Blizzard, creators of World of Warcraft, are suing Michael Donnelly, the creator of the program known as "MMO Glider." This application performs tasks in the game that could be considered motonous such as leveling character–all without player interaction.
Blizzard complains that the bot infringes upon the company’s copyrights and has the potential to damage the game. In its legal papers, the company writes, "Blizzard’s designs expectations are frustrated, and resources are allocated unevenly, when bots are introduced into the WoW universe, because bots spend far more time in-game than an ordinary player would and consume resources the entire time."
So far, more than 100,000 copies of MMO Glider have been sold to consumers, but more than 10 million people across the world play World of Warcraft. Donnelly retorts that his bot does not infringe Blizzard’s copyrights because no copy of the WoW client is ever produced by the program. As of now, the two parties are awaiting a summary judgement on the case.
Blizzard will more than certainly win this case (after all, they’re the ones with money) as I feel they should. Bots provide an unfair advantage to the "lazy". Games are all about accomplishing something and being rewarded for those accomplishments. Cheating is the exact antithesis of that and I fully support the punishment of cheaters.
[Via Slashdot]
