【2004 Archives】

Blizzard Entertainment004 Archivesdelivering its message loud and clear: If you make cheats for any Blizzard games, you're going to pay. A lot.

Blizzard -- the company behind Overwatch, Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, Diablo,and Heroes of the Storm -- won a lawsuit last week against the creators of multiple cheating services used on its games. The cheating company Bossland now owes Blizzard over $8.7 million.

The court's judgement (obtained by TorrentFreak) declares that Bossland must stop its operations and pay Blizzard over $8.7 million for copyright violations and covering Blizzard's court fees. The judgement was a default, meaning Bossland did not respond to summons or failed to appear in court.

Bossland creates and sells cheats for most of Blizzard's current games, including Hearthbuddy (Hearthstonebot), Demonbuddy (Diablo 3bot), and Honorbuddy (World of Warcraftbot). There are also two other products mentioned in the lawsuit for Overwatchand Heroes of the Storm -- Watchover Tyrant, and Stormbuddy -- that are currently unavailable.

According to court records, Bossland has accrued 42,818 copyright violations against Blizzard within the United States.

Blizzard set the terms on its lawsuit against Bossland in March, asking for minimum damages of $200 for each instance of copyright violation. Blizzard said (and courts agreed) that each cheat sold by Bossland was a violation of copyright.

Bossland has only been barred from creating and selling its cheats in the United States. Its CEO Zwetan Letschew told TorrentFreakit would continue its legal battle and the company won't stop selling its cheats outside of the U.S.

(Editor: {typename type="name"/})