But Who's Doing All That World Of Warcraft Gold Farming While WoW Is Down In China?

from the hit-on-the-economy dept

A few years back, we wrote about the rise of virtual sweatshops in China that involved "gold farming" in online worlds. The idea was that these shops would get people to do repetitive tasks in online games to create virtual wealth that could be sold in the real world for cash. Last month, there were some stories claiming that China was looking to crack down on gold farmers, but later analysis suggested it had less to do with gold farming and more to do with alternate currencies found online. Still, it's worth noting the reports claiming that World Of Warcraft has been down in China for a while, and no one's entirely sure why. The rumor is that the Chinese gov't believes that an agreement between Blizzard and another company is illegal, and during the investigation it has forced the site offline. Still, it does make you wonder what all those WoW gold farmers are going to be doing. Judging by how often they try to spam our comments, from Chinese IP addresses, they can't be handling the downtime all that well. Update: Cool. Folks in the comments come through again, pointing out that the gold farmers are connecting via US servers so this doesn't much matter. So now you know... Of course, if that's the case, then who cares whether or not the Chinese servers have gone down?

Filed Under: china, gold farming, world of warcraft

Blizzard Gets Super Aggressive With Cease & Desist Letters

from the way-to-piss-off-fans... dept

Bradley writes in to alert us to the news that, in the last month or so, the lawyers over at Blizzard have been quite busy sending out an awful lot of cease-and-desist letters for pretty much anyone having anything to do with the game World of Warcraft. Among those hit with C&Ds are iPhone apps, web comics and others. The latest involves a popular fan site, called WarcraftPets.com that was apparently selling some things to support the site -- which is apparently a huge no-no to the lawyers at Blizzard (though, it's not clear why they went after some free iPhone apps as well). The whole thing doesn't make much sense. Why is it so problematic that a fan site that's helping to promote the game can't make a little profit for helping promote the game? And, yes, when it comes to trademark law, there is a duty to protect, but that's only in the cases of clear confusion. If there isn't likely to be any confusion, there shouldn't be an issue.

Filed Under: cease and desist, copyright, trademark, world of warcraft
Companies: blizzard

Ruling In WoW Bot Case At Odds With Intention Of Copyright Law

from the very-troubling dept

When a judge ruled last summer that a World of Warcraft bot violated Blizzard's copyright, the ruling was already quite problematic in that it vastly expanded the scope of copyright law in terms of the power of an EULA to limit the activities of legitimate purchasers by use of copyright law. However, an additional ruling dealing with some of the other aspects in the case may be even worse. Tim Lee's writeup explains all the gory details, but just to highlight the key point: this ruling clearly goes well beyond the intention of copyright law and the DMCA specifically, in allowing a software company not to just limit the sale or copying of its program, but to limit how a legitimate copy is used outside of additional copying or selling.

Of course, as we saw when the original ruling was made, there are some in the tech community who are willing to ignore the implications of this just because they don't like what the bot software did (i.e., helping people effectively cheat in the game). However, you need to look beyond what the software did to what these rulings actually mean, and it's quite problematic, and could represent a significant expansion of how copyright law can be used to remove all sorts of rights from individuals. The fact that this particular piece of software was used for questionable purposes is not the issue. The issue is that it was a twisted reading of copyright law that was used to stop it. Blizzard had a variety of options -- mainly technological -- to combat such a bot. To use copyright law is a problem we should all be concerned about.

Filed Under: bots, copyright, world of warcraft
Companies: blizzard

Blizzard Adds Another Scarcity To Sell Around World Of Warcraft: 3D Figurines

from the it's-the-little-things dept

We're always looking for interesting examples of companies using infinite goods to sell scarcities, and George Johnston points us to one side business that Blizzard Entertainment seems to have gotten into to make more money from World of Warcraft. The company already gives out its basic software for free, but sells the (scarce) service of connecting to its game servers to play (even though there are "free" servers out there, many end up paying for the official one, because it's better, more stable, and has many more players). However, Johnston noticed that Blizzard has also done a deal with a 3D printing company (usually used for things like rapid prototyping) to allow game players to buy 3D models of their players. This is unlikely to ever become a really big business, but it highlights, yet again, that there are numerous different scarcities around any particular product -- and a good business is one that goes out and explores that wide variety of options to figure out what they can sell.

Filed Under: 3d figures, online worlds, scarcity, virtual games, world of warcraft
Companies: blizzard

Mixed Signals On The Value Of World Of Warcraft In Moving Up The Corporate Ladder

from the depends-on-who-you-talk-to dept

Just a few weeks ago, the NY Times had a blog post talking about how some recruiters were telling World of Warcraft players to avoid mentioning their gaming on resumes, as many employers were telling recruiters to avoid gamers, on the theory they "cannot give 100 percent because their focus is elsewhere [and] their sleeping patterns are often not great..." Of course, in different companies, you get very different views on that same subject -- and CIO magazine is running a profile of Starbucks' new CIO, where they actually play up the fact that he was "one of the top guildmasters" in the online game. In fact, those who have worked with him note that his experiences in WoW have given him more leadership ability than the MBA he also happens to have. So, for the WoW gamers out there who despaired after reading the NY Times article, perhaps just go looking for a different type of company.

Filed Under: resume, world of warcraft

Looks Like Someone Learned From The Scrabulous/Hasbro Mess

from the good-for-them dept

We've talked about how both Hasbro and Mattel seriously screwed up in dealing with Scrabulous, the online version of Scrabble written by two brothers in India and placed in Facebook where it became a huge hit. While the companies did make overtures to working with the brothers, eventually they sued to shut down the game, pissing off plenty of legitimate fans, leading to widespread boycotts of Hasbro and Mattel games, and allowing the brothers to create their own new game that has also won fantastic reviews.

It appears that not every game company is so short-sighted. Reader Doug Schneider writes in to let us know about a guy who created a virtual copy of the popular casual game Bejewled inside the virtual world World of Warcraft. Yet, rather than shut the guy down or threaten to sue him, the makers of Bejewled, Popcap Games, hired the guy to create an official version for World of Warcraft, saying that the original version lacked polish, so they figured it made sense to just hire him to clean it up and make an official version. What a concept.

Filed Under: bejeweled, fans, lessons, scrabulous, video games, world of warcraft
Companies: hasbro, mattel, popcap games

Blizzard Seeks Injunction Against Open Sourcing Bot Software It Can't Defend Against

from the that-raises-just-a-few-questions... dept

We were more than a bit worried last month, when a judge ruled that some bot software of the game World of Warcraft somehow infringed on Blizzard's copyright. It involved a lot of really tortured logic to figure out how such software actually violates Blizzard's copyright. It certainly is true that such software may be annoying to other World of Warcraft players, but that doesn't mean it actually violates copyright. We're already seeing some of the potential unintended consequences of such a decision, as Slashdot alerts us that beyond just seeking an injunction against the software, Blizzard is specifically seeking an injunction against him revealing the code of his software, such as by open sourcing it. If the court agrees, this effectively gives Blizzard control over someone else's source code, just because a judge found it infringed on their copyright. That seems highly problematic and dangerous.

Filed Under: bots, copyright, injunction, open source, world of warcraft
Companies: blizzard

Courts Should Reject Blizzard's Assault on the First Sale Doctrine

from the contract-or-copyright? dept

We've written before about the ongoing fight over the legal status of end-user license agreements. Many software companies have tried to claim that breaking an EULA is copyright infringement, which often carries harsher penalties and stronger remedies than mere breaches of contract. The courts have generally resisted these arguments, holding that a copyright holder cannot expand the scope of copyright simply by attaching a "license" to its products. The Electronic Frontier Foundation points to the latest skirmish in this debate: Blizzard has taken the position that using a piece of software called Glider to cheat in World of Warcraft is not only contrary to the game's license agreement but is copyright infringement as well. Indeed, on Blizzard's theory, any violation of the license agreement would constitute copyright infringement.

Public Knowledge has submitted a brief in the case pointing out the real problems the courts would cause if they accepted Blizzard's argument. For example, among the terms of the World of Warcraft license are rules about what you can name your in-game characters. Blizzard's theory would mean that if you choose a name that violates those rules (such as naming your character after a "popular culture figure, celebrity, or media personality"), you would not only get kicked out of the game, but you would be liable for copyright infringement too! This is plainly not how copyright is supposed to work, and PK rightly urges the court to reject Blizzard's over-reaching argument. Perhaps most troubling, accepting Blizzard's argument would mean that software vendors would have the power to dictate who may make software that interoperates with their products. Outside of the much-reviled DMCA, copyright law has never given software vendors this kind of control, and there's no good reason to start now.

Filed Under: copyright, eula, first sale, world of warcraft
Companies: blizzard, eff

Once Again Real World Laws Enter Virtual Worlds: Warcraft Bot Maker Sued

from the bots-have-rights-too... dept

This isn't the first time we've seen stories like this, but Blizzard, the makers of World of Warcraft are suing the maker of a Warcraft "bot" that allowed players to automate certain activities. If this sounds familiar, you might recall people freaking out over bots in Second Life as well. It all goes back to the same point that it's dangerous to move real-world laws into virtual worlds. Those real world laws are designed to matter due to scarcity and the physical constraints of the real world. However, the whole point of a virtual world is that you're not limited by those constraints -- and you are only limited by the constraints programmed into the world. If the creators of the world don't program in certain constraints, it makes little sense to force them on the world through a real-world legal process. Why not just program in those constraints? So, if such a bot is really a problem, program a way to stop it from working and kick the user out for violating terms of service. But to bring a real lawsuit (using copyright, no less) makes little sense here.

Filed Under: bots, copybot, copyright, lawsuits, world of warcraft
Companies: blizzard

Government Continues To Search Virtual Worlds For Terrorists

from the anyone-look-on-America's-Army? dept

A few weeks back, we pointed to a ridiculous report from the federal government's Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, claiming that places like Second Life could be breeding grounds for terrorists. Why Second Life as opposed to any standard web chat room? That's not at all clear. Salon has gone through and thoroughly debunked the notion that terrorists are likely to use Second Life, noting that the so-called "experts" who made the claims clearly had never used Second Life. Yet, don't think that means the government won't keep up its fear-mongering over the issue. Wired is reporting that the U.S. intelligence community is working on software to detect terrorists infiltrating World of Warcraft. Initially, the program will focus on just profiling the behavior of people in such virtual worlds, but down the road they hope that it will automatically identify those likely to be terrorists. I wonder if they'll use similar programs in the Army's own America's Army online video game?

Filed Under: second life, terrorism, virtual worlds, world of warcraft