Blizzard Being Sued by Bot Developers

Blizzard have never been one to tolerate cheating in their online games. The have banned countless gold sellers in Diablo III and World of Warcraft and they've sued a number of companies offering cheating services in the past. Last week, they added to the collections of lawsuits by filing one against the team behind a series of bots called “Buddy,” which allow users to cheat at various Blizzard games including the aforementioned two and also MOBA Heroes Of The Storm.

You'd think that it wouldn't be too easy to defend a business model based entirely on ruining games for other players but not, the company have lashed out at Blizzard for alledgedly procuring source code in a surreptitious manner. They state that a deal was done with a freelance employee to obtain code he should not have had access to and as such Blizzard's lawsuit does not have merit. 

Bossland CEO Zwetan Letschew spoke out to website TorrentFreak:

"Today Blizzard acted in a manner as shady as possible for a multi-billion-dollar corporation. We were informed that the deal compelled Apoc [the freelancer in question] to submit the entire source code of Stormbuddy, which is actually the intellectual property of Bossland GmbH, to Blizzard.

Blizzard now possesses the whole Stormbuddy source code. There was no permission given by Bossland GmbH, nor were we contacted by Activision Blizzard, nor had Apoc the rights to give out our intellectual property.”

Although he makes no reference to the accusations that Blizzard have levelled at Bossland, he's made it very clear that he's not happy that they have obtained his company's code.

Blizzard have issued a statement detailing their thoughts on the matter:

"Bossland’s entire business is based in cheating, and the use of their bots negatively impacts our global player community. That’s why we do not tolerate cheating in our games, and it’s why our players overwhelmingly support that policy. We’ve already won numerous cases against Bossland in Germany (where they’re based), and despite their tactics to delay the ongoing proceedings and the related repercussions, we’re confident that the court system will continue to validate our claims and ultimately stop the distribution of these cheating bots.

We’ll continue to aggressively defend our games and services, within the bounds of the law, in an effort to provide the best possible experience for our players. We want to use this as an opportunity to remind players who might not be aware—using bots, such as those distributed by Bossland, to automate gameplay in our games will result in a loss of access to those games."

Neither company have offered any insight into the accusations levelled at them by the other at this stage.