Blizzard sues manufacturer of bots for WoW, D3, HotS – [Update: Statement from Bossland]

Game studio Blizzard has now sued a bot manufacturer for World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, and Heroes of the Storm. It is reportedly about an 8-digit sum.

“HonorBuddy”, “Stormbuddy”, and other “Buddies” are bots that have been around for many years. Blizzard seems to have had enough now. They have filed a lawsuit in a California court. James Enright is accused. He allegedly made a good profit from distributing such bots. Blizzard believes they have incurred damages in the seven to eight-digit million range, in revenue and in the difficult-to-quantify trust of the players. The exact amount is to be determined in court.

Players could have gained “unfair” advantages through the bots, which could have endangered the balance in Blizzard’s games.

Furthermore, they accuse Enright of having violated the copyrights by “reproducing, altering, and distributing protected elements of the products.”

Such proceedings are usually lengthy. This will be something we will hear about for a while – just like with bots. In recent months, they took action against the German provider “Bossland” (albeit in the game); just recently, parts of the community complained that Blizzard’s Diablo 3 is completely infested with bots. Many assumed that they would take action against bot users in the game with bans and penalties. It seems that this time, Blizzard wants to tackle the causes, not just the symptoms.

Update: The manager of Bossland, Zwetan Letschwe, has since commented on this indictment to the site Torrentfreak and also with us. For him, the indictment is ridiculous, as his company manufactures the “products” and Blizzard is suing Bossland at several locations in Germany. The accused James Enright is merely a “freelancer”; he is not even employed by Bossland and certainly not a decision-maker. You can read the manager’s statement in the comments.

Letschwe also references a report from an Erfurt professor from 2012. The report found that bots have no negative impact on MMORPGs in general and on WoW in particular, but rather increase long-term motivation.