Blizzard, creators of the MMORPG World of Warcraft (WoW), have just won a legal battle surrounding the WoW MMOGlider software. The creation, made by MDY Industries, allows plays to automate many of the repetitive steps the video game involves, like attacking and acquiring loot.
The case was based on Blizzard's claim the company infringed its copyright, and the courts agreed it broke the license terms which players sign on for when they first play the game. Which part of the licensing agreement says you must attack all monsters manually and the like is beyond me, but I assume it includes something about forbidding the alteration of gameplay.
Like me, you may have been assuming the software was free, but it is not. Creator of Glider, Michael Donnelly sold it for $25 a copy, and moved more than 100,000 of them. That's about $2.5 million in revenue.
Blizzard will be pocketing about $6 million from the suit, but "experts" say damages could have been worse if MDY hadn't won some of its arguments about the damages in the court room. In any case, Blizzard can still appeal the ruling which threw out its claim to double or triple the cash settlement.
The case will go to court again in January, when the issues remaining to be resolved are expected to have settled. One issue is whether or not MDY broke the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act and whether the Glider creator will have to pay the money himself or not. Would not want to be that guy right now.
What is your take on this? Should he be sued? Should Blizzard have maybe partnered with him and used his software to meet the demand obviously a siginificant amount of gamers have for this sort of thing? Is it cheating, or cheap, or defeating of the purpose of playing a game?
