Today marks a monumental event in MMO gaming history as Blizzard emerge victorious in a lawsuit against a World of Warcraft bot company. Blizzard originally filed the lawsuit back in December of 2011 claiming that Ceiling Fan Software, the developers of the popular Shadow Bot and Pocket Gnome programs, had “tortiously induced Blizzard?s game players to breach a term in their contracts “
Two years of legal battles ensued before a California Court ordered the company to cease all operations and pay Blizzard $7 million dollars in damages. The official Ceiling Fan Software website has since been updated with the following message:
My Fellow Users –
We are very sorry that we can no longer offer our products and we understand that you may be concerned about this result.
After more than 2 years of legal battles with Blizzard
Entertainment to both pursue our right to operate and our customer?s
right to play WoW as they choose, we did not prevail in the suit and
have been ordered by the United States District Court in California to
cease our operations.
They even have the balls to ask members for donations to help reduce legal costs. Very few developers have been successful when attempting to shut down similar services but today could mark a big change in the way the legal system addresses these concerns.
Source; GameIndustry