Blizzard wins $8.5m lawsuit against bot makers

Blizzard has emerged victorious in a long-running lawsuit against Bossland, a German company that creates cheats for online games.

As reported by TorrentFreak, the US court ruled that Bossland owed Blizzard $8,563,600 for 42,818 violations. Bossland would additionally have to pay $174,872 in Blizzard's legal fees.

The ruling also prevents Bossland from selling its wares in the US. This includes hacks like Honorbuddy, Demonbuddy, Stormbuddy, Hearthbuddy, and Watchover Tyrant.

The court ruled that these products infringed upon Blizzard's product by damaging the player experience for honest, non-cheating folk. "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 ruled. "Accordingly, the in-game cheating also harms Blizzard's goodwill and reputation."

Beyond diminishing its audience, the Bossland bots also cost Blizzard a lot as the game developer was spending substantial funds to combat the nefarious hacks.

Indeed in 2015 Blizzard figured out a way to catch the Honorbuddy bot, a cheat that would allow World of Warcraft players to automate their characters so they could level up and earn resources while away from their computer.