Blizzard Squeezes $88 Million From Private Server Owner

[Demoren]

Seems silly to hate on Blizzard for going after a criminal. I know they're rich or whatever but they aren't going to see much more than the 3 million the person made paid back to them. The point was to put the person out of business permanently not to make a bunch of money. This is more of a put a head on a pike as an example thing than a "we are greedy" thing.

 

[Xiorell]

So is it illegal, to run a private server, FOR YOURSELF, that only you can access?
For the purpose of solo dicking around and the like

 

[Assassin Xaero]

0__O Holy balls. As though they needed the money...why did they have to be dicks? What happened to "stop doing that right now or we'll take all your money. And then some"

No word of warning?

I'm sure they've probably warned them numerous times and the people just said "yeah right, whatever".

 

[Booze Zombie]

Just makes Blizzard look likes cocks, if I'm to be honest.

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).

It's a strange world and it just keeps on surprising me all the time.

 

[Glamorgan]

Woah. I'm a little nervous actually. Just don't piss of the big companies, hey kiddies?

 

[Judgement101]

I justed to play that server...it sucked...they deserve this...

 

[Reyalsfeihc]

This whole lawsuit seems aggressively unnecessary. One would think they could just issue a C&D and call it a day, instead of ruining someone's entire financial future over a, to be frank, irrelevant issue.

Actually, if I remember correctly, they DID issue a cease and desist to at least one private server that was very well-known, as well as several others. Unless I'm in the wrong (which I may be) Scapegaming was issued one of these orders.
No matter what happened, though, it was going to happen eventually. The profits he took in from Blizzard's property is just insane.

I don't even really LIKE World of Warcraft, and Blizzard did the right thing, but eighty eight million dollars? I'd like to see what happy fantasy land they live in where they were actually deprived of that much money due to one server/set of servers. The three million in "disgorged profits" seems much more reasonable.

The reason why it's such a large sum of cash is because this server was SELLING ITEMS to the people who played on it. Knowing how pissed a lot of people get waiting for a .1-1% drop to occur, I could see why this would be appealing to some.

 

[SelectivelyEvil13]

Seeking to shut the server down and protect their financial assets from others "stealing" money from their IP? Fine. Ruining someone's entire financial future and even life so that they may as well start living on the street or kill themselves now? Not fine, that's just a dick move, and sounds exactly like the sort of thing that stems from having someone with the mentality of Kotick as your CEO.

this. i can undertand shutting it down and giving her a small fine or somehow make her reimburse the company through work or something, but they just literally ruined her life, if i were her, either A) get off the map asap, or B) kill myself.

that is a ridiculous amount

I have to agree, especially because I was once in a life/death situation and the thought of money was sometimes scarier than anything else. Fortunately that all panned out 100% fine. In the case of this server shutdown, it is a punishment that seems a bit overkill in that it is really just destroying her life. And as Slayer_2 said, and I was thinking, all for a game. :/

For her sake, I hope they can work out something realistic.

 

[ChaoticLegion]

Well.... people have always been warned that WoW will ruin your life xD

 

[Radelaide]

Another reason why MMOGs are a stupid idea.

 

[stabnex]

What.
The.
Hell.

Tell me you're joking.
THAT'S NOT FUNNY!

Fuck you, Blizzard. I'm cancelling my WoW Subscription RIGHT NOW.

BRB

*tick*tick*tick*tick*tick*tick*tick*tick*tick*tick*tick*tick*tick*

THERE! No more of my money for you.

You think I'm joking?

Spoiler: Click and see

 

[Nannernade]

Sure that was wrong, but holy shit Blizzard lay the fuck off, why not just give her a life time sentence since she'll never be able to pay the money anyway, poor girl even though she did break the law.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Seeking to shut the server down and protect their financial assets from others "stealing" money from their IP? Fine. Ruining someone's entire financial future and even life so that they may as well start living on the street or kill themselves now? Not fine, that's just a dick move, and sounds exactly like the sort of thing that stems from having someone with the mentality of Kotick as your CEO.

this. i can undertand shutting it down and giving her a small fine or somehow make her reimburse the company through work or something, but they just literally ruined her life, if i were her, either A) get off the map asap, or B) kill myself.

that is a ridiculous amount

I have to agree, especially because I was once in a life/death situation and the thought of money was sometimes scarier than anything else. Fortunately that all panned out 100% fine. In the case of this server shutdown, it is a punishment that seems a bit overkill in that it is really just destroying her life. And as Slayer_2 said, and I was thinking, all for a game. :/

For her sake, I hope they can work out something realistic.

exactly. i understand alot of work goes into the game and whatnot, but did she fucking murder someone? did she rape someone? did she destroy someones home? hell no. seriously they should have turned this into a positive somehow, but instead they fucking put her under a microscope underneath the sun, because she is about to burn alive for the rest of her life.

 

[SirDerick]

they already have enough money to buy saturn and all of its moons why did they do it

I don't think they did it for the money, they did it to make a statement.

And that statement was "Running an illegal server? You gonna regret that spunky."

 

[SirDerick]

Do you know how long was she running this, how many players and how much money she made?

Depending on the amounts, this could be either be justified or overkill.

She made $3,052,339, disgorgement means you pay the cash you made illegally. She will just declare bankruptcy and walk away from the civil debt.

I'm sorry, i'm my school we used commas instead of decimals.

Did she make 3 million or 3 thousand?

 

[Zhukov]

Blizzard: totally not an evil corporation now.

 

[mishagale]

Kinda off-topic, but I'm wondering how the hell a private server works? Surely the server code (as opposed to the client software that everyone has) is a closely guarded trade secret?
So did someone actually reverse engineer the whole thing (which would be damn impressive) or was a version of Blizzard's code somehow leaked?

 

[Sonic Doctor]

I am a disappointed that people are bashing Blizzard over this. I don't believe that Blizzard was being this overbearing evil giant company that just wants to grab all the money it can, like some of the comments in here I feel are insinuating. I hate how it seems like the norm of today is that people either acknowledge that the person did wrong, but still go all weepy for the criminal, or they just side with the criminal all together, especially if it is a big company.

The woman did wrong; she made a lot of money off property that wasn't hers. She broke the law and now she pays for her actions. Yes, 88 million is an incredible amount over what she made off the criminal act, but she should have thought about the consequences before she acted and avoided it by not doing what she did. She has to be pretty stupid to think she would get away with it. It is the internet, if you do something wrong, eventually someone will find out and do the right thing and point you out to the proper authorities. There are no secrets on the internet.

The large amount of money set was most likely to stand as a deterrent to other criminals. They will be caught eventually and they will pay dearly. I'll go all Doctor Who on this and quote the Judoon, "Justice is swift!"

 

[Adventurer2626]

Good God! I think my soul just got a couple hairline fractures from the shockwave of LAW PWNAGE. No doubt they deserved it but...$88 million levied on one person who's not a big time CEO? Day-um.