War of words between Blizzard and bot maker heats up

Bot maker Bossland has accused Blizzard of illicitly obtaining the source code to one of its cheating products.

Blizzard recently filed a lawsuit against the company concerning its bot software Buddy, which allows gamers to cheat at a range of titles including World of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm and Diablo III.

However, TorrentFreak reports that Bossland has now alleged that Blizzard illegally purchased a copy of Buddy’s source code from freelance coder James ‘Apoc’ Enright. Doing so allowed it to shut its usage down.

Today Blizzard acted in a manner as shady as possible for a multi-billion-dollar corporation,” Bossland CEO Zwetan Letschew said. We were informed that the deal compelled Apoc to submit the entire source code of Stormbuddy, which is actually the intellectual property of Bossland to Blizzard.”

As a result Bossland intends to take Blizzard to court. The developer, however, is unrelenting in its stance and is prepared for what would be yet another legal battle with Bossland in the German courts.

Bossland’s entire business is based in cheating, and the use of their bots negatively impacts our global player community,” the company told Kotaku. That’s why we do not tolerate cheating in our games, and it’s why our players overwhelmingly support that policy.

We’ve already won numerous cases against Bossland in Germany, and despite their tactics to delay the ongoing proceedings and the related repercussions, we’re confident that the court system will continue to validate our claims and ultimately stop the distribution of these cheating bots.

We’ll continue to aggressively defend our games and services, within the bounds of the law, in an effort to provide the best possible experience for our players. We want to use this as an opportunity to remind players who might not be aware—using bots, such as those distributed by Bossland, to automate gameplay in our games will result in a loss of access to those games.”

In May Bossland was forced to apologise to users of its HonorBuddy WoW bot after Blizzard banned its use and locked their accounts. Other bot makers have been forced out of business by Blizzard’s efforts to protect its games from cheaters.