Bossland | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net KitGuru.net - Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards Tue, 04 Apr 2017 12:21:57 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/cropped-KITGURU-Light-Background-SQUARE2-32x32.png Bossland | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net 32 32 Blizzard awarded $8.5 million in lawsuit against cheat maker https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/matthew-wilson/blizzard-awarded-8-5-million-in-lawsuit-against-cheat-maker/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/matthew-wilson/blizzard-awarded-8-5-million-in-lawsuit-against-cheat-maker/#comments Tue, 04 Apr 2017 10:04:49 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=328677 Over the last few weeks, Blizzard's lawsuit against prolific cheat maker ‘Bossland' has been swiftly escalating. Bossland is behind several subscription based ‘Buddy Bot' cheats for most of Blizzard's titles, as well as an ESP hack for Overwatch. A few weeks ago, we heard that Blizzard was seeking an $8.5 million payout over irreparable harm …

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Over the last few weeks, Blizzard's lawsuit against prolific cheat maker ‘Bossland' has been swiftly escalating. Bossland is behind several subscription based ‘Buddy Bot' cheats for most of Blizzard's titles, as well as an ESP hack for Overwatch. A few weeks ago, we heard that Blizzard was seeking an $8.5 million payout over irreparable harm caused to its business and this week, the suit came to a head, with a judge taking Blizzard's side and awarding it the full $8.5 million.

A California District Court agreed that the cheats developed by Bossland were built to bypass Blizzard's anti-cheat software, thus violating the DMCA. In other words, Bossland's cheats violated US copyright law. As Torrentfreak points out, since Bossland did not represent itself in court, it was much easier for Blizzard's lawyers to convince a judge to award the full $8.5 million in damages.

In a court order, the judge writes: “Bossland materially contributes to infringement by creating the Bossland Hacks, making the Bossland Hacks available to the public, instructing users how to install and operate the Bossland Hacks, and enabling users to use the software to create derivative works.”

“Blizzard has established a showing of resulting damage or harm because Blizzard expends a substantial amount of money combating the use of the Bossland Hacks to ensure fair game play. Additionally, players of the Blizzard Games lodge complaints against cheating players, which has caused users to grow dissatisfied with the Blizzard Games and cease playing. Accordingly, the in-game cheating also harms Blizzard’s goodwill and reputation.”

In all, the court granted statutory copyright damages for 42,818 violations of copyright, adding up to just over $8.5 million in damages. Blizzard is also entitled to retrieve $174,872 in attorney fees. Aside from all that, Bossland is obviously prohibited from selling its cheats in the United States going further, or any other software that exploits Blizzard's games or services.

KitGuru Says: Given that Bossland didn't show up to defend itself in court, this ruling doesn't come as much of a surprise. This outcome also seemed more likely following Riot's recent legal win against a League of Legends cheat maker.

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Blizzard aiming for $8.5 million payout in lawsuit against cheat seller https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/matthew-wilson/blizzard-aiming-for-8-5-million-payout-in-lawsuit-against-cheat-seller/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/matthew-wilson/blizzard-aiming-for-8-5-million-payout-in-lawsuit-against-cheat-seller/#comments Wed, 15 Mar 2017 17:31:48 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=325394 Back in July 2016, Blizzard filed its lawsuit against Bossland, the company behind several subscription based ‘Buddy Bots' cheats as well as and Overwatch ESP hack. At the time, the company said that Bossland had caused irreparable harm to Blizzard with its cheat business but we didn't know how much money the publisher would be …

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Back in July 2016, Blizzard filed its lawsuit against Bossland, the company behind several subscription based ‘Buddy Bots' cheats as well as and Overwatch ESP hack. At the time, the company said that Bossland had caused irreparable harm to Blizzard with its cheat business but we didn't know how much money the publisher would be gunning for. Now this week, some new details have come to light surrounding the lawsuit and it turns out that Blizzard wants an $8.5 million payout.

This new tidbit was unveiled in a motion for default judgement against Bossland, which Blizzard Entertainment filed recently. This document essentially requests the minimum statutory copyright damages of $200 per infringement, with each individual cheat sale being counted as an infringement.

Blizzard is arguing that Bossland sold at least 42,818 copies of its cheats in the US, amounting to $8,563,600 worth of copyright infringement. Blizzard is also arguing that its estimates here are leaning on the conservative side as Bossland has testified to selling 118,939 cheats in the US since July 2013. Blizzard is essentially guessing that 36 percent of those sales were for cheats of its own games, including WoW, Overwatch and Diablo III.

Bossland is actually based in Germany and as TorrentFreak points out, already tried to have the case dismissed citing lack of jurisdiction. This tactic ultimately failed, leaving Blizzard open to request a default judgement, which if granted would mean no trial.

In all, the case is somewhat similar to a recent lawsuit Riot Games had filed against a cheat maker. The judge in that case awarded Riot a $10 million payout against a cheat service.

KitGuru Says: Similarly to Riot's recent case, I imagine Blizzard is using this as an opportunity to win a big payout in order to warn other cheat sellers to cease activity. If Blizzard wins a case like this once, there is nothing stopping it from doing it again, which could scare off other cheat subscription providers. 

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