NCSoft Wins Legal Battle Against Bot Creators

[Labyrrinth]

1784Last week, the Seoul District Court ruled in favor of NCSoft in a battle against the makers of game cheating programs. The court sentenced two distributors of ``LinMate,’’ a Bot or Macro program that plays Lineage without the presence of an actual player, to a suspended jail term of two years and a 10-million won penalty.

Though NCSoft officially condemns such programs as illegal, they said that they have no immediate plan of leveraging the court’s decision to completely root out similar cheating programs. This decision has a lot of people questioning whether or not NCSoft is really ready to take a firm position on the problem or if this is all for show.

Many gamers have blamed game companies like NCSoft, saying that they have been deliberately overlooking the use of Bots, because they are worried that they may lose profit if Bots are banned.

The Bot sellers also insist that NCSoft has been benefiting from such cheating programs and ``LinMate’’ was just a scapegoat.

Read the full article here (http://search.hankooki.com/times/times_view.php?&path=hankooki3/times/lpage/biz/200605/kt2006050917505311880.htm&media=kt).

[Razorwire]

Hope they keep it up

[Dillgaar]

a significant number of their subscriber base only subscribe to farm items etc... shutting them off would make their amazing numbers a lot less amazing... I wonder if they are working on figuring out some way to get a piece of the market without losing the numbers they have

[Vengeful]

Wow...

I forsee that this could be the beginning of a landslide against 3rd party companies that are influencing MMOs. If people can't make Bots, banning/sueing companies that are selling Gold shouldn't be too far behind. I hope someone carries this torch.

[reefus88]

hip-hip-hooray
hip-hip-hooray

BoT's and illegal farming have ruined one too many games for me, glad to see this happen.

[khatib]

hip-hip-hooray
hip-hip-hooray

BoT's and illegal farming have ruined one too many games for me, glad to see this happen.


Why'd you right BoT instead of bot or BOT??? Did you used to play on Kettemoor in SWG or Azgalor in WoW by chance?

[reefus88]

Why'd you right BoT instead of bot or BOT??? Did you used to play on Kettemoor in SWG or Azgalor in WoW by chance?

no but I did raid BoT (Bastion of Thunder) alot in EQ, thats probably why :)

[Dorfeater]

I'm no fan of NCSoft whatsoever, but this is a good move. For the entire MMOG community, and they should crack down even more imo.

If NC Soft decides to take more action against these bot programs, I think other companies may follow, or.. attempt to follow.

I'm not entirely sure if the Gaming company would win that battle in the US. But its worth a shot isn't it?

kudos to NC Soft

[Darkgecko]

Not to imply that there is nothing wrong with it, but what is illegal about cheating at a video game? When we were all a bit younger, cheats were actually built into games.

[Skarlath]

From the company's standpoint, it is devaluing their content. Devaluation of content can lead to things like MUDflation, whihc damages the health of the game. The BOTers are potentially reducing future revenue.

Not to mention that it makes the game less enjoyable for the non-botting players. Those players then quit, and once again the botters have lost the company money.

This isn't just cheating at a game, this is damaging a revenue source. :)

[khatib]

Not to imply that there is nothing wrong with it, but what is illegal about cheating at a video game? When we were all a bit younger, cheats were actually built into games.

Messing with the economy of the game by botting and gold selling causes an influx of currency into the economy, since the people farming it are not playing the game normally and aren't encountering all of the standard money sinks the devs have built in to keep the cashflow in check.

This causes inflation of the economy and then devs have to brainstorm, balance and tinker and -- ultimately -- burn valuable time trying to bring the economy back under control for the average paying customers. Exploiting or Botting is a waste of company resources, and hurts the developer financially, as well as hurting the experience of the standard "legal" player by diverting dev attentions from normal balance fixes and upcoming new content.



And Reefus -- oh. My old guild tag was BoT and a lot of people from those servers have a habit of typing it that way ;) just wonderin.

[Darkgecko]

Well I didnt ask what was wrong with it (that has been discussed plenty of times), I asked what would justify legal action, in America at least. Just because I do something that is bad for your business doesn't mean I'm breaking the law.