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In an interesting case being reported by a number of sources, Blizzard Entertainment is suing the maker of a bot called MMO Glider. The bot enables players to play World of Warcraft without the need for anyone to be behind the keyboard.



According to the reports, a Vivendi games lawyer visited his house over the tool he developed. The developer, Michael Donnelly, said that this was how he found out about the legal complaint in the first place. Blizzard argues that the tool breaches copyright, the End User License Agreement and disrupts the balance of the game.

A trial version of the tool is free, but full versions are sold for 25$. According to the reports, over 100,000 copies of the tool were sold. The tool seems to be powerful too. According to the FAQ, "Glider works a lot like a regular player. It looks at your health, mana, energy, etc. It moves the mouse around and pushes keys on the keyboard. You tell it about your character, where you want to kill things, and what to kill. Then it kills for you, automatically. You can do something else, like eat dinner or go to a movie, and when you return, you'll have a lot more experience and loot."

Donnelly reportedly said that the development of the tool technically doesn't violate the EULA as it does not make a copy of the game data.

The official MMO Glider forums seem to be buzzing with discussion on the topic. In response to the following:

"Blizzard has said the tool infringes copyright because it copies the game into RAM in order to avoid detection by anti-cheat software."

KrTech writes:

It would be fun to prove that, since WoW loads itself into RAM when you try to play. And I don't think Glider actually copies all the memory WoW uses and then reads it, that would be stupid. Instead it probably looks for very specific information that is located somewhere in that giant heap of info WoW loads and then processes it, that doesn't even mean it is directly copied. As BBC puts it, that case is going nowhere.


"if there are other [programmers] out there that copy to RAM then a judgement in favour of Bliz in this case would open up lot in lots of other areas of industry." writes ILikeToBot.

D3m0nik points out the following, "The use of Glider is against the EULA. But the creation of it, may not be, which is what they are fighting about."

All in all, users of the tool seem confident that Blizzard doesn't have a case.


  • #1    "Glider works a lot like a regular player. It looks at your health, mana, energy, etc. It moves the mouse around and pushes keys on the keyboard. You tell it about your character, where you want to kill things, and what to kill. Then it kills for you, automatically. You can do something else, like eat dinner or go to a movie, and when you return, you'll have a lot more experience and loot."

    it is an automated robotic player like so blizzard has all reason to be worried since for that reason it is a cheater.

    "Blizzard has said the tool infringes copyright because it copies the game into RAM in order to avoid detection by anti-cheat software."

    simple in the next update patch blizzard adds code to scan the ram ( yes scanning ram may possibly raise alarms by anti virus software) then trick the users into to updating by either adding that version to the banned versions on the server or saying that it fixes a security flaw that can allow hackers to gain access to your pc through the online game server.
    posted by ejonesss 248 days 4 hours 6 minutes ago
  • #2    This is bullocks, I'm not fond of botters, but this is too damn far seriously, how can you sue for someone creating a module for your game that you don't like, it's not like the module was made by Blizzard, I was hoping that Blizz would be smarter than this crap.

    Fugging 'infringing on copyright' crap, that's so damn vague you could be describing anything and you'd be infringing!
    posted by Mord_Sith 248 days 2 hours 46 minutes ago
  • #3    Not a very smart move on Blizzard's side. Now consider this game dead, hackers in a mass will begin to crack down on this tyrant due to their course of actions.... Starcraft hombrew for the NDS now this....
    posted by huhster 247 days 15 hours 21 minutes ago

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