Blizzard sues private WoW server operator

Written by Joe Martin

August 17, 2010 | 09:40

Tags: #legal #world-of-warcraft #wow

Companies: #blizzard

Blizzard has been awarded a payment of $88 million after a lawsuit against Scapegaming, a company which operated 'private' World of Warcraft servers, according to Gamasutra.

Blizzard accused Scapegaming, run by Alyson Reeves, of copyright infringement, unfair competition and copyright circumvention in a lawsuit that was filed in October last year.

Evidence garnered from PayPal revealed that Scapegaming had bought in $3 million in revenue from running unauthorised WoW servers, which don't require players to pay a subscription to the game.

Private MMO servers also allow operators to alter the rules of the game; Scapegaming is reported to have charged players $1 for levelling up and up to $300 for rare items.

Blizzard was awarded a total of $200 for each of the 427,000 customers Scapegaming had at it's peak back in June 2008, plus $85.4 million for statutory damages.

Scapegaming did not respond to the suit however, so it's unclear if the company will appeal the judgement - or even be able to pay out to Blizzard.

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