I will truly never understand why people use cheats, bots or hacks to achieve a better outcome in computer games. And I find World of Warcraft boring even without these cheats. So when people use bots to collect fictional herbs and other odds and ends in the fictional World of Warcraft world, I must say this, to me, falls under the category of one of the unfathomable mysteries of mankind. But so what? I don’t even understand the draw of Nicolas Cage’s movies or those burping apps for your phone, so I’m presumably not the normal, average consumer.
I have thus been observing the litigation brought by World of Warcraft producers, Blizzard Entertainment, against the developers of these cheat bots with a certain astonishment about the popularity of these bots, yes, but, above all, with a legal interest in the outcome of the litigation. The courts that previously had to deal with the issue in Germany and the U.S. have come to similar conclusions for similar arguments. However, the corresponding legal theories have completely different fields of law in the American and German legal systems. And I find this much more exciting than using cheats to finagle my way through a video game:
(1) Blizzard Entertainment has just won a case before the United States District Court of Central California (Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. v. Ceiling Fan Software LLC, Judgment from 09/23/2013, Case No. SACV 12-00144 JVS). The defendant was a software company called “Ceiling Fan”, which has sold a number of World of Warcraft bots with names like “Pocket Gnome” or “Shadow Bot”. The U.S. District Court banned the sale of the software and ordered the defendant to pay $7 million in damages, because this
“knowingly and tortiously induced Blizzard’s game players to breach a term of their contracts with Blizzard that prohibits the use of the type of software programs sold by Defendants.”
The American court derives the user’s liability from tort law, an approach that wouldn’t work under German law. German tort law only protects a few specific legal rights, such as ownership, possession, bodily integrity, etc. And while “companies” are theoretically also protected by German tort law, the scope of this protection is fairly limited and usually does not apply to activities that only indirectly reduce a company’s earnings. A well desired restriction since German law provides some additional and very specific rules to protect businesses elsewhere.
(2) Blizzard Entertainment has won a legal dispute against Bossland GmbH – the German developer of the “Honorbuddy” cheat bot – before the Hamburg District Court (Landgericht Hamburg, Judgment from 05/23/2013, 312 I 390/11). The court imposed an injunction on the bot developers, which derived from competition law, unlike in the American court. “Competition” in German law applies not only when two companies are active on the same market and offer interchangeable goods or services. In fact, this law also includes some “impediment competition” case groups, wherein a company purposefully damages another company because the act of doing so can bring about a direct advantage. According to the Hamburg Regional Court the plaintiff is due injunctive relief because the defendant operated in a manner that was purposefully damaging in terms of Section 4, No. 10 of the Law Against Unfair Practices (Gesetz gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb – UWG). Bossland severely interfered with the World of Warcraft’s gaming system in that it
“…made it possible for players and induced players to use bots and to thereby breach the game’s rules…”,
rules that included the prohibition of
“… using any other third party software that changes the World of Warcraft game experience”.
The arguments of the German and American courts are thus very similar as both are based upon an inducement of the user to breach the terms of their contracts. And perhaps this will usher in an era of peace in the World of Warcraft universe, one in which only fair players collect their herbs, gold pieces and other odds and ends with honest work.
