Vivendi sues creator of Warcraft bot

26 Mar 2008 | 16:23 GMT

By Egan Orion

GIANT GAMING publisher Vivendi Games unit Blizzard has gone legal on the creator of MMO Glider, which is a World of Warcraft game program that's termed a "bot" because it operates semi-autonomously and performs certain functions, such as fighting, automatically.

Blizzard claims that Glider violates its End User Licence Agreement, infringes its copyright on World of Warcraft and potentially damages the game. Blizzard's complaint said:

"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."

Michael Donnelly, the creator of MMO Glider, said that he first learned about Blizzard's legal beef with him when a lawyer from Vivendi Games showed up on his doorstep accompanied by a private investigator.

In his reply to the lawsuit, he said, "When they arrived, they presented Donnelly with a copy of a complaint that they indicated would be filed the next day in the US District Court for the Central District of California if Donnelly did not immediately agree to stop selling Glider and return all profits that he made from Glider sales."

According to Donnelly, he's sold more than 100,000 copies of Glider. World of Warcraft is played by more than 10 million people worldwide.

Donnelly has said that his Glider program doesn't infringe Blizzard's copyright because it doesn't copy the World of Warcraft game client software.

Blizzard claims that Donnelly's "bot" program really does infringe its copyright because Glider copies the game into memory.

Sounds to us a lot like Vivendi simply wants the money that Donnelly has made by selling copies of Glider. A judge's summary judgement decision is pending. µ

L'Inq
BBC

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