April 5, 2017
Legal
March 15, 2017
July 9, 2014
Multiboxing “walks the strange line we technically allow” explains Blizzard
December 11, 2013
Blizzard Instruct Youtube Users to Contest Content Matches
The past 48 hours has been hairy to say the least for anyone who creates videogame related videos and places them on Youtube. Now in full effect, Youtube has instigated a new policy which is threatening channels and copyright claims and third party content matches on videos are now flooding in.
October 22, 2013
Blizzard Shuts Down World of Warcraft Bot Maker
Blizzard has shut down a major WoW bot-maker and won a substantial legal judgment against the company.
September 12, 2013
Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls Info Leak Datamined
An early build of Reaper of Souls has been hacked and datamined, and there are spoilers galore. It’s not known where the info came from but it seems like an inside job; perhaps an embittered Bliz employee leaked it, or maybe someone at Gamescom snagged a demo and there was a bunch of extra game info on it? It’s hard to imagine Blizzard not attempting some legal action, and we can only hope the hacking and dissemination of the data doesn’t create a situation like they had with Half Life 2 back in the day, where the security breach considerably delayed the game’s release.
August 13, 2013
Blizzard Trademarks “The Dark Below” … for WoW?
News today that Blizzard has just filed a copyright for the title, “The Dark Below” for a computer game. There’s some “maybe it’s D3 Expansion!!?1!” theorizing, but the term seems clearly tied to the Warcraft world.
July 23, 2013
June 6, 2013
Former QA and GM Spills Blizzard Secrets?
A person who claims to have been a Blizzard employee from 2006-2012, working in Tech Support, QA, and as a WoW GM took part in a spontaneous AMA on Reddit today. There’s no real proof that this person is legit, but she sounds pretty authentic in her knowledge of internal company function and politics. There’s zero secret game info and almost no mention of Diablo 3, but quite a bit about GMing in WoW, company policies for user help in that game, catching gold botters, dealing with developers, dishy details about which game devs are the most arrogant, why they ignored DoTA and let others cash in on their game, and much more.
November 12, 2012
Blizzard Respond to Class Action “False Information”
Blizzard has now responded to the action raised by Benjamin Bell, (we reported last week), in which he intends to sue Blizzard for “consumer fraud, unjust enrichment, negligence, breach of contract and bailment” . In addition he charges them with “negligently, deliberately, and/or recklessly fail to ensure that adequate, reasonable procedures safeguard the private information stored on this website. As a result of these acts, the private information of plaintiffs and class members has been compromised and/or stolen since at least 2007”.
November 9, 2012
October 30, 2012
Auction House Bot Maker Served
A bot maker from Germany who has spent a considerable amount of time on creating a bot which automated much of the Auction House process has been served with legal papers demanding he cease and desist from doing so. The bot seems very polished with fairly advanced capabilities, it must have taken 100’s of hours to get to the stage its at but all that counts for nada when you violate the EULA. An excerpt I’ve translated from the legal papers reads:
October 29, 2012
A Wild Diablo III Movie Appears
July 5, 2012
Diablo III Cracked in China, and Digital Resales Are Legal in Europe
Interesting legal news about Diablo 3 from Europe and China, this week. The bigger news is from China, where Diablo III is technically illegal, as it’s still delayed by the usual Chinese government video game regulatory hell. Eager fans have been paying a fortune to get working copies from Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, etc, but now a more home-grown version is available, via hackers and piracy. To quote from the Kotaku article:
June 28, 2012
Blizzard Responds to French Consumer Group Over Diablo 3 Complaints
We recently reported that the French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir were on Blizzard’s case regarding Diablo 3 connectivity issues in France. The sought a response from Blizzard within 15 days at that time and asked that gamers be awarded compensation of some sort for the problems. The fifteen days are now up and Blizzard has responded to the UFC-Que Choisir.