Blizzard Entertainment, responsible for the hugely popular World of Warcraft MMORPG, has won a default judgment against the operator of a private server used to run World of Warcraft.
Alyson Reeves, operator of Scapegaming, has been ordered to pay $88 million to Blizzard Entertainment, who accused Reeves of copyright infringement, unfair competition and circumvention of copyright protection systems as well as other allegations. Blizzard filed the suit last October, citing that Reeves was “well aware” that the actions that Scapegaming performed were unauthorized.
Blizzard was able to satisfactorily provide evidence that showed Scapegaming hosted 32,000 users on a given day in June 2008. That same month, there were over 427,000 members of the Scapegaming community. Blizzard was even able to find Reeves’ own statements saying that 40,000 people play on Scapegaming’s servers every day.
A total of $3,052,339 in gross revenues was also uncovered by Blizzard, who “submitted satisfactory evidence from the third-party PayPal Inc.,” stated the judge’s order.
Scapegaming, operated by Reeves, allowed users to access World of Warcraft without using official Blizzard servers, thereby circumventing subscription fees. The total award took into account the number of active users within the Scapegaming community. A U.S. District court judge took the size of the community, 427,000 users, and multiplied that figure by $200 “per act of circumvention.” The award totaled over $3 million in disgorged profits, $85.4 million in statutory damages and $64,000 in attorney fees.
Reeves did not respond to the suit, resulting in a default judgment for Blizzard.
Source: http://www.industrygamers.com/news/blizzard-wins-88-million-suit-against-world-of-warcraft-private-server-owner/
