Blizzard’s been waging a legal war against cheat maker Bossland, maker of prominent cheat programs for games like Overwatch, World of Warcraft, and Heroes of the Storm, for years. Bossland’s latest tactic? They’ve just stopped responding entirely.
Blizzard most recently went after Bossland last summer, when they filed suit over the group’s now-unavailable Overwatch program, Watchover Tyrant. At the time, Blizzard said Bossland’s cheats were “continuing to cause, massive and irreparable harm to Blizzard” by violating copyrights and terms of service, potentially causing players to stop playing Overwatch, or not buy it at all.
The German group, who you might recognize as the creator of WoW’s Honorbuddy cheat program, failed to have Blizzard’s latest suit dismissed over lack of jurisdiction earlier this year. Ever since then, they’ve been silent, even going so far as to ignore an ultimatum from a German court in which they had 24 hours to reply.
According to TorrentFreak, Blizzard has now submitted a motion for default judgment. They want $8,563,600 in damages, a number they calculated by taking Bossland’s testimony that they’ve sold 118,939 products to users in the United States since July of 2013 and approximating that 36 percent of them were cheats for Blizzard games. Blizzard claims that adds up to 42,818 infringements, for a total just north of $8.5 million.
It’s quite a bit of money, but Blizzard claims they’re actually low-balling it. “While Blizzard would surely be entitled to seek a larger amount, Blizzard seeks only minimum statutory damages,” they said.
Blizzard also added that they believe Bossland has gone radio silent to avoid getting cuffed by Johnny Law in the United States.
“Bossland’s decision to default is a calculated and bad-faith tactic designed to shield its unlawful conduct from the reach of United States law,” wrote Blizzard. “By defaulting, Bossland apparently hopes to block Blizzard from taking any discovery into its conduct, thereby concealing from Blizzard the scope of its unlawful conduct, the amount of revenue it has received from the Bossland Hacks, and the whereabouts of its assets.”
“Bossland also hopes that by hiding this information it may avoid a monetary judgment or render any judgment that may be entered against it either unenforceable in the courts of Germany or uncollectable,” Blizzard added. “Thus, Bossland hopes that it will be able to continue to conduct business as usual, and that Blizzard will be unable to avail itself of the relief to which it is entitled.”
Unsurprisingly, Bossland has yet to reply.