Bossland gives up on WoW’s Honorbuddy cheat following Blizzard’s 2017 court victories

November 16, 2017 11:30 AM

If you weren’t convinced that Blizzard defeated Bossland in its string of lawsuits already, you will be today. As The Nosy Gamer noticed, Bossland announced today that it’s ending sales for multiple hack, bot, and cheat programs that affected Blizzard games, including Honorbuddy (for World of Warcraft) and Hearthbuddy (for Hearthstone), though it looks as if Demonbuddy (Diablo III) will remain intact. Support for the discontinued cheats ends on December 31st.

The Bossland announcement is super classy, and by super classy, I mean not at all classy, as you might expect. The developers insist their paid cheat programs “provide no edge” and were intended to help time-starved players. They also claim Blizzard is winning only because of its supposed “decision to compromise the privacy of their players” by using checks that any studio that cares about cheating uses.

Blizzard had pursued Bossland for the last several years across multiple continents in an attempt to shut down the cheat programs, which Blizz argued violated its copyrights and cost it significant amounts of money to fight – money it was therefore not spending on its own games and customers. The drama finally culminated earlier this year in victories for Blizzard in a German Supreme Court ruling and a California federal court case, the latter of which awarded Blizzard $8.5M in statutory damages and legal fees – the minimum, as Blizzard didn’t push for more. Bossland’s owners did not appear in person to contest the suit or the ruling, though they did talk smack on the internet, which is sort of the same? No, maybe not.

Source: Bossland via Nosy Gamer. Thanks, Sally!

Further reading on the Blizzard v. Bossland legal drama: