Blizzard Squeezes $88 Million From Private Server Owner

[ucciolord1]

Holy.
Shit.
Don't you think an $85 million fine is a bit much? Like, shouldn't destroying that woman's livelihood- even given the fact that she was costing them money/breaking the law -rest a little uneasily on those Blizzard execs' consciences?
I bet Skeletor feels a bit out of his league right now...

 

[Gindil]

I fully stand behind Blizzard on this one (guess according to that Vaviel or whatshisface earlier in the thread that means I have a pitch black soul of nasty evil). Someone hosts a private server, fine. It's illegal and wrong, but a lot of companies just shrug at it since it's more work to kill one than to let it die its own natural death in due course. Someone is not only hosting a private server, but has close to a half-million users grand total, bilks them for over 3 mil, and brags about how she used the money for personal reasons rather than for server stuff. This is a multiple-time-e whammy.

Wrong? How is it wrong to want to play a free game on the internet? Furthermore, Blizzard will always have people and newer updates. Let's also think about another option for the game. The supposed "pirate" has to pay for a server, updates... The list could go on. But saying she is owed such a large amount just shows how bad the copyright laws are, not that she's a criminal.

Consider; that's not just theft in terms of offering the service for free. That's outrightly tainting the pool. Those people will think of this experience of paying extra to someone who wasn't even using it for the game, and will equate it mentally with the game. Potentially, those gamers are lost customers because of her. I'd be damn pissed too.

Define "theft" when she has stolen nothing from Blizzard.

You say it's overkill? I say it's not only neccesary, it's vital. Not just to send a message to other private server hosters, but to send one that clearly says 'If you profit off us and give our product a bad name, we will SMITE you'.

This sounds to have been legal too. [http://www.geekosystem.com/federal-officials-take-down-nine-domains-for-offering-first-run-films/] More money =/ Moral high ground

The irony? They probably never expected a final settlement to come to those numbers. But her failure to show up and contest it more or less cinched those numbers in. Hell, that probably even surprised Blizzard's own lawyers; who would expect someone NOT to show up to fight something like that? But no. As she did before, she shrugged it all off. And this time, she has to pay the penalty due her.

It's uncanny when someone believes this could actually be fair. Even more depressing that someone believes this supposed punishment fits the crime.

Those of you saying she was wronged by this number, please pause and consider: she broke the law, misused funds, potentially tainted a massive number of users against the product, and then didn't even bother to defend herself when called on all this. If it were your company, your product, your time and energy- hell, not just yours, but that of all those around you who helped make this happen -being twisted for the sake of this woman, can you honestly in your heart of hearts say you'd do any less?

Broke what law?

Misused what funds?

Did she hold the users at gunpoint to play on her server?

Or perhaps she found it to be a foregone conclusion that Blizzard could attack any private server and claim they are infringing a copyright and winning in court that favors Blizzard's draconian ruling. Yeah... Rock and a hard place.

Especially when one private server is essentially dying for the sins of ALL private servers.

 

[Necromancer1991]

Ok Blizzard has the Uber-Lawyers from Activision backing them out, thats like going 10 rounds with Mike Tyson (who happens to be wearing Brass Knuckles BTW)

 

[Alar]

Her best bet would be to not appeal and file Bankruptcy. Let the Bankruptcy Court fight it out with Blizzard.

Exactly.

As much of a Blizzard fanboy I am, this seems very harsh. There's no way in hell the private server owner could have made that much money, or prevented Blizzard from making that much money. Not unless this server has been running since year one of WoW, and has been constantly taking microtransaction and subscription fees from its players.

 

[zombays]

I'd rather be in jail....

 

[Midnight Crossroads]

Blizzard ganked private servers.

 

[Lalithor]

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So, uhh, you believe that piracy is costing any given industry trillions of dollars?

I'm fairly certain piracy costs industry money. The only way piracy doesn't cost an industry money is if there are people that buys multiple copies of a product for every person that pirates it and never follows through with a purchase. I don't know many people that buy multiple copies of games or CD's just for the hell of it, and I know many people that pirate and never buy the product.

The discussion is generally about whether or not $88 million dollars is a fair and justifiable assessment of the revenue Blizzard lost to "piracy". I think it is absolutely justifiable given 427,000 people playing WoW for a year (I'm assuming the timeframe, I don't have information about how long the servers were up) while circumventing the subscription fee = 88 million dollars of potential revenue lost, which is what was awarded in damages.

Like I said, I was pleasantly surprised that the number seemed reasonable, and not hyperinflated like the RIAA's lawsuits where they seek trillions of dollars for 12 songs, which I don't believe is justifiable at all.

 

[Jfswift]

That's just stupid. That just seems excessive and pointless to sue for that much, can't they find a more creative solution than to do this?

 

[Sephiwind]

I'm sorry but what ever happened to letting the punishment fit the crime? Yeah she commited piracy by makeing this private server, and made some cash on micro transactions. Sure there should be some punitive damages but for christ sake the chick will be ruined for the rest of her life. Even if she files bankruptcy and starts over she is still completely screwed. When you file bankruptcy you end up with no credit, you can't buy most things now a days like a car, computer, major appliance, house, rent an apartment. Things like that.

I all ways thought the punishment is supposed to fit the crime? How is completely destroying some one financially for the next 10-20 years of their life a suitable punishment?

 

[Rhiehn]

Why does everyone think Blizzard just pulled the number out of their asses with intentions to ruin her life. The court agreed on it, because it's about how much it would have cost for the 427,000 people playing on her server to play on Blizzard's servers for the year and a half they'd been playing on it for. It doesn't hurt that she didn't even show up to contest it.

 

[Corvuus]

Blizzard is right.

As to someone saying that this isn't "theft", you are wrong. it is 'theft' in any definition of the word and in terms of law, "unfair business competition".

Someone *steals* your product and then offers it for considerably less amount of money, ranging from 'free' to 'microtransaction'. They proceed to make 3 MILLION dollars from this enterprise which is considerably larger than whatever amount they may have spent on servers/supporting this scheme.

I believe most private servers have bugs or other 'small foibles' but in general, you get pretty much the entire full content of the game. With enough time and effort, you could probably get a private server relatively bug free that emulates WoW. By *stealing* the product and offering private server for a fraction of the cost to the individual user, you are stealing their product and unfair business competition since you are offering their own product for less money.

The list just goes on. There is no possible justification in existence for a private server with PROFIT. A non-profit/just donation to pay for upkeep is one thing, but making 3 million for basically doing nothing but being greedy enough to try?

They deserve to have their life ruined since, quite frankly, they KNEW what they were doing. It isn't like a child or someone who "didn't know" or heck, even showed up to their court case. They knew it was wrong and they still did it.

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Blizzard won't see that much money from the defendant anyway, so the issue of it being "too much" is silly. Trying to use the fact that it is "88 million" to downplay how RIGHT blizzard is and how wrong the private-server-transaction is, is just spin. Even if it was 20 mil, heck even 10 million, there would still be people complaining that it is "too much". I'd love it if it was just 3 million (what they can prove that they did make; presumably these people made even MORE) but involved mandatory prison time of at least several years.

C

 

[Jimmyjames]

Sure, private servers are illegal, but taking in consideration that WoW has 11.5 million people playing it on the official servers, I wonder why they are starting to attack private servers.

You kind of answered your own question. They want to make sure they keep those 11.5 million paying subscribers.

 

[acosn]

Ok. So you run a private server and illegally host a game. That's scuzzy.


Then you charge micro-transactions for in-game rewards?

Damn.

I'd charge them half their income for life for assuming people would be stupid and let them get away with it.

And people will always hate Blizzard by simple merit of the fact that they're popular. I mean, its well deserved popularity (literally no one in the industry can match Blizzard's quality-per-release records) but it's still sheer popularity. It's the same principal as why people inherently hate Halo.

EDIT: I also wouldn't worry too much about it. Aside from forking over the money they made illegally most of the rest of the money that has to get paid up can be dodged in the legal hoop-lah of filing for bankruptcy. People take copy-right infringement seriously. While this isn't a literal case of it, taking someone else's work and profiting off of it is.

 

[Rhiehn]

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Really? How blind can you get? I want you to think about why, the 427 thousand people who played on the private server, did what they did. Do you really believe any more than 0.1% of those people would've played on Blizzard's WoW servers, were private servers not an option? There is a reason these exist, and that's because people don't want to pay. They won't suddenly start wanting to pay if there are no more private servers, they'll just move on to the next activity. No, these aren't your customers, and no, these aren't lost sales. The fact that people donated money for some items or whatever only proves that people approve more of this business model than Blizzard's.

My question still stands. Do you believe piracy is costing, let's say, the movie industry, trillions of dollars? Because it would certainly look like it if we glance at the numbers on some torrent sites and do one of these calculations.

Did anyone mention that she didn't show up to contest it, so Blizzard got what I would assume was the maximum they could reasonably explain to the judge, expecting to settle for much less, but since she didn't show up, they were awarded the 88 million, and again, it's irrelevant, the amount awarded had she showed up would have been beyond her ability to pay it, making the amount totally arbitrary. And yes, I do believe more than 0.1% of the people playing would have played on Blizzard's servers, certainly nowhere in the neighborhood of 100%, but enough that they could sue her for more than she could pay, which would result in her filing bankruptcy.

 

[Gindil]

I'm fairly certain piracy costs industry money. The only way piracy doesn't cost an industry money is if there are people that buys multiple copies of a product for every person that pirates it and never follows through with a purchase. I don't know many people that buy multiple copies of games or CD's just for the hell of it, and I know many people that pirate and never buy the product.

The discussion is generally about whether or not $88 million dollars is a fair and justifiable assessment of the revenue Blizzard lost to "piracy". I think it is absolutely justifiable given 427,000 people playing WoW for a year (I'm assuming the timeframe, I don't have information about how long the servers were up) while circumventing the subscription fee = 88 million dollars of potential revenue lost, which is what was awarded in damages.

Like I said, I was pleasantly surprised that the number seemed reasonable, and not hyperinflated like the RIAA's lawsuits where they seek trillions of dollars for 12 songs, which I don't believe is justifiable at all.

I would like proof that piracy has caused the gaming industry money. I've been studying "copyright infringement" for a long time and I can't tell how piracy affects the industry. Hell, the Government Accountability Office did a report on piracy and yet they can't tell all of the benefits. But they have found that there were some benefits that were positive such as sampling a product (in this case looking at a private vs Blizzard server) or deciding if a game is worth a longer investment. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone can pay $30 bucks a month for entertainment.

$88 million dollars is excessive to the 10th degree. That's more than half of their revenue in 2009 (which was 1.2 billion [http://seekingalpha.com/article/193148-blizzard-s-world-of-warcraft-the-china-growth-story]). Most people on a private server weren't going to pay the fee regardless so how was Blizzard losing money?

Before you get into the microtransaction system, I'd like to explain that perhaps there was a community that liked what she was doing. Maybe she was taking donations. Perhaps she was a codemonkey on the side who was doing a lot of custom quests. Fact of the matter is, the microtransaction system could be anything. It could be used to vilify her because she wasn't going to go to a court that was against her from the start.

Unfortunately, it seems that there is moral dissonance from your last paragraph. Out of all of the servers out there, Blizzard picked a fight with the weakest one to make an example. Exactly like the RIAA did in the early days of trying to kill off Napster. To make matters worse, there is really no way to pay Blizzard that amount. It was just pulled out of the air for all it's worth.

 

[es-]

Before you get into the microtransaction system, I'd like to explain that perhaps there was a community that liked what she was doing. Maybe she was taking donations. Perhaps she was a codemonkey on the side who was doing a lot of custom quests. Fact of the matter is, the microtransaction system could be anything. It could be used to vilify her because she wasn't going to go to a court that was against her from the start.

Trust me, she didn't do anything to benefit the community.

I used to play there (4 years ago and for a week, before I played on the official WoW realms proper), and what honestly baffles me most were people who were willing to fork over that kind of money for very poor service and uptime.

The reason she used microtransactions was to provide players with really out-there items in game. I don't know what items they were, having never entertained the idea myself, but I would imagine they must have been of great value if people were throwing money at her with the full knowledge that the money wasn't used for the upkeep of the server. Plus the constant barrage of advertisements begging you to donate "otherwise the server would go offline" seemed to be a good enough scare tactic for teenagers.

I roughly remember the time when she began using the donated money for her own personal expenses. She directed about $3000 of the donations to some kid with cancer without the approval of the community, despite her own TOS saying that the donations would only be directed to the upkeep of the servers. Problem with contesting this fact was that anyone who said it wasn't right to direct money to non-server causes was painted as an asshole (and since it was to a kid with cancer, it was a fine line to tread).

Then she started using the money for treadmills and all those things, I believe. There was a brief hoo-ha in the community demanding she produce proof that the treadmills were bought with her own money. She gave them the big go-around ("oh, the transaction is with my friend, I can't access it, she changed the password, she's out of town etc.") and then just plain banned everyone who brought it up. I didn't really follow the drama thereafter.

There were a lot of key people and customers who kept jumping ship, so I'm actually quite surprised she managed to keep it afloat for so long before getting caught. The biggest attraction that she provided was that it was a popular free server (and I imagine a fairly good one before those key people decided to leave), and way back then, whenever you Googled "wow private server" it'll be the first search result.

Blizzard isn't that foolish to believe they'll ever see a penny of that 88 million. Peyton wasn't "the weakest" by any means - she buoyed her extravagance on well-meant donations by the community through an illegal means of transaction. If she is the person amongst all the others who run private WoW servers to be punished and scare the others into not making a profit off their game, it's well deserved.