Blizzard Suing StarCraft 2 Hackers

[Vlad Rose]

Some of you not too keen on the idea seem to forget, and or may be ignorant to the fact of the problems this causes.
Their have been multiple games and online games that suffered heavy revenue loss over this crap.
~Paying Players Leaving that refuse to deal with or compete. <-More so an issue in mmo's
~Online competitive games with dead servers only weeks after release because some exploit was found and the company knew nothing about it over the fact it came on so fast. (80% of those players will not return. They moved on.)
~Server instability cause by the hacks or exploits. And most of the nasty one's are not stumbled upon. They'll spend hours reversing code to find an exploit.
~Stolen software that is still fully supported by a company.
(If they toss it on the vaporware shelf then have at it I say)

And what does all of the above plus many I did not list equate to?
Loss of revenue, Loss of player base, and in some cases a good IP gets considered as failed, and or the micro Dev team no longer has a job because the game and support was shut down years before projection of such actions.

Now what do you think a court would do to an every day avg Joe pulling this in their daily life on the street to a company?
Oh that's right we're on the internet.

By the way. To the guy that made the comment of a middle man being accused.
A simple data log requested from the ISP will show this. Traffic data can tell more about a household then any recovered data from their hardware.
Yes even if it's the neighbor kid stealing next door granny's wifi.

Now before the rest overly jump to conclusions.
They will sue the living hell out of the creator, lifetime ban/delete the accounts that used it, and charge the creator for every person that used it. They will not slam every player/user in court.

Read what I responded to the other guy.

Also, that's all cool, but if Mods, Admins and GMs aren't there to handle cheaters, then what exactly are they there for?

That has always been an INTEGRAL PART of their job. Blizzard is shitting itself once more because their games are get this: LESS hacked than the rest.

They design better games than most people so they're harder to exploit. If they'd throw their cash and resources at making even less exploitable games instead of going ballistic with their lawyers, we'd have even less hackers (again, SC2 is seriously not that hacked, I play that shit 5 hours a day, minimum).

Besides, stop being so poor at math. An average person will never have millions to pay all those companies the outrageous sums they're asking for.

So all in all, their "million dollar lawsuits" are worth jack shit.

From an average salary, what will they get? 100/200$ a month, tops? What good will that bring them once they waste so much cash on their lawsuit?

Yeah, sure, the people found guilty are gonna have to pay that back, but who's paying in the meantime? The company? The government? They'll go out of business long before they get the money back. Maybe they'll be able to get the legals fees back, but all in all, it's making EVERYONE lose money AND time.

In short, lawsuits vs individuals are worth jack shit.

Not to mention the bad publicity with lawsuits.

Honestly, it should be the GMs and maintainers of the games to properly handle people hacking (which are security holes in game code). I know in the case of Aeria games, they just ban everyone in the entire room of Wolfteam if even only person is hacking. Me and a friend of mine got banned for reporting hacker. Very poor support by that company and will obviously never get service from us again. Similar bad support for Blizzard for banning a WoW account that I had cancelled 6 months beforehand but a hacker got a hold of that they will never provide any form of compensation for.

Now just think if companies sued everyone that got banned for anything. There would be a ton of innocent people fighting the companies in court that they once supported instead of just boycotting them.

What negative publicity are you talking about the vast majority of us that play SCll are all in favor of their actions. I think its a positive, of course I pay for my games and I don't try to get hacked copies.

The bad publicity they'd get for filing a lawsuit against a player that didn't do anything wrong. AFAIK, to run a hacked copy of a game, you will need a generated keycode or an account that has been hacked. The keycode or account more than likely will not belong to the hacker, but to a victim of the hack. If they go by IP address, those are dynamically assigned by internet providers such as Charter and change on occasion. If they go after someone based on one of those methods, there is a good chance they will end up suing the wrong person.

I don't run hacked copies either, but have been a victim of buying a game at the store and having to exchange it for a new copy because it's keycode had been compromised.

 

[littleleo]

Some of you not too keen on the idea seem to forget, and or may be ignorant to the fact of the problems this causes.
Their have been multiple games and online games that suffered heavy revenue loss over this crap.
~Paying Players Leaving that refuse to deal with or compete. <-More so an issue in mmo's
~Online competitive games with dead servers only weeks after release because some exploit was found and the company knew nothing about it over the fact it came on so fast. (80% of those players will not return. They moved on.)
~Server instability cause by the hacks or exploits. And most of the nasty one's are not stumbled upon. They'll spend hours reversing code to find an exploit.
~Stolen software that is still fully supported by a company.
(If they toss it on the vaporware shelf then have at it I say)

And what does all of the above plus many I did not list equate to?
Loss of revenue, Loss of player base, and in some cases a good IP gets considered as failed, and or the micro Dev team no longer has a job because the game and support was shut down years before projection of such actions.

Now what do you think a court would do to an every day avg Joe pulling this in their daily life on the street to a company?
Oh that's right we're on the internet.

By the way. To the guy that made the comment of a middle man being accused.
A simple data log requested from the ISP will show this. Traffic data can tell more about a household then any recovered data from their hardware.
Yes even if it's the neighbor kid stealing next door granny's wifi.

Now before the rest overly jump to conclusions.
They will sue the living hell out of the creator, lifetime ban/delete the accounts that used it, and charge the creator for every person that used it. They will not slam every player/user in court.

Read what I responded to the other guy.

Also, that's all cool, but if Mods, Admins and GMs aren't there to handle cheaters, then what exactly are they there for?

That has always been an INTEGRAL PART of their job. Blizzard is shitting itself once more because their games are get this: LESS hacked than the rest.

They design better games than most people so they're harder to exploit. If they'd throw their cash and resources at making even less exploitable games instead of going ballistic with their lawyers, we'd have even less hackers (again, SC2 is seriously not that hacked, I play that shit 5 hours a day, minimum).

Besides, stop being so poor at math. An average person will never have millions to pay all those companies the outrageous sums they're asking for.

So all in all, their "million dollar lawsuits" are worth jack shit.

From an average salary, what will they get? 100/200$ a month, tops? What good will that bring them once they waste so much cash on their lawsuit?

Yeah, sure, the people found guilty are gonna have to pay that back, but who's paying in the meantime? The company? The government? They'll go out of business long before they get the money back. Maybe they'll be able to get the legals fees back, but all in all, it's making EVERYONE lose money AND time.

In short, lawsuits vs individuals are worth jack shit.

Not to mention the bad publicity with lawsuits.

Honestly, it should be the GMs and maintainers of the games to properly handle people hacking (which are security holes in game code). I know in the case of Aeria games, they just ban everyone in the entire room of Wolfteam if even only person is hacking. Me and a friend of mine got banned for reporting hacker. Very poor support by that company and will obviously never get service from us again. Similar bad support for Blizzard for banning a WoW account that I had cancelled 6 months beforehand but a hacker got a hold of that they will never provide any form of compensation for.

Now just think if companies sued everyone that got banned for anything. There would be a ton of innocent people fighting the companies in court that they once supported instead of just boycotting them.

What negative publicity are you talking about the vast majority of us that play SCll are all in favor of their actions. I think its a positive, of course I pay for my games and I don't try to get hacked copies.

The bad publicity they'd get for filing a lawsuit against a player that didn't do anything wrong. AFAIK, to run a hacked copy of a game, you will need a generated keycode or an account that has been hacked. The keycode or account more than likely will not belong to the hacker, but to a victim of the hack. If they go by IP address, those are dynamically assigned by internet providers such as Charter and change on occasion. If they go after someone based on one of those methods, there is a good chance they will end up suing the wrong person.

I don't run hacked copies either, but have been a victim of buying a game at the store and having to exchange it for a new copy because it's keycode had been compromised.

Clearly that is not what this is about you have a Battlenet account and if gets hacked you have ways to deal with the problem. You can buy the software and upgrades thru your Battle net account so you can't accidentally get a hacked copy since your buying it from Blizzard directly. And I don't see how you could innocently buy a hacked game and not know it. Come on be serious you'd have to try to be very hard to find someone offering a hacked version of SCll in which case your not an innocent.

 

[Vlad Rose]

Some of you not too keen on the idea seem to forget, and or may be ignorant to the fact of the problems this causes.
Their have been multiple games and online games that suffered heavy revenue loss over this crap.
~Paying Players Leaving that refuse to deal with or compete. <-More so an issue in mmo's
~Online competitive games with dead servers only weeks after release because some exploit was found and the company knew nothing about it over the fact it came on so fast. (80% of those players will not return. They moved on.)
~Server instability cause by the hacks or exploits. And most of the nasty one's are not stumbled upon. They'll spend hours reversing code to find an exploit.
~Stolen software that is still fully supported by a company.
(If they toss it on the vaporware shelf then have at it I say)

And what does all of the above plus many I did not list equate to?
Loss of revenue, Loss of player base, and in some cases a good IP gets considered as failed, and or the micro Dev team no longer has a job because the game and support was shut down years before projection of such actions.

Now what do you think a court would do to an every day avg Joe pulling this in their daily life on the street to a company?
Oh that's right we're on the internet.

By the way. To the guy that made the comment of a middle man being accused.
A simple data log requested from the ISP will show this. Traffic data can tell more about a household then any recovered data from their hardware.
Yes even if it's the neighbor kid stealing next door granny's wifi.

Now before the rest overly jump to conclusions.
They will sue the living hell out of the creator, lifetime ban/delete the accounts that used it, and charge the creator for every person that used it. They will not slam every player/user in court.

Read what I responded to the other guy.

Also, that's all cool, but if Mods, Admins and GMs aren't there to handle cheaters, then what exactly are they there for?

That has always been an INTEGRAL PART of their job. Blizzard is shitting itself once more because their games are get this: LESS hacked than the rest.

They design better games than most people so they're harder to exploit. If they'd throw their cash and resources at making even less exploitable games instead of going ballistic with their lawyers, we'd have even less hackers (again, SC2 is seriously not that hacked, I play that shit 5 hours a day, minimum).

Besides, stop being so poor at math. An average person will never have millions to pay all those companies the outrageous sums they're asking for.

So all in all, their "million dollar lawsuits" are worth jack shit.

From an average salary, what will they get? 100/200$ a month, tops? What good will that bring them once they waste so much cash on their lawsuit?

Yeah, sure, the people found guilty are gonna have to pay that back, but who's paying in the meantime? The company? The government? They'll go out of business long before they get the money back. Maybe they'll be able to get the legals fees back, but all in all, it's making EVERYONE lose money AND time.

In short, lawsuits vs individuals are worth jack shit.

Not to mention the bad publicity with lawsuits.

Honestly, it should be the GMs and maintainers of the games to properly handle people hacking (which are security holes in game code). I know in the case of Aeria games, they just ban everyone in the entire room of Wolfteam if even only person is hacking. Me and a friend of mine got banned for reporting hacker. Very poor support by that company and will obviously never get service from us again. Similar bad support for Blizzard for banning a WoW account that I had cancelled 6 months beforehand but a hacker got a hold of that they will never provide any form of compensation for.

Now just think if companies sued everyone that got banned for anything. There would be a ton of innocent people fighting the companies in court that they once supported instead of just boycotting them.

What negative publicity are you talking about the vast majority of us that play SCll are all in favor of their actions. I think its a positive, of course I pay for my games and I don't try to get hacked copies.

The bad publicity they'd get for filing a lawsuit against a player that didn't do anything wrong. AFAIK, to run a hacked copy of a game, you will need a generated keycode or an account that has been hacked. The keycode or account more than likely will not belong to the hacker, but to a victim of the hack. If they go by IP address, those are dynamically assigned by internet providers such as Charter and change on occasion. If they go after someone based on one of those methods, there is a good chance they will end up suing the wrong person.

I don't run hacked copies either, but have been a victim of buying a game at the store and having to exchange it for a new copy because it's keycode had been compromised.

Clearly that is not what this is about you have a Battlenet account and if gets hacked you have ways to deal with the problem. You can buy the software and upgrades thru your Battle net account so you can't accidentally get a hacked copy since your buying it from Blizzard directly. And I don't see how you could innocently buy a hacked game and not know it. Come on be serious you'd have to try to be very hard to find someone offering a hacked version of SCll in which case your not an innocent.

As mentioned, I did have to exchange a copy of the SC2 game due to the keycode already being compromised (bought at Walmart). Not all retailers have an exchange policy though.
With Battle.net, Blizzard's way of handling a hacked/compromised account is to permaban it: no ands, ifs, or buts. As mentioned, it's what happened with my WoW account; 6 months AFTER I had cancelled the service. I'm sure a hacker could do the same with my SC2 account since I don't play it anymore either.
If you're talking about the key chain thing you can buy from them as a preventive measure, the problems I had occurred before they existed (something you shouldn't have to buy anyways if they did their jobs properly in the first place).
I do agree with you though that if you don't buy the game from a respectable retail outlet or through Blizzard themselves, you are taking that risk of buying a hacked game (Ebay does not count either). It doesn't mean that the account can't be compromised at a future date though; which is the main point I've been trying to make.