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Glider loses again, shutdown imminent
In the latest ruling in the Blizzard v. Glider case, the Honorable David G. Campbell (U.S. District Judge for the District of Arizona) ruled essentially that MDY Industries (the makers of Glider) has to present him with arguments why Glider should not be shut down during what will be a lengthy future appeals process. The arguments must be presented to the court by February 13th, 2009.The Judge will then decide if the arguments hold merit and justify the continued operation of Glider.If MDY Industries is not successful in their persuasion of the Judge Campbell, and MDY Industries CEO Michael Donnelly believes they will not be (according to posts made on the Glider forums), then they will have to cease and desist selling Glider. The shutdown of Glider will happen quickly after the February 13th date.Campbell's full ruling on the matter is available in PDF format for your viewing. We'll have more on this as it develops in the next couple weeks. In the mean time, check out our previous coverage of Glider and its resultsThanks to everyone who sent this in! And while I don't know what Judge David Campbell looks like, I prefer to think of him as pictured in the article.
Blizzard loses a round in the fight against botting
In Blizzard's attempts to get rid of gold farmers and hackers, one of their most annoyingly persistent enemies has been the WoWGlider bot, now known as MMOGlider. They've been throwing suits and countersuits at each other for a few years now, but the latest salvo seems to have gone against Blizzard, the Game Activist reports. Blizzard was trying to subpoena Joe Thaler, owner of Lavish Software LLC, maker of programs such as EQPlayNice. While Lavish Software's programs do not appear to be cheat programs on their own, they did make a deal with MDY Industries, maker of MMOGlider, to use the programs within MMOGlider. According the judge's decision, Blizzard was hoping to obtain all documentation related to the deal, all communication between Thaler and Lavish and MDY and its owner, Michael Donnelly. They also wanted a list of all WoW accounts owned by Thaler and Lavish, as well as the contents of the WTF folders of every installation of WOW used by Thaler and Lavish Entertainment. Unfortunately, the Judge ruled that Blizzard was demanding information that could compromise Lavish's trade secrets and client confidentiality, and that the demand for the information within 9 days did not give Thaler and Lavish enough time to respond an gather information. It's worth noting that the judge did specifically say that Blizzard could file another subpoena that would be more narrow in scope and allow more time for Lavish and Mr. Thaler to respond, so this is probably not a fatal blow to Blizzard by any means. I personally hope not. I've never had much patience for bots, or people who feel they have a civil right to cheat at games, so I'm rooting for the big bad corporation on this one. What about you? Thanks for the link, Tyrsenus.
