Home Gaming Blizzard and game-cheating company Bossland are going back to court

Blizzard and game-cheating company Bossland are going back to court

3 min read
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Heroes

As a kid, you’re often told that cheaters never prosper. Which is an absolute lie when you look at the mansion that your local politician or TV evangelist spends their evening in as they laugh their way to the bank. And that’s something which extends to gaming as well, as many an opportunistic company has offered a service or two to help less scrupulous players get an edge.

And mind you, this is a far cry from a simple cheat like moon gravity in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3. This is more along the lines of slyly activating god-mode in a professional game of Call of Duty, an act which usually results in the culprit being drawn and quartered with V8 muscle cars. Right now, Blizzard is looking to take German company Bossland to school, over the use of their bots in games such as Heroes of the Storm, Diablo III and World of WarCraft.

Essentially, these bots provide a significant cheating advantage in Blizzard’s games. According to TorrentFreak, Blizzard’s lawyers allegedly approached Bossland freelancer James “Apoc” Enright with a deal “under which he agreed to hand over the source code for the Stormbuddy software.”  That Stormbuddy bot happens to be used in Heroes of the Storm.

Bossland is naturally unhappy, with CEO Zwetan Letschew telling Torrentfreak that:

Today Blizzard acted in a manner as shady as possible for a multi-billion-dollar corporation. We were informed that the deal compelled Apoc to submit the entire source code of Stormbuddy, which is actually the intellectual property of Bossland GmbH, to Blizzard.

Letschew says that this has resulted in a loss of revenue over at Bossland, who’ll now be taking Blizzard to court over the deal made with Enright. It’s not the first time that Blizzard and Bossland have locked horns however, as they’ve been going at it since 2011. Blizzard actually had to pay costs in a court case this year that involved Bossland and gold-selling in Diablo III. They also banned many thousands of players who were using Bossland bots in World of WarCraft.

And of course, Blizzard isn’t budging on this latest development, as a spokesman said to Kotaku while not directly addressing Letschew’s comments:

Bossland’s entire business is based in cheating, and the use of their bots negatively impacts our global player community. That’s why we do not tolerate cheating in our games, and it’s why our players overwhelmingly support that policy. We’ve already won numerous cases against Bossland in Germany (where they’re based), and despite their tactics to delay the ongoing proceedings and the related repercussions, we’re confident that the court system will continue to validate our claims and ultimately stop the distribution of these cheating bots.

We’ll continue to aggressively defend our games and services, within the bounds of the law, in an effort to provide the best possible experience for our players. We want to use this as an opportunity to remind players who might not be aware—using bots, such as those distributed by Bossland, to automate gameplay in our games will result in a loss of access to those games.

Ah the courts, that magical place where the law is enforced, not justice.  Meanwhile, I’ll be hiding my Game Genie cartridge and notebook full of codes, in case Nintendo comes sniffing at my door.

Last Updated: November 23, 2015

7 Comments

  1. Cheating in Diablo 3 on Xbox One is alive and well unfortunately. Someone dropped me a sword with 1 and 9 brazilian damage just the other day….????

    Reply

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