MMOFTW - Blizzard Sues Bot-Maker

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MMOFTW - Blizzard Sues Bot-Maker

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the_stickman

That makes Blizzard what? 10 years late in dealing with bots?

Wizardry

the_stickman said:

That makes Blizzard what? 10 years late in dealing with bots?

That  is basically what i was eluding to in my other post.

It looks like nothing but sour grapes,using these bots as a scapegoat for failing subs.This is especially true when you allow the problem to persist forever and don't seem to make a fuss about it until now.

They also knew of the problem 100% LONG ago,i watched the interview proving it,so not like they can make claims of it only being a problem recently or they only found out recently.Point is they were quite alright with bots when their subs were rising.

Imo their ONLY legit lawsuit would be copyright not the bots,but if i am reading correctly they are  suing the bots on claims they are costing Blizzard money.I feel this is a VERY shallow lawsuit and their over priced lawyers are simply banking on the culprit not able to defend himself because of >>$$$$$$.

SomeHuman

"Pc's, because let's be honest, that's all we care about" - LOL

Horusra

Wizardry said:

the_stickman said:

That makes Blizzard what? 10 years late in dealing with bots?

That  is basically what i was eluding to in my other post.

It looks like nothing but sour grapes,using these bots as a scapegoat for failing subs.This is especially true when you allow the problem to persist forever and don't seem to make a fuss about it until now.

They also knew of the problem 100% LONG ago,i watched the interview proving it,so not like they can make claims of it only being a problem recently or they only found out recently.Point is they were quite alright with bots when their subs were rising.

Imo their ONLY legit lawsuit would be copyright not the bots,but if i am reading correctly they are  suing the bots on claims they are costing Blizzard money.I feel this is a VERY shallow lawsuit and their over priced lawyers are simply banking on the culprit not able to defend himself because of >>$$$$$$.

And Capo was caught on tax evasion.  You use the tactic the most likely to win.

Yaevindusk

Wizardry said:

the_stickman said:

That makes Blizzard what? 10 years late in dealing with bots?

That  is basically what i was eluding to in my other post.

It looks like nothing but sour grapes,using these bots as a scapegoat for failing subs.This is especially true when you allow the problem to persist forever and don't seem to make a fuss about it until now.

They also knew of the problem 100% LONG ago,i watched the interview proving it,so not like they can make claims of it only being a problem recently or they only found out recently.Point is they were quite alright with bots when their subs were rising.

Imo their ONLY legit lawsuit would be copyright not the bots,but if i am reading correctly they are  suing the bots on claims they are costing Blizzard money.I feel this is a VERY shallow lawsuit and their over priced lawyers are simply banking on the culprit not able to defend himself because of >>$$$$$$.

Blizzard has been suing BOT makers and gold sellers since around 2007.  We just didn't make a big deal out of it to make it newsworthy posts since WoW was at it's prime and there wasn't a content drought and overall dislike for an expansion.

Their last few lawsuits against bot makers -- back in 2013 I think -- were successful.  Though I think there is one in particular that didn't succeed among those successes.  When it comes to gold sellers, they have no way to get those located in China, but ones in the west have been brought to heel time and again.  Usually in secret and or with behind the scene stuff.  There will always be those who say there is hidden motive -- or Blizzard isn't trying -- and therefore it's best just to deal with it in secret as a whole as one of those people may be influential one of these days.

In whole, it's we who are making it out to be a big deal because they lost so many subscribers.  They couldn't care less, as they are making more money now than ever before with cash shops, weak content patches and "yearly" expansions that are overpriced and are using metrics such as profit rather than subscribers to tell investors what's what now in how much money they're making them.  Selling level 100s, new mounts, the before-mentioned yearly overpriced expansions, making 25% more per subscriber by selling game tokens that can be put on the auction house to make easy gold and instantly get stage six crafted gear that's better than heroic raiding gear as a whole.

If anything, it's becoming more public now to show people that they're doing it -- as well as announcing they banned 100,000 people six months ago when it's usually company policy for it to be private -- so that people can talk about that, feel like they're doing something extra that they've always been doing have therefore have no time for other things (lol) besides working on Legion because it will be the "best thing ever" in the World of Warcraft.  Because Illidan and Demon hunters and oh, look, your class might not be shit anymore.

That said, I've no doubt they intend to try and make Legion great and possibly support it since they lost so much trust after Warlords.  Though it's a wait and see thing for a lot of people, and any positive moves they're doing (beta announcements, banning people who are ruining BGs and the like, PvP changes, the upcoming movie, class and profession changes... etc.) will only boost hype and get more people pre-purchasing the expansion.

Here's a relevant comedy video by Nixxiom:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDS6zqtLN0M

gervaise1

Yaevindusk said:

Wizardry said:

the_stickman said:

That makes Blizzard what? 10 years late in dealing with bots?

Their last few lawsuits against bot makers -- back in 2013 I think -- were successful.  Though I think there is one in particular that didn't succeed among those successes. 

As was picked up in the other thread the case against the creators of the bots in question was unsuccessful: in the regional court, the national court and the court of appeal. And the creators were quick to assert ownership.

This new case - seems to be - against the distributor. If the software is unmodified it seems to me that it will be a hard sell suing a company that is selling legal goods.

If Blizzard can identify the bots - and they must be able to or they wouldn't have a case - why hasn't it done more and done so earlier. As I said the actions of Respawn (in Titanfall using EA's bot detection software) seemed particularly fitting: putting all the bots onto a single server. Avoids all sorts of issues: they can pay a sub, bot gold on the server and try to sell it to other bots!

Court cases spread over many years may or may not help Blizzard's balance sheet; they don't help subscribers. That would take resources though and the answer to that is well known: we haven't got the resources. Interpretation: we are unwilling to spend more than we are and prefer going through the courts as we hope to get back our costs. As you say there does seem to be an element of "they couldn't care less" though.

12 significant content patches they released in the 2 years after vanilla launched and then they released BC. Shock: they created content patches and an expansion at the same time. No longer the same.

Xeno.phon

I know they are breaching the ToS and all that stuff, but we all need to realize that botting is only possible in games today because devs refuse to spend the time and effort to find a solution.

If they spent the effort to shore up their own products security it would not happen. Instead they take the easy road, do nothing and just sue people that exploit their laziness.

collekt

Xeno.phon said:

I know they are breaching the ToS and all that stuff, but we all need to realize that botting is only possible in games today because devs refuse to spend the time and effort to find a solution.

If they spent the effort to shore up their own products security it would not happen. Instead they take the easy road, do nothing and just sue people that exploit their laziness.

You should clearly be working for Blizzard. I'm sure you could churn out a perfect solution for flawlessly detecting bots.

Thomas2006

Xeno.phon said:

I know they are breaching the ToS and all that stuff, but we all need to realize that botting is only possible in games today because devs refuse to spend the time and effort to find a solution.

If they spent the effort to shore up their own products security it would not happen. Instead they take the easy road, do nothing and just sue people that exploit their laziness.

There is no fail proof way for detecting and little lone preventing bots. The only way to 100% prevent bots is not to make a game to start with. Cause a bot can be as simple as a program that presses a key every few seconds and how would you go about preventing that from happen? Remove that key from the keys you can press? Just like aimbots there is no 100% way to prevent / stop them. You just have a few options to combat them when people that are using them are dumb. You can scan to see if your d3d11.dll has been injected, you can scan memory for a footprint of said bot program, you can look in the task manager for said program name, you can look at the players ingame stats. But none of them is a fail proof way as a footprint can change every time the program is updated and then you would be constantly updating your game with new footprints and you are always going to be a step behind. There is just no single way to stop / prevent it.

Xeno.phon

Thomas2006 said:

Xeno.phon said:

I know they are breaching the ToS and all that stuff, but we all need to realize that botting is only possible in games today because devs refuse to spend the time and effort to find a solution.

If they spent the effort to shore up their own products security it would not happen. Instead they take the easy road, do nothing and just sue people that exploit their laziness.

There is no fail proof way for detecting and little lone preventing bots. The only way to 100% prevent bots is not to make a game to start with. Cause a bot can be as simple as a program that presses a key every few seconds and how would you go about preventing that from happen? Remove that key from the keys you can press? Just like aimbots there is no 100% way to prevent / stop them. You just have a few options to combat them when people that are using them are dumb. You can scan to see if your d3d11.dll has been injected, you can scan memory for a footprint of said bot program, you can look in the task manager for said program name, you can look at the players ingame stats. But none of them is a fail proof way as a footprint can change every time the program is updated and then you would be constantly updating your game with new footprints and you are always going to be a step behind. There is just no single way to stop / prevent it.

FFXI didnt have any bots. I understand what you are saying, you obviously are not understanding what I am saying.

Game makers have opted to not do much of anything to combat bots, but sue them for money or accept them as subs and move on.

If they tried harder there would be less bots is my point. It is not easy at all to make a bot from a program that inspects for injections as well as watching for rhythmic key presses as well as not allowing alt tab as well as downloading the launch files directly from the server each time game loads.

Put all the counter measures together and you wont have 12yo script kiddies crapping out auto clicker bots like candy.

Vrika

Xeno.phon said:

I know they are breaching the ToS and all that stuff, but we all need to realize that botting is only possible in games today because devs refuse to spend the time and effort to find a solution.

If they spent the effort to shore up their own products security it would not happen. Instead they take the easy road, do nothing and just sue people that exploit their laziness.

Then we should release all criminals from the jails, because obviously they are only there since victims didn't spend enough effort to prevent 100% of all crimes. It's not the criminal's fault if the victim defends himself poorly, and the criminal shouldn't be punished for what is the victim's fault.

Mensur

Finally! thank you for my MMOFTW!!

Solar_Prophet

Xeno.phon said:

Thomas2006 said:

Xeno.phon said:

I know they are breaching the ToS and all that stuff, but we all need to realize that botting is only possible in games today because devs refuse to spend the time and effort to find a solution.

If they spent the effort to shore up their own products security it would not happen. Instead they take the easy road, do nothing and just sue people that exploit their laziness.

There is no fail proof way for detecting and little lone preventing bots. The only way to 100% prevent bots is not to make a game to start with. Cause a bot can be as simple as a program that presses a key every few seconds and how would you go about preventing that from happen? Remove that key from the keys you can press? Just like aimbots there is no 100% way to prevent / stop them. You just have a few options to combat them when people that are using them are dumb. You can scan to see if your d3d11.dll has been injected, you can scan memory for a footprint of said bot program, you can look in the task manager for said program name, you can look at the players ingame stats. But none of them is a fail proof way as a footprint can change every time the program is updated and then you would be constantly updating your game with new footprints and you are always going to be a step behind. There is just no single way to stop / prevent it.

FFXI didnt have any bots. I understand what you are saying, you obviously are not understanding what I am saying.

Game makers have opted to not do much of anything to combat bots, but sue them for money or accept them as subs and move on.

If they tried harder there would be less bots is my point. It is not easy at all to make a bot from a program that inspects for injections as well as watching for rhythmic key presses as well as not allowing alt tab as well as downloading the launch files directly from the server each time game loads.

Put all the counter measures together and you wont have 12yo script kiddies crapping out auto clicker bots like candy.

You know, in some Middle Eastern countries they stone rape victims to death for adultery because to their way of thinking, the victim is at fault because they acted in such a way as to seduce and tempt the men into doing it. Do you condone that? Because they're using your absolutely ridiculous logic.

And yes, FFXI had bots. They weren't as rampant as in some games, but they definitely existed.

Dead_Guy

If your game is simple enough to be played by bots, then you deserve to have them.

gervaise1

Vrika said:

Xeno.phon said:

I know they are breaching the ToS and all that stuff, but we all need to realize that botting is only possible in games today because devs refuse to spend the time and effort to find a solution.

If they spent the effort to shore up their own products security it would not happen. Instead they take the easy road, do nothing and just sue people that exploit their laziness.

Then we should release all criminals from the jails, because obviously they are only there since victims didn't spend enough effort to prevent 100% of all crimes. It's not the criminal's fault if the victim defends himself poorly, and the criminal shouldn't be punished for what is the victim's fault.

The ToS has no bearing here; Blizzard are not suing the people using the bots.

gervaise1

Thomas2006 said:

Xeno.phon said:

I know they are breaching the ToS and all that stuff, but we all need to realize that botting is only possible in games today because devs refuse to spend the time and effort to find a solution.

If they spent the effort to shore up their own products security it would not happen. Instead they take the easy road, do nothing and just sue people that exploit their laziness.

There is no fail proof way for detecting and little lone preventing bots. The only way to 100% prevent bots is not to make a game to start with. Cause a bot can be as simple as a program that presses a key every few seconds and how would you go about preventing that from happen? Remove that key from the keys you can press? Just like aimbots there is no 100% way to prevent / stop them. You just have a few options to combat them when people that are using them are dumb. You can scan to see if your d3d11.dll has been injected, you can scan memory for a footprint of said bot program, you can look in the task manager for said program name, you can look at the players ingame stats. But none of them is a fail proof way as a footprint can change every time the program is updated and then you would be constantly updating your game with new footprints and you are always going to be a step behind. There is just no single way to stop / prevent it.

Agree - almost certainly no fool proof way but an aggressive policy can be adopted - something which Blizzard, in their own words, have opted not to adopt such a policy in the past.

And hands up everyone using gaming mice / keyboards / resource trackers / boss raid add-ons ....... shame on you. Advancing your character faster!

Thomas2006

Xeno.phon said:

Thomas2006 said:

Xeno.phon said:

I know they are breaching the ToS and all that stuff, but we all need to realize that botting is only possible in games today because devs refuse to spend the time and effort to find a solution.

If they spent the effort to shore up their own products security it would not happen. Instead they take the easy road, do nothing and just sue people that exploit their laziness.

There is no fail proof way for detecting and little lone preventing bots. The only way to 100% prevent bots is not to make a game to start with. Cause a bot can be as simple as a program that presses a key every few seconds and how would you go about preventing that from happen? Remove that key from the keys you can press? Just like aimbots there is no 100% way to prevent / stop them. You just have a few options to combat them when people that are using them are dumb. You can scan to see if your d3d11.dll has been injected, you can scan memory for a footprint of said bot program, you can look in the task manager for said program name, you can look at the players ingame stats. But none of them is a fail proof way as a footprint can change every time the program is updated and then you would be constantly updating your game with new footprints and you are always going to be a step behind. There is just no single way to stop / prevent it.

FFXI didnt have any bots. I understand what you are saying, you obviously are not understanding what I am saying.

Game makers have opted to not do much of anything to combat bots, but sue them for money or accept them as subs and move on.

If they tried harder there would be less bots is my point. It is not easy at all to make a bot from a program that inspects for injections as well as watching for rhythmic key presses as well as not allowing alt tab as well as downloading the launch files directly from the server each time game loads.

Put all the counter measures together and you wont have 12yo script kiddies crapping out auto clicker bots like candy.

Actually a simple search on google returns 3-4 different bots that do everything from fishing to hunting for you.  So FFXI does indeed have bots.

barasawa

Blizzard has sued bot makers before, just look up Wowglider. Of course, the bot makers try to make them as undetectable as they can, so it's a game of cat and mouse with blizz trying to collect obfuscated data and trends to identify them. This is complicated by the multiple bots out there, so the more 'popular' ones are more likely to get caught, eventually. FFXI definitely had bots. I know one person that ran some. I hate bots for the most part and gave him hell over it. Every game with enough popularity has bots for the simple fact that if it can be controlled by a human, it can be controlled by a computer. Heck, even captchas which were supposed to stop bots are now much easier for bots to solve than actual humans. (Yes, this research and results are out there, just look it up.) Sure blizz could put 90% of their resources into hunting bots, but that would cripple everything else. Just like you and me, they have limited resources available and must decide where to deploy them for what they feel is the best use. In general, my opinion with bots. Grinding rep, annoying, but let's face it, that's a mind numbing task that nobody wants to do. Farming rares, dammit, there aren't enough of those in the first place, so if you aren't there doing it, you shouldn't get it. Traveling to places, hey, another boring job where automation would be welcome, and who the heck would care on that one. Heck, even blizz automated travel on their flight points, so... Fighting anywhere and especially battlegrounds, now thats just downright scuzzy. Even a Sith would backhand you for that lazy cheating, and not only would you deserve it, it would still be letting you off light. So yes, I think the games in general need some tweaks to make the mind numbingly boring stuff more tolerable, but I don't think bots are the right solution. For everything else bots are used for, their users should be flogged with a wet mouse cord.

doodphace

Thomas2006 said:

Xeno.phon said:

Thomas2006 said:

Xeno.phon said:

I know they are breaching the ToS and all that stuff, but we all need to realize that botting is only possible in games today because devs refuse to spend the time and effort to find a solution.

If they spent the effort to shore up their own products security it would not happen. Instead they take the easy road, do nothing and just sue people that exploit their laziness.

There is no fail proof way for detecting and little lone preventing bots. The only way to 100% prevent bots is not to make a game to start with. Cause a bot can be as simple as a program that presses a key every few seconds and how would you go about preventing that from happen? Remove that key from the keys you can press? Just like aimbots there is no 100% way to prevent / stop them. You just have a few options to combat them when people that are using them are dumb. You can scan to see if your d3d11.dll has been injected, you can scan memory for a footprint of said bot program, you can look in the task manager for said program name, you can look at the players ingame stats. But none of them is a fail proof way as a footprint can change every time the program is updated and then you would be constantly updating your game with new footprints and you are always going to be a step behind. There is just no single way to stop / prevent it.

FFXI didnt have any bots. I understand what you are saying, you obviously are not understanding what I am saying.

Game makers have opted to not do much of anything to combat bots, but sue them for money or accept them as subs and move on.

If they tried harder there would be less bots is my point. It is not easy at all to make a bot from a program that inspects for injections as well as watching for rhythmic key presses as well as not allowing alt tab as well as downloading the launch files directly from the server each time game loads.

Put all the counter measures together and you wont have 12yo script kiddies crapping out auto clicker bots like candy.

Actually a simple search on google returns 3-4 different bots that do everything from fishing to hunting for you.  So FFXI does indeed have bots.

I love it when people make completely outrageous claims, and at the same time, forget that google exists lol.

l2avism

Actually, Blizzard sued the company that owns honrbuddy in Germany and lost. Now they are suing random hackers that Blizzard claims made honorbuddy even though everyone knows that honorbuddy is owned by a company in germany. Blizzard is fail.

Blizzard Loses In Court, Botters Lose In WoW Yesterday saw a major ban wave hit World of Warcraft. Many botters believe the move was retaliation for the victory of Bossland GmbH, the maker of the Honorbuddy series of bots, in a German court concerning the Demonbuddy bot for Diablo 3: "Bossland GmbH (https://www.thebuddyforum.com/), creater of bot software for several MMOs, has won the lawsuit against Blizzard Entertainment S.A.S, creator of World of Warcraft and Diablo III. Blizzard had argued that the sale of virtual currency “Gold” in the game Diablo 3 is anti-competitive. The judges of the Civil Division of the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court considered this question with reference to Federal Court of Justice of Germany case law and it recommended the applicant to withdraw the application for an injunction. "On 6 May 2013 The Hamburg Regional Court had issued a temporary injunction without a hearing and thereby ruled that the defendant (Bossland GmbH) have to refrain, without the consent of the applicant to operate a gold-trading website for the game Diablo III. "On 7 May 2015 (3 U 45/14), the Civil Division of the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court disagreed with this order.The court ordered that the entire costs of the two instances of the process be paid by Blizzard Entertainment S.A.S. "'I am pleased that after many years, a Court of Appeal has finally dealt accurately and in detail with the legal assessment and the key points of the law has worked out so well for us. I am optimistic that the federal court will view our other business models as permissible.' says Zwetan Letschew, CEO of Bossland GmbH expressed. "Bossland GmbH fights in different legal proceedings against Blizzard Entertainment S.A.S. and Blizzard Entertainment Inc. These proceedings have the objective of clarifying various legal questions, for example, issues of integration of EULA of software bought in shops or at online retailers and, for example, the legal status of virtual items and issues of competition law. "Bossland GmbH is represented in Cases for many years by the lawyers Marian Härtel, and Dominik Büttner and Carsten Neuhaus from the firm Kaesler & Kollegen."

Blizzard retaliates by banning every honnorbuddy user from battle.net...

The belief that yesterday's ban wave is in retaliation for losing in court is perhaps understandable. Apparently Blizzard does not conduct frequent ban waves and the company conducted a sizable ban wave less than two months ago. If Blizzard really is following the CCP model, then the botters should expect more frequent ban waves. CCP's philosophy is to continuously ban botters and ISK sellers so as not to give the rules breakers any time to feel safe from receiving bans. Don't expect Blizzard to have that capability in the near future, so expect smaller, more frequent ban waves in the months ahead.

The company that owns honnorbuddy is actually sueing blizzard right now....

Bossland GmbH sued Blizzard (READ) and Court News July 2015 Greetings Buddies, this week we have sent our lawsuit to the court of Leipzig. We have sued Blizzard to stop using Honorbuddy and Demonbuddy. Honorbuddy and Demonbuddy are bots that automate WOW and D3. Blizzard sued me personally and as CEO in the court of Leipzig to stop using WOW and D3. Using means, to load it into RAM, to display it on any Monitor or Device and to save it on any harddisk. The court of Leipzig found it to be true that WOW and D3 are only ment to be used for personal usage. Now we find, since WOW and D3 are ment to be used ONLY for privat use, the court made clear there is no ecxeption, following that logic Honorbuddy and Demonbuddy can only be for privat use too. Months ago we withdraw Blizzard any licences they had with. We forbid them to use Honorbuddy and Demonbuddy in front of the court of Leipzig. But not a month after, Blizzard started a big banwave and you know the rest. In court Blizzard also presented how they used Honorbuddy with *****engine. They were directly harming our intellectual property rights. We say enough is enough! If we find out that Blizzard uses Honorbuddy/Demonbuddy again - we will ask the court to put a fine on them for up to 250.000 EUR, and if not paid alternativelly up to 6 months jail for the man in charge. Stay tuned - we assume that the court will soon appoint a hearing, probably September - October. The Federal Court of Justice of Germany, sent us its bill. This means that our very first case that found place in Hamburg, will soon be heared there. Our Court of Justice Lawyer already wrote his statement and the case looks strong from what i can tell. We expect a hearing and a decision somewhere in 2016. However, we have 2 more cases that just where decided by the Courts of Appeal in Dresden and Munich, that we will push to the next step: The Federal Court of Justice of Germany All in all the last 2 months where very surprising. First we won vs Blizzard in Hamburg, then we lost vs the Banhammer, then we had 3 more court cases in 3 weeks and now it is all over for the moment. Time to analyze things and look to the future. From what i can tell Blizzard is at the end of its patience. As higher we go, the more we win. It seems like they already see what will happen, once we are at the The Federal Court of Justice of Germany, and try with all might to stop us before we reach it. They suceeded with Glider and with PoketGnome, but we will not fall as easily. Especially that all the latest decisions of the European Court of Justice teld to help us. On the other side, we have informed us heavily before we picked up our The Federal Court of Justice Lawyer. At the moment there are only 45 Lawyers that can represent a party there. So even if until now Blizzard with its lawfirms with 100s of lawyers had the power to flood us with a lot of written nonsense, the The Federal Court of Justice equal firepower rules still count.

So basically, you only heard half of the story....

sniperman248

the_stickman said:

That makes Blizzard what? 10 years late in dealing with bots?

there's no such thing as too late, and blizzard isn't the first to sue a bot company, in fact Jagex LTD. had sued several bot makers in the past and forced them to shutdown otherwise they would face a jail sentence. But yea my point is its never to late to sue bot makers and force them to shutdown.

Impmon

Many years ago in Vanilla WOW I made the suggestion on the official forums for Blizzard to sell their own gold. It would cut out the gold farmers. They ignored me obviously. Enter Guildwars 2 & they have a cash shop where you can buy gems & convert them to in game gold. This cuts out the gold farmers entirely & they profit.

zaberfangx

Impmon said:

Many years ago in Vanilla WOW I made the suggestion on the official forums for Blizzard to sell their own gold. It would cut out the gold farmers. They ignored me obviously. Enter Guildwars 2 & they have a cash shop where you can buy gems & convert them to in game gold. This cuts out the gold farmers entirely & they profit.

Does help for the case of gw2 as still gold farmer still there not as bad games with out a way to cover gold in to gems to cash shop use as long the gold farmer still see it's a market for them if people still find it better just to buy then grind.

muffins89

the_stickman said:

That makes Blizzard what? 10 years late in dealing with bots?

they finally learned enough about Artificial Intelligence to cut this guy lose and sue him.

gervaise1

sniperman248 said:

the_stickman said:

That makes Blizzard what? 10 years late in dealing with bots?

there's no such thing as too late, and blizzard isn't the first to sue a bot company, in fact Jagex LTD. had sued several bot makers in the past and forced them to shutdown otherwise they would face a jail sentence. But yea my point is its never to late to sue bot makers and force them to shutdown.

In this case they are not suing a bot maker though. They did that and lost - and reading the above I understand why (its a legal thing.)

So what Blizzard now seem to be doing is suing a US distributor. And they are hoping that a US judge (overrides EU-US trade treaties and) rules that the sale of software that is legal in the EU is illegal to sell in the US. Good luck with that: defence case - my client is a registered business selling a legal product and paying taxes.