Bossland Loses $8 Million Lawsuit to Blizzard

As the competitive scene in video games continues to grow, the demand for “cheats” and “hacks” continue to skyrocket to “help” those combat against those with skill. A corporation that is at the forefront of cheating is the German company Bossland. Bossland has gained notoriety for creating fraud services for numerous of Blizzard’s games like Overwatch, Hearthstone, and Diablo 3. Needless to say, Blizzard is not happy with people using their services to gain an edge in competition, and thus the two companies have been engaged in court for a while in both the United States and Germany.

Last week the US case came to a close in the California District Court with Blizzard coming out with an easy victory due to Bossland failing to represent itself. The court agreed that Bossland’s “hacks” bypassed all of Blizzard’s cheat protection technology thus violating Blizzard’s DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act).  The court’s order reads, “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.”

The court awarded Blizzard several millions of dollars in copyright damages. Blizzard request for 42,818 violations within the United States was approved, totaling $8,563,600 with an additional $174,872 in attorneys’ fees. The court prohibits Bossland from marketing or selling any cheats within the United States. So hacks like “Hearthbuddy,” and “Watchover Tyrant” cannot be monetized in the United States for example.

“Players of the Blizzard Games lodge complaints against cheating players, which has caused users to grow dissatisfied with the Blizzard Games and cease playing,” the court stated before the ruling. “Accordingly, the in-game cheating also harms Blizzard’s goodwill and reputation.”

Events like these aren’t the first time Blizzard has fought and won in court against a cheat-maker. Blizzard went after World of Warcraft bot-makers MDY Industries in 2008 who sold bots that controlled player’s characters which automatically did repetitive tasks such as killing monsters, loot farming, and turning low-level characters into powerful ones.