Blizzard suing Starcraft 2 cheat makers

[quote=Matt]I'm pretty sure it's cheathappens.com that they're suing, for making a Starcraft 2 trainer. http://kotaku.com/5665407/blizzard-suing-starcraft-ii-cheat-makers http://au.gamespot.com/news/6282171.html http://www.cheathappens.com/ http://www.cheathappens.com/article_blizzardbans.asp[/quote]

[quote=B-Wong]Makes sense. Really ruins the game for the ones that actually play the game legitly.[/quote]

[quote=Matt]Does anyone know what these cheats let players do exactly? The article doesn't say, but seems like that is a pretty important detail. I hate online cheaters (definitely ban them) but, I don't like the way Blizz is handling this at all... It seems overboard and unnecessary. It's not like they didn't see this coming either, every game in existence has cheats, even Starcraft 1 which managed to do just fine regardless. I bet a simple letter to the cheat makers warning them would have been enough, they wouldn't risk facing a legal battle with Blizzard over a few bucks. It sounds like Blizz knew these guys were going to make a cheat, but they waited till now to do something about it? "...in excess of the scope of their limited license, as set forth in the EULA and ToU, and create derivative works of StarCraft II..." Gross :( I think they should definitely do something about it, but waiting till now and suing them seems really shitty... Unless they did ask the cheat makers to pull the cheats and they refused, then I guess they have no choice.[/quote]

[quote=B-Wong]There's a lot of things that people can do, maphacks, infinite minerals, blah blah blah. It's ridiculous the advantage anyone gets with hacks and I don't see the point in it and the cheats have only been out as long as the game (the game is still very, very young) and I think because Starcraft itself is already a fucking huge franchise they probably feel like it's necessary to keep everything fair for progamers and the likes. They just don't want any overwhelming imbalances, I guess. Since they're actually making money off of it, that's kinda fair to the user-base, too (i.e. F2p games don't have the best anti-hacks (fucking Combat Arms and shit)).[/quote]

[quote=Matt]Yeah for sure. Even so, seems like maybe they coulda taken better measures to make it hard to cheat instead of waiting for it to happen and then suing people O_O[/quote]

[quote=B-Wong]Yea. But the only way I could see going around it would be to give a few warnings till you take actual action. You can't exactly force em to take down all their cheats for Starcraft 2, not sure what else there is.[/quote]

[quote=Alahric]Well they do have a long as* agreement, which I do believe says that modifications like cheats can get you banned. So in the end they'll just end up lossing their accounts, if Blizzard really does something about it. I think this is just a matter of making money out of it.[/quote]

[quote=Oberron]It's easy to see that one of the reasons they would sue cheat makers is for making money off of Blizz' hard work though. They spend a lot of money to develop these games, and even make in-game cheat codes just so people can have what they want, and here is this other company making money off their dime. I mean, it's not like people are paying for the trainers, but they are getting paid by the adverts on thier website, so they are making some money. On the other hand, it's kinda odd to see people being banned on the offline portion right up until you see that they can get achievements. If Blizz wanted to fix this without causing all this strife, they just need to add a verification file the game directory that disables achievements if the files have been modified. Then everyone wins. I understand why this is a big deal, cuz it's kinda like saying, "Look at me, I won a Game that was 2v5!" when in reality, 4 of those 5 people you were playing against were Easy-mode AI's... Or buying a WoW account that has a decked ICC25 tank. You KNOW people will want that person to tank, but that player has NO idea how to play the game. Nobody want's to be lied to like that.[/quote]

[quote=Matt]Agreed that making money selling trainers is sketchy. However they don't seem to focus on that aspect at all in their statements, they seem to only be focusing on them breaking the ToU. And really if that was the problem, I bet a legal warning back at launch time would have been enough. These guys have been selling trainers for any and all games for years and as far as I know this is the first time a publisher has gotten pissed. Without getting into a long-winded explanation, I feel that cheats and trainers for offline games or game modes should always be allowed... If their fuss is about achievements, then yeah, let people disable achievements and then be free to explore the game as they see fit. I don't give a crap about achievements and would much rather have the freedom to explore and mess with the games I buy how ever I want (but not online games of course). I kinda feel like if it was so easy to make and use trainers in online matches, Blizzard is just as much at fault... They should have built the game with that in mind, obviously people are gonna do it! Suing these guys isn't gonna fix it anyways, there are probably dozens of other trainers already floating around that they have nobody to sue over.[/quote]

[quote=Alahric]If they cheat offline there is no way of knowing, so I guess you can avoid that unless you post it on the internett. Then off course you can say it was editing that made it look like cheating, so I guess this has to concern the online community.[/quote]