Blizzard Squeezes $88 Million From Private Server Owner

[lacktheknack]

These lawsuits always seem unnecessarily harsh. I'd be devastated if i was told to pay something much smaller like $10,000. I can't imagine what having to pay 88 million must feel like, do most people even earn that much in their life time?

Nope, they usually earn around $3000000, tops.

She is sooooooo screwed.

 

[Canid117]

Blizzard worked very hard for several years to develop that product before it came out and have worked very hard to keep it running, and keep new content coming out. No one deserves make make money of of that product other than Blizzard and if your try then in my opinion you deserve to get royally ass fucked by the court. Do not steal other peoples hard work and make money off of it yourself. This is hardly an irrelevant issue. I do not know how much money she made but it could be in the millions or tens of millions depending on how many players she had on her server and how much they spent on micro-transactions. And no one has the right to make money off that product other than the people who created it.

Very true, but the amount of money Blizzard lost on a single server is nowhere near $85,000,000. I guarantee it. Yes, the owner should face charges, but slapping them with a $90 million debt is way past the punishment fitting the crime. What's happened is that the owner is now in massive debt, forever. And she hardly deprived Blizzard of any revenue. The vast majority of people who play on private servers don't want to pay for the game, that's why they're on private servers in the first place. If the server wasn't there, they wouldn't be playing the game at all (in general, this doesn't apply to all the players). Essentially, they put this woman in debt for the remainder of her life, and most likely the life of whoever inherits the debt, over a revenue loss less than if one of their accountants makes a rounding error.

I agree that she should be punished, hosting a private server is a direct violation of copyright law, but the level of punishment in no way fits the crime.

If she was running the server for free then I might agree with you but she wasn't she was making a very nice profit off of micro transactions (about three million according to other posters which yes is no where near the total fine but she almost certainly won't have to pay the whole thing.) No one should make money off the hard work of others without any compensation to the original laborer. If you try then you deserve to get metaphorically raped by the law with a metaphorical barbed wire condom.

 

[lacktheknack]

Double post

You know, blizz wouldn't get a dime from ME had I done that. Its actually pretty easy to make money disappear. Even 3 million dollars.
File for bankruptcy...go to Canada...buy a house for cash...rent said house for cash...geez, why is this chick still around?

She's filing for bankruptcy right now, mark my words.

 

[jp201]

I think this excessively gross lawsuit is just to show anyone else running private servers that we will destroy your life if you keep doing this.

They are clearly making an example that if you run private servers this is what will happen. Would scare anyone to immediately shut down their servers fast.

 

[Cody211282]

Humm I don't know how I feel about this one. I hate Pirates and Blizzard about the same, but this is a little excessive, on the other side she did steal their product and let people play it for free.

The thing is, it's a product they're selling- once they have sold it it is no longer theirs- it is the property of the person who bought it. Would you be happy if someone sold you a house and then told you you were only allowed to use "x brand" furnature in it to make it hospitable? and that you would be prosecuted if you bought the cheaper "y brand"

That's a good point to, and it's also why I don't play MMOs because you never really buy the game, you rent it.

 

[thedeathscythe]

If I was her, I'd make another private server and do the same thing to try and make money to pay off that debt. They'd never see it coming.

 

[Baldr]

This judgment also makes it easier to go after private servers.

 

[Antari]

She took it that extra step by trying to profit from it. Tsk Tsk Tsk. If she'd just been running a free shard she'd likely never have been touched.

 

[marurder]

Key words top remember - they sued a COMPANY, not an individual. Most private servers are not making money. The larger ones are but most are run in a guys home running off donations (rather than gear purchases). This server was targeted as by making a it a company changes it from an education to a profit enterprise. Put simply, you want to make money and you went over the paypal limit so this makes you a big fat target. As for the posters NEVAH MAKE A PRIVATE SERVAH! What a load of BS. This is fear-mongering. For every 1000 servers you see, how many are genuinely shut down directly because of Blizzard? I would wager 1 per 1000. And they are only the very large ones turning profits..

Moral of the story - don't get greedy, change to a company and think your WOW server can turn profits.

 

[Jodah]

She broke the law she should pay. Sure the punishment is pretty hefty but still, its deserved.

 

[Stormz]

That's a bit...much. I understand what she did was wrong and by all mean sue. But 88 MILLION dollars from one person? Blizzard has basically ruined the rest of this persons life. Hope it was worth it dick heads.

 

[drdamo]

As with any drugs: If you underprice the big kahuna, you're gonna feel it.
Swimming in cash ain't enough for Blizzard it seems, they want to drown in it.

I'm glad i stopped playing a year ago.
This "Im the biggest bully"-attitude simply doesn't deserve my money, if not anyones money at all. Its like that annoying Risk player that simply wants everyone dead and own each continent simply because they can.
Well, if they continue like this they'll end up being alone and depressed like the anti-social monstrosity they want to be. A perfect self-fullfilling prophecy i'd say.

Seriously, private servers are wiped every few months, have buggy content, no support, tweaked xp & droprates and are mainly ment for those casual gamers who'd otherwise play a F2P mmo. Who cares, they certainly won't pay the full monthly fee for sure after this debacle.

 

[fanklok]

Now this is harsh. 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.

I'm wiling to bet they were bored, you can only spend so much time sliding down a slip'n'slide made entirely of five million dollar Bearer Bonds that uses liquid gold instead of water before you get tired of it.

 

[FFHAuthor]

Something like that isn't Blizzard looking for money, they're looking at forcing the target into bankrupcy so all the equipment they have is sold at auction and they can't do it again.

 

[theultimateend]

Good to see running a private gaming server has harsher penalties than the maximum liability limit on a catastrophic oil spill (They were capped at 75 million but chose to pay more).

GG America, nothing like making digital theft always more extreme than real world disasters or actual physical theft.

And no, I don't support what they did, I just find it odd that physically stealing a copy of a game gets me lighter charges than downloading a copy of it (which is true).

 

[Yureina]

Wowza... That's what I call an execution. Still, I don't have much sympathy for this person.

 

[The Great JT]

They made a product. Someone stole that product to use for their own gains. Blizzard protected their product.

I see no notion of Blizz being corrupt corporate jerkasses here.