A U.S. court ruled in favor of Jagex Games Studio over the firm's two-year lawsuit against Impulse Software for developing and selling macro/bot software for its MMORPG RuneScape.
The British independent developer and publisher called the ruling a victory for game companies battling bot makers in their titles, and said it could serve as a "serious deterrent for anyone who continues to be involved in developing botting software or scripts or even maintaining or supporting those involved."
Impulse Software's iBot allowed users to automatically complete tasks and level up in RuneScape without needing to actually play the game. It's a practice frowned upon and prohibited by most publishers, and popular games like World of Warcraft are aggressive in banning players suspected of using bots.
Jagex filed its lawsuit against Florida-based Impulse Software in February 2010, accusing the company of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and of copyright and trademark infringement. The publisher said iBot had harmed its game and player community for a number of years.
The court has ruled that Impulse Software must pay Jagex "substantial damages," and has placed an injunction preventing the company from developing or helping anyone develop bot software for any Jagex product.
Furthermore, Impulse Software was ordered to give up all its websites, domains, source code, and customer details to Jagex. It must also provide details for all the individuals who developers scripts for iBot and sold/re-sold those scripts.
Along with its legal efforts, Jagex has recently made strides in fighting bot makers and users in-game. Last October, the publisher rolled out a RuneScape update designed to make most bots obsolete, and banned some 7.7 million bot users in a week. It claims no bot maker has managed to circumvent the new security since the update.
"We have spared no expense fighting this case, as demonstrated by the seven-figure bill this action has cost," says Jagex CEO and CTO Mark Gerhard. "But the point of this and other cases of its kind, is that we will continue bring to justice those who set out to harm the game or our beloved community."
None of this actually fixes one of the major flaws of Runescape, which is how outdated of an MMO it is, and how absoultely terrible the early game is.
People argue every MMO has it's early game grind, but Runescape has one of the worst. This is why people botted, they wanted to get to the "fun" part of the game, not spend hours hitting goblins outside of lumbridge until they had a high enough attack to hit slightly higher level goblins, and repeat.
I will admit that bots also flooded the market with gold, and all but ruined the Grand Exchange.
Exactly, creating an industry that cheats to get past a game's inherently poor design is no excuse especially if it violates the EULA or other legal agreement. On the one hand I understand and can see why they and the hack industry exists. Technically, it's standard economics. The problem is instead of it being something where, for instance, you create a "cheat" mod for Skyrim which doesn't affect anyone but the single player playing the game, you've got cheats and hacks that help people circumvent the system and effectively ruin the game for paying customers. It's like saying it's okay to create a device that allows you to syphon off gas from people's cars without them knowing. Sure it makes it easier for a subset of the population to get gas for free and doesn't necessarily harm the victims (they don't die or anything), but ultimately there's still a cost involved.
In the case of game cheats and hacks in MMOs, the victims are the other players who actually pay for the game (or buy items via MTs). You spent $20 on items that that guy over there got for $5 after buying a script from one of these firms or you want to sell the item you took forever to get on raids but now sells for 50 gold because the botters are selling 100 of them for cheap.
Like Gregory said, if you don't like the game design or the grind, just play something else. The devs/pub will learn real fast.
What if these bots collect game information and help the player learn better strategies? I oppose to criminalize companies who offer products like these, even if they ruin a game.
This is discrimination against AIs. In 20 years' time this will be viewed as something abhorrent ;)
I know it's the principle at stake here but bots are still present (even after the recent bot armageddon, or whatever it was branded as) and this will not help to reduce their number.
If you don't want bots in a game - design them out. Now that's a material for a blog post. Is it possible to design a game that solves the bot problem either by making it impossible for bots to do anything useful or make their presence benign?
I think that the main way to avoid the bot issue is to follow the advice posted above, design a game that has enough compelling gameplay that people won't want to use a bot. I think that would have been far cheaper and better for the community of Runescape fans in the long run than a multi-million dollar lawsuit fighting a bot maker.
People argue every MMO has it's early game grind, but Runescape has one of the worst. This is why people botted, they wanted to get to the "fun" part of the game, not spend hours hitting goblins outside of lumbridge until they had a high enough attack to hit slightly higher level goblins, and repeat.
I will admit that bots also flooded the market with gold, and all but ruined the Grand Exchange.
Despite any flaws the game may or may not have this decision is good for the game
and good for the developers.
Players may get away with it, a game's mechanics may invite it, but botting isn't a right.
If the game is a grindfest then play something else.
In the case of game cheats and hacks in MMOs, the victims are the other players who actually pay for the game (or buy items via MTs). You spent $20 on items that that guy over there got for $5 after buying a script from one of these firms or you want to sell the item you took forever to get on raids but now sells for 50 gold because the botters are selling 100 of them for cheap.
Like Gregory said, if you don't like the game design or the grind, just play something else. The devs/pub will learn real fast.
I know it's the principle at stake here but bots are still present (even after the recent bot armageddon, or whatever it was branded as) and this will not help to reduce their number.
If you don't want bots in a game - design them out. Now that's a material for a blog post. Is it possible to design a game that solves the bot problem either by making it impossible for bots to do anything useful or make their presence benign?