punish the player for liking your game and come up with Random BS to validate your tom-foolery!

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6282171.html

seriously:

" They're claiming using the hacks causes people to infringe copyright: 'When users of the Hacks download, install, and use the Hacks, they copy StarCraft II copyrighted content into their computer's RAM in excess of the scope of their limited license, as set forth in the EULA and ToU, and create derivative works of StarCraft II.'"

I call shenanigans!

Sounds reasonable to me. Cheats and hacks destroy online competition.

even if you only use it on your local game they consider it to be a violation of the EULA. I totally agree that you should not be able to use it in competitive online games but man sometimes GOD MODE in a local game is just fun.

However, I don't imagine the hacks themselves are coded so that they can only be used in local games.

And it's a game with online achievements.

this is an old arguement that X and I have all the time. Is it the users fault for exploiting progaming bugs? I mean we do it all the time in WoW currently. Take for instance OS3D last night, we exploit a bug to set up a more strategically engineered battle.
In the starcraft case Blizzard should render things server side and not PC side so that cheats to remove fog of war are invalid. Im really not defending these folks for cheating online, because I really do think competition should be fair, but if I want to use a cheat on a local game I think it should be allowed. The classic arguement here is did you buy a game or did you merely buy the right to play the game? Do the same rules apply to your TV? your can opener? I strongly feel that if I bought the game I have every right to tinker with it on my machine and do whatever I want with it, within the domain of my PC.

Overgearing a fight in order to beat it before more difficult mechanics come into play is not the same as jumping over the fence in AB and capping before the other team can or lifting the fog of war in SCII so you can see what the opponent is doing.

If we were talking about a completely offline game where cheating had no effect on others I would agree with you. But everything about SCII is competitive including the achievements in single player.

I'm also not saying that I agree with Blizzard's decision to make the single player game an online game. But since they have, they are now in a position that they have to protect it. If they don't, the entire game is trivialized and they might as well just remove the achievement rankings.

Blizzard have to balance a whole lot to make the game both playable and untamperable. They could render everything on the server and only send to the clients what they were allowed to see and interact with. But that would mean that the amount of processing a server would have to do for a single game would be much much larger, possibly large enough that the outlay of computing time Blizzard would need to buy to support the number of players they have would be cost prohibitive. So they balance it with the idea that they can send information to the client and let the client deal with a certain amount of the processing, on the assumption that the client is not going to be tampered with, and trade the giant cost of computing time for the somewhat smaller cost of policing (and possibly suing) the clients.

As far as responsibility, it's Blizzards responsibility to make the game, to make it playable and to make it enjoyable. It's players' responsibility to abide by the agreements that allow Blizzard to do this within the realm of possibility. If someone decides to screw with it, they are obviously causing a business disruption to Blizzard, and harm to their clients, and Blizzard have a perfect right to sue them for doing so. How much responsibility the client shoulders for that blame is up to the legal system to determine, though I'd say it's indisputable that they shoulder some of it.

I'm essentially with Witherwing on this one. However, achievements in single player aren't that big of a deal for me either so I wouldn't care if they got deep sixed. Of course, I don't own SC2 and have never played it. I'm just speaking in general terms that if you buy something then it's yours. I suppose that when you think you bought SC2, that in the licensing there is the express message that you didn't buy it, you just think you did. There's the rub. I don't plan to buy SC2, at least not until it's cheap enough which means probably never.

Great: SC2 is yours. You're welcome to screw it up for yourself. Doesn't give you the right to screw with Blizzard's servers to screw with it for other people though. :)

In addition to what Fox and Fren pointed out, the real issue with Blizzard suing the people who sell the hacks is this...they're selling them. They are making a profit off of Blizzard's product/intellectual property, which is a big no-no.

If someone made the hack for themself and used it, that is a simple ban, end of story. When they start making money off of it is when Blizzard seeks legal recourse.

True, no one ever makes a profit off of someone else's product or property. God forbid I buy a shovel and charge someone to use it, or buy a cake mix and sell the fucker. That would be calamity incarnate. Hell, to imagine buying the damn cake mix and putting your own dam sprinkles on it makes me nauseous. But now that I think about it, that does screw everyone else up. I mean, if people buy a game they better damn well get their achievements and no body else better get them without coughing up a lung first or the bloody world would be in chaos. I once caught a cub scout cheating on one of his badges and I throttled him good and sent him packing. Fair is fair. I used to be one of those pea brains that thought an achievement was about personal experience and.. uh, achievement, but then I slowly learned that it's about waving your penis at everyone else so they can see how much bigger it is because I have more achievements and even though I got them without cheating I never felt better about it because I was focused on everyone else's achievements. I've grown much since those days.

Pils, give Maligner back his forum access.

True, no one ever makes a profit off of someone else's product or property. God forbid I buy a shovel and charge someone to use it, or buy a cake mix and sell the fucker. That would be calamity incarnate. Hell, to imagine buying the damn cake mix and putting your own dam sprinkles on it makes me nauseous. But now that I think about it, that does screw everyone else up. I mean, if people buy a game they better damn well get their achievements and no body else better get them without coughing up a lung first or the bloody world would be in chaos. I once caught a cub scout cheating on one of his badges and I throttled him good and sent him packing. Fair is fair. I used to be one of those pea brains that thought an achievement was about personal experience and.. uh, achievement, but then I slowly learned that it's about waving your penis at everyone else so they can see how much bigger it is because I have more achievements and even though I got them without cheating I never felt better about it because I was focused on everyone else's achievements. I've grown much since those days.

<3 this post

True, no one ever makes a profit off of someone else's product or property. God forbid I buy a shovel and charge someone to use it, or buy a cake mix and sell the fucker. That would be calamity incarnate. Hell, to imagine buying the damn cake mix and putting your own dam sprinkles on it makes me nauseous. But now that I think about it, that does screw everyone else up. I mean, if people buy a game they better damn well get their achievements and no body else better get them without coughing up a lung first or the bloody world would be in chaos. I once caught a cub scout cheating on one of his badges and I throttled him good and sent him packing. Fair is fair. I used to be one of those pea brains that thought an achievement was about personal experience and.. uh, achievement, but then I slowly learned that it's about waving your penis at everyone else so they can see how much bigger it is because I have more achievements and even though I got them without cheating I never felt better about it because I was focused on everyone else's achievements. I've grown much since those days.

You're missing the point here. We're talking about INTELLECTUAL property.
Start up your own line of Star Wars products and see what happens. Sell bootleg DVDs and see what happens. Print up a bunch of band/sports team T-Shirts, sell them down the street from a concert/game and see what happens. You many not agree with the consequences or think there should be any consequences, but the legal system is not on the side of the people selling the hacks/fake shirts/unlicensed Star Wars/bootleg DVDs.

Also, you not caring about achievements does not give you the right to affect the achievement system through a mechanic that was not in the game.

Pretty soon we're going to have to add intellectual property to the list of forbidden topics :P

Politics
Religion
Dessert Preference
Intellectual Property

We is SO intellkshul!

Maligner started it when he used baking a cake as an example, thereby endorsing a dessert preference.

I blame Xqualin.

In all honesty I agree that profiting from someone elses product when it comes to software is a No No. however suing your customer base for using said product is also a No No unless you want to lose your customer base. to use the Cake model here. lets assume jack daniels wanted to market a product called jack and coke. everyone loves jack and coke already so why wouldnt it be just convienent to buy it together? well Jack didnt pay coke for using coke or their name (IE their intellectual property) and they make a profit, thats wrong and should be punished. I dont think the designers of the hack should make a profit from it in any form or fashion, BUT if they had released it for free and folks used it I would not kick them to the curb. I still stand by my statement though that if you hack it at home and it stays at home you should not be punished.

"Hack the planet!"™
Emmanuel Goldstein aka Cereal Killer

How dare you invoke the Lillard!

Ok, if you're gonna blame me, then I'm gonna get into this so I'm worthy of the blame. Heaven help you all.

First off, I'm going to link to this here article discussing it on Techdirt

Yes, it's INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY being discussed here. And therein lies the issue. Because Blizzard is twisting Copyright law into something it shouldn't be in order to sue these guys.

As far as cheats go, I'm with the "who gives a rats ass if you cheat in single player. If you cheat against me in multiplayer, then i'm gonna be pissed" camp. And Blizzard has every right to ban / suspend cheaters. It can be a PR hit for sure depending on how they do it, but yes, if they don't protect the game, people will stop playing, and that's bad for the players and bad for Blizzard.

But twisting the law like they do to claim that the guys who programmed the hack violated Copyright? That's downright disgusting.

They're using the case where they sued the creator of the WoWGlider bot, where part of their argument was that the game is not sold to us, but is instead licensed to us, as precedent to sue the Starcraft hack creators. It was important for them to get licensing instead of ownership recognized by the judge, because if users owned the game, they would claim ownership rights which would allow them to modify it, since they own it. By claiming the game is licensed, Blizzard gets around that little inconvenience, and can claim that no one is allowed to tamper with the code, because we're all bound by the EULA. (And really, I think it's still being argued in courts out there as to whether EULAs that come with software can be legaly binding).

Then they use the Ninth Circuits ruling on copying to RAM (which really is a pretty bogus interpretation, from what I know of technology) to claim (and I quote from William Patry, as noted in the Techdirt article):

When users of the Hacks download, install, and use the Hacks, they copy StarCraft II copyrighted content into their computer's RAM in excess of the scope of their limited license, as set forth in the EULA and ToU, and create derivative works of StarCraft II.

So yeah, they're claiming that this is a Copyright issue because your computer makes a copy of the game to your RAM, and since you licensed the game, then if that copy in your ram is modified at all, you've violated Copyright.

How fucking convoluted do they have to get?

I have no qualms with Blizzard banning cheaters

I have some qualms with Blizzard suing over it, because really, all it does is draw more attention to it. It seems like a move done because their legal department said they should, as opposed to being a smart business decision, but hey, its their right.

I do have major qualms about them bending copyright law to the breaking point in order to set a horrible precedent because they're butthurt over some guys breaking their game. Copyright was never meant to be used in that way, and it's a shame that they're trying to do so.

however suing your customer base for using said product is also a No No unless you want to lose your customer base.

Agreed. However, that's not what Blizzard are doing: they're suing the authors of the hack. All they're doing to the customer base is enforcing the license agreement the customers agreed to in order to play the game. At the moment, that explicitly forbids hacking it. It's a personal decision: if you feel strongly that you need to hack the game, then nothing prevents you from doing so. Your only problem is that if Blizzard discover that you've done so, because you've broken your side of the license agreement it's within their rights to rescind their side of it by denying you access to the game.

Pssst. Witherwing...

.

And yes I just linked to an image on another site in a discussion about copyright.