decided to up the ante by filing a lawsuit in the Los Angeles US District Court against three individuals who are being targeted for making and selling hacks and cheats for StarCraft II. In case you had no idea, hacking is a clear no-no in the gaming world and is stated as such in the end-user license agreement, the Battle.net terms of usage and in general copyright law.
For more on what's happening with this three-piece suit, hit the break.
We have gotten a hold of the lawsuit and Blizzard is less than happy with these types of people.
Just days after the release of Starcraft II, Defendants already had developed, marketed, and distributed to the public a variety of hacks and cheats designed to modify (and in fact destroy) the Starcraft II online game experience. In fact, on the very day that Starcraft II was released, representatives of the hacks Web site advised members of the public that 'our staff is already planning new releases for this game.'
Blizzard is suing for copyright infringement and wants damage money and any of the profits earned by the selling and distribution of the hacks. They are also accusing them of making other infringements on their copyrights.
When users of the Hacks download, install, and use the Hacks, they copy StarCraft II copyrighted content into their computer's RAM in excess of the scope of their limited license, as set forth in the EULA and ToU, and create derivative works of StarCraft II.
Of course, we knew this was coming, as it does with any Blizzard game and pretty much any PC game out there. The three defendants in this lawsuit go by the names of "Permaphrost", "Cranix", and "Linuxawesome", with two living in Canada and one in Peru. Blizzard is demanding that the defendants remove their programs from anything that is hosted within the LA court's jurisdiction. The problem is that we are unsure at this point what jurisdiction the court will have over the defendants in other countries. The EULA does state that disputes will be decided in a court within LA County, however.
And of course, when asked to comment, Blizzard does not comment on pending litigation. We'll keep you posted as we receive more information.