The fight by Blizzard against the German bot manufacturer Bossland at WoW appears to be bearing fruit.
Last week on January 12th, Blizzard won a court victory against the bot manufacturer Bossland GmbH from Zwickau. The Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe upheld the Hamburg Higher Regional Court’s ruling that the distribution and sale of the WoW bot Honorbuddy in Germany is anti-competitive.
Bossland had filed an appeal against previous rulings from the Regional Court and Higher Regional Court of Hamburg. This appeal was dismissed in Karlsruhe.
The distribution of bot programs for online games is deemed anti-competitive and must not be tolerated by the game developer. This was announced by Blizzard’s law firm Gleiss Lutz in a press release.
The reasoning of the judgment has not yet been published.
The process between Blizzard and Bossland has been dragging through the courts for years and now seems to be bearing fruit. Bossland has also released a statement which has consequences.
Bossland retroactively changes “Lifetime Licenses” to licenses with a two-year duration – and many have already expired
Shortly after the ruling, Bossland announced in its forum that it would no longer offer a German version of Honorbuddy, but defiantly stated that this is not the end. They will continue to develop and offer products worldwide – outside of Germany.
Bossland interprets other parts of the ruling as meaning that “Reverse Engineering” is generally permissible.
But it goes further. In a statement yesterday, Bossland informed its customers that they have been heavily burdened by court costs and low sales in recent months. Therefore, they are currently not making enough money. As a result, Bossland is retroactively changing users’ “Lifetime Keys” to licenses with a two-year duration.
This has caused upset among many fans of the bot software. Their “lifetime bots” are partially expiring today. They cannot understand how they lost their “lifetime subscription” to a bot overnight.
Although Bossland regrets it if customers see this change as unfair, from a business perspective there is no other choice. According to “Bossland,” the licenses for the Lifetime Keys were only valid for a “corresponding Honorbuddy version.” The lifetime licenses for earlier versions have only been maintained “as a courtesy” all these years. This is no longer possible.
It literally states:
The Lifetime Keys are always based on the corresponding Honorbuddy version; just because no one sees it, doesn’t mean it’s not a new product.
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