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Private server company to pay Blizzard 88 million dollars.
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Post by
xaratherus
Two thread fail
Save that this thread was the original. It was posted several days ago, while the other one was posted a few hours ago.
Post by
300899
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Zoneseek
I dont really get why someone would want to play on a private server really anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual
Post by
Pwntiff
I dont really get why someone would want to play on a private server really anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual
Care to comment more on that, or just have us infer what you meant?
Post by
Zoneseek
I dont really get why someone would want to play on a private server really anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual
Care to comment more on that, or just have us infer what you meant?
Just saying that everyone is different and likes different things. Millions of people wouldn't get why we like to play world of warcraft at all.
Post by
Pwntiff
Hmm, I can see that. Except I knew a couple people who messed around on private servers (and played around on one myself for a couple hours), and they said it was worse that official servers, and I agree. The largest problem is there are far fewer people on them, and smaller communities like that aren't favorable for an MMO.
Plus, they seem to be far less stable than Blizzard's.
So, yeah:
I dont really get why someone would want to play on a private server really anyway.
That makes two of us.
Post by
obiwaynekenobi
Many people play on private servers that are locked to Vanilla or TBC, and not so they can buy epics or overpowered stuff to blow through content. For these people
there is no alternative
, as you can't play Vanilla or TBC
as it was originally
anymore, and Blizzard refuses to create Vanilla/TBC servers themselves.
That's one reason people play on private servers. At least one friend of mine plays on a free private server that's identical to Blizzard's except not costing $15/month for the "privilege" of playing.
Post by
Magician22773
Honestly, their lives are not ruined. I would hope that anyone running a "business" that grossed 3+ million dollars would have the sense to be incorporated. That being the case, the corporation will be bankrupted, but the officers will be left essentiallly untouched. Aside from having a poor credit rating for the next 7 to 10 years, they won't really be affected. They should count themselves lucky that it was only a civil case and not a criminal one. Spending 5 to 15 years in a 8x10 box with Bubba is having your life ruined. Losing your business that you knew in the first place was not legal is just a setback.
Post by
soccergenius
Kinda feel bad. Whatever kind of errors these people made, not sure I could justify ruining their entire lives over it. That's what $88 million is going to do. They're finished.
(And to you people who said they had it coming... I disagree. Imagine dropping litter - you know it's illegal, but what would you think if they charged you $1.5 million or something for it :O Illegal where I am at least)
This is like splitting your cable connection and selling it to your neighbors. Or making copies of your movies/music and selling them. That's not legal.
Your comparison is terrible. I don't make money at the expense of the soda company by tossing the empty can in a ditch.
You have 100% missed the point.
Legality - punishment. That's what my post was about. Not how the money was made.
And if I found out someone was nicking a bit of my internet, I'd tell him to &*!@ off, I wouldn't sue him for like 88 million :)
And remember, you seem to have interpreted my post as fact, and therefore it can be wrong. No, just no. It's my opinion, deal with it please.
That settlement will bankrupt the company. As far as I know, the owners are not personally liable, ie, they lose their company, not their house.
If you don't associate a penalty with unwanted behavior, how on Earth can you prevent the behavior? If a cop pulls you over for speeding, will a stern talking about how it's dangerous
really
going to keep people from speeding?
Post by
darkdog
Honestly, their lives are not ruined. I would hope that anyone running a "business" that grossed 3+ million dollars would have the sense to be incorporated. That being the case, the corporation will be bankrupted, but the officers will be left essentiallly untouched. Aside from having a poor credit rating for the next 7 to 10 years, they won't really be affected. They should count themselves lucky that it was only a civil case and not a criminal one. Spending 5 to 15 years in a 8x10 box with Bubba is having your life ruined. Losing your business that you knew in the first place was not legal is just a setback.
^This if they set up their business correctly the business will simply file bankruptcy sell all assets (my bet alot less then 3 million) and since they were running a illegal operation they will not be able to keep running to make money to pay for the judgement. So my bet is after legal fees blizzard probably will lose money
Will it be the end of private servers? I doubt it my bet is most the people working there will either join another business doing the same thing or make there own.
Post by
366971
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Sephrain
Something, TL;DR
Watch the video in this guy's link. Seriously. It's awesome.
Edit: Errr, sig, rather.
Post by
Rexz
If any of you guys want to know more info about the history of this, i'd like to share it. (Wall-o-Text ahead)
I used to play on Scapegaming, yes the WoW private server. I played there on WoWcrack in 2007, one of the 3 server they hosted for more than a year until 2008. The hosting site used to be %^&*!@#$ until Alyson Reeves (goes under the forum username as Peyton) took over. &*!@#$%^ used to be owned by a few individuals, one of which was Silent, a 14 year old i believe. What happened was there was an internal conflict within the leadership and Silent was banned and removed as well as some other individuals, who are unknown to me. But what happen as a result was that Peyton became the head of the server hosting, donation management, and the site as well. Silent on the other hand went with those who were kicked and they established another private server themselves. Peyton pretty much don't play WoW, and she only handle the "business" side of the game, letting other staff members like GM and Forum Mod and the Developers do the rest of the work. The person who coded and work with the server script was called Burlex and he was one of those brilliant computer engineer, he's really well known in the whole private server scripting community. Anyway, more internal conflicts eventually ensued within the group who are managing everything and more staffs eventually were banned/kick or they left themselves, including Burlex who left because of all the drama. Some staff members even released website like this
http://thetruthaboutpeyton.blogspot.com/
that showed what happened within the conflict. So without Burlex, the servers went into chaos, bugs and glitches existed for about 3-5 months I believe. The hack detection system was also outdated due to the lack of work put into them and hackers spawned everywhere. A lot of people quitted but due to the huge number of players there were still a good chunk of players left. about 15k players on all 3 servers (%^&*!@#$ had probably the most populated private servers) went down to about 7-10k I think. During this time, Peyton redid the %^&*!@#$ website and turned it into Scapegaming. I believe the reason she did this was to establish a whole NETWORK of private servers for many other games, not just WoW. She wasn't able to do this in the end because shortly after Scapegaming was established, there were a lot more drama within the leadership and Blizzard started intervening. Anyway, after more server drama and more staff being hired and kicked... they eventually hired a new server developer who goes under the name 2bits. This is when it went down hill.
Before 2bits joined, Peyton was known for using the donation money (the money that players donated to get credits so they can use it to get items in game) to buy herself stuff in real life. From what i know she purchased a treadmill, new phone, refurbished her house and other stuff. This abuse was known by some staff members who were also in charge of donation item distribution and this is what ultimately caused the internal conflict and drama within the @#$%^&*! community and finally, the issue with blizzard.
So when 2bits joined, a lot of stuff got fixed and all went well but only for a short period of time. During this time Peyton was on infamous status within the private server community, since she was the only one who abused the donation money on her server and use it for her own benefit and was caught. A lot of other private server started many DoS attacks on the Scapegaming website and more players quitted. During around this period, Peyton was inactive and was nowhere to be found, a lot of rumors sprang up about Blizzard trying to shutdown Scapegaming and that Peyton was hiding from Blizzard. One day, the website was "red stamped" by blizzard and the forum 404'd and all 3 servers went down. Shortly when everything went up, the Scapegaming website was redirected to 2bitgaming, a temporary website that 2bits set up. What 2bit said was that Peyton was nowhere to be found and he could not contact her, so he is taking care of the servers for now.
During this time I was not playing WoW and i only found out what happened from friends. What happened next I can only guess what that Peyton (Alyson Reevs) saw ahead that blizzard could be coming to shut down the popular private servers. And since she is using the donation money to profit herself he could get in trouble and so she went into hiding. I found out later that Blizzard sued Scapegaming and filed an investigation. Blizzard later found out that Peyton was the one in charge of the private server operation. They did more investigation and found out websites like the one i just showed above and found out Peyton's real life information. They went to Paypal and tracked her account down, found out that she was using donation money for herself and finally were able to put her name in the charge that they filed. A lot of the other staff members were listed under "suspect" were unharmed since Blizzard was only looking for the person who was in charge of the private server and who was abusing the donation money.
Anyway, im glad that she was caught and I don't pity her one bit. These are the reasons why:
1. She doesn't play WoW, her only business was trying to profit from the server
2. She is a lying and pretentious B****, she lied a lot about what happened to the missing staff members who left or quitted, and she always say she cared about the welfare of the server yet she rarely ever put the donation money toward fixing the server or improving it to make it better
3. She used the donation money toward a local band. Apparently they were some crappy band that she was a manager of, she only became their manager after she got rich from all those donation money that she took.
4. She was ruthless to the staff members, who were doing everything for free. I can't even count the number of GMs and Forum Mod who were kicked and left because of her.
So TLTR
She got what she deserved
PS: I duno why W0wscape was censored, it doesn't even exist anymore
Post by
saruu
If any of you guys want to know more info about the history of this, i'd like to share it. (Wall-o-Text ahead)
I used to play on Scapegaming, yes the WoW private server. I played there on WoWcrack in 2007, one of the 3 server they hosted for more than a year until 2008. The hosting site used to be %^&*!@#$ until Alyson Reeves (goes under the forum username as Peyton) took over. &*!@#$%^ used to be owned by a few individuals, one of which was Silent, a 14 year old i believe. What happened was there was an internal conflict within the leadership and Silent was banned and removed as well as some other individuals, who are unknown to me. But what happen as a result was that Peyton became the head of the server hosting, donation management, and the site as well. Silent on the other hand went with those who were kicked and they established another private server themselves. Peyton pretty much don't play WoW, and she only handle the "business" side of the game, letting other staff members like GM and Forum Mod and the Developers do the rest of the work. The person who coded and work with the server script was called Burlex and he was one of those brilliant computer engineer, he's really well known in the whole private server scripting community. Anyway, more internal conflicts eventually ensued within the group who are managing everything and more staffs eventually were banned/kick or they left themselves, including Burlex who left because of all the drama. Some staff members even released website like this
http://thetruthaboutpeyton.blogspot.com/
that showed what happened within the conflict. So without Burlex, the servers went into chaos, bugs and glitches existed for about 3-5 months I believe. The hack detection system was also outdated due to the lack of work put into them and hackers spawned everywhere. A lot of people quitted but due to the huge number of players there were still a good chunk of players left. about 15k players on all 3 servers (%^&*!@#$ had probably the most populated private servers) went down to about 7-10k I think. During this time, Peyton redid the %^&*!@#$ website and turned it into Scapegaming. I believe the reason she did this was to establish a whole NETWORK of private servers for many other games, not just WoW. She wasn't able to do this in the end because shortly after Scapegaming was established, there were a lot more drama within the leadership and Blizzard started intervening. Anyway, after more server drama and more staff being hired and kicked... they eventually hired a new server developer who goes under the name 2bits. This is when it went down hill.
Before 2bits joined, Peyton was known for using the donation money (the money that players donated to get credits so they can use it to get items in game) to buy herself stuff in real life. From what i know she purchased a treadmill, new phone, refurbished her house and other stuff. This abuse was known by some staff members who were also in charge of donation item distribution and this is what ultimately caused the internal conflict and drama within the @#$%^&*! community and finally, the issue with blizzard.
So when 2bits joined, a lot of stuff got fixed and all went well but only for a short period of time. During this time Peyton was on infamous status within the private server community, since she was the only one who abused the donation money on her server and use it for her own benefit and was caught. A lot of other private server started many DoS attacks on the Scapegaming website and more players quitted. During around this period, Peyton was inactive and was nowhere to be found, a lot of rumors sprang up about Blizzard trying to shutdown Scapegaming and that Peyton was hiding from Blizzard. One day, the website was "red stamped" by blizzard and the forum 404'd and all 3 servers went down. Shortly when everything went up, the Scapegaming website was redirected to 2bitgaming, a temporary website that 2bits set up. What 2bit said was that Peyton was nowhere to be found and he could not contact her, so he is taking care of the servers for now.
During this time I was not playing WoW and i only found out what happened from friends. What happened next I can only guess what that Peyton (Alyson Reevs) saw ahead that blizzard could be coming to shut down the popular private servers. And since she is using the donation money to profit herself he could get in trouble and so she went into hiding. I found out later that Blizzard sued Scapegaming and filed an investigation. Blizzard later found out that Peyton was the one in charge of the private server operation. They did more investigation and found out websites like the one i just showed above and found out Peyton's real life information. They went to Paypal and tracked her account down, found out that she was using donation money for herself and finally were able to put her name in the charge that they filed. A lot of the other staff members were listed under "suspect" were unharmed since Blizzard was only looking for the person who was in charge of the private server and who was abusing the donation money.
Anyway, im glad that she was caught and I don't pity her one bit. These are the reasons why:
1. She doesn't play WoW, her only business was trying to profit from the server
2. She is a lying and pretentious B****, she lied a lot about what happened to the missing staff members who left or quitted, and she always say she cared about the welfare of the server yet she rarely ever put the donation money toward fixing the server or improving it to make it better
3. She used the donation money toward a local band. Apparently they were some crappy band that she was a manager of, she only became their manager after she got rich from all those donation money that she took.
4. She was ruthless to the staff members, who were doing everything for free. I can't even count the number of GMs and Forum Mod who were kicked and left because of her.
So TLTR
She got what she deserved
PS: I duno why W0wscape was censored, it doesn't even exist anymore
Sounds like she got what she deserve,Karma is a pain.
Post by
TheReal
I'm not going to read through all the replies because I'm a bit short on time at the moment, but I do want to say what has probably already been said several times:
PWNT.
For all those people who think it's okay to infringe on copyrights, I hope that one day your lives are as ruined as the folks' lives who ran that private server. I personally have to deal with scum making money off of my work everyday; it's good to see a Johnson-sized slice of justice served.
Post by
Anmaja
I see a lot of ignorance here.
It costs a lot of money to run a private server, and it is a lot of work running it smoothly, and it requires a team of GMs 24/7 to keep things orderly.
Some people like playing Vanilla or TBC. Some people like the small community. Okay, you do get an unstable economy and relations are not like official because you know most of the population personally, but it can be really fun. When I played on a private server there were a lot of bugs, but there was a team working on them full time, and in the meantime GMs could help you with problems if you asked them. I've played official for a while now, but I still miss the people and the community of my old private server.
I hope private servers who only make money to (barely) cover their costs won't be taken down by Blizz, it would be really sad :S
Nobody would be better from it, and many people will lose their online friends. Take my mom; she loves playing WoW, but she would never play official WoW. It's just not for her, such a massive community. It's a different scene.
Post by
TheReal
Dude, you are advocating copyright infringement because you value your experience above Blizzard's rights?
So by that token, the drugs you're on should be legal, right?
Post by
Deepthought
Dude, you are advocating copyright infringement because you value your experience above Blizzard's rights?
So by that token, the drugs you're on should be legal, right?
You cannot seriously, possibly, believe that this is a good, logical route for you to bring your arguement down, right?
Post by
TheReal
If I enjoy it, then it should be legal. Yes, that's the "route" I'm taking.
Post by
Deepthought
If I enjoy it, then it should be legal. Yes, that's the "route" I'm taking.
Tell me why copyright infringement is illegal.
Then tell me why certain drugs are illegal.
Look at the two reasons very carefully and you might just see why they aren't a valid comparison.
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