Blizzard is suing cheat creator Bossland, claims they have cost Blizzard millions in lost sales.

[HKZeroFive]

26 minutes ago, ivan134 said:

Steam has VAC. So while it might sometimes take long for cheaters to get banned, they do get banned. Not to mention there are even ESEA servers where they are dealt with more swiftly. Everyone else is just going around in casual servers. People don't care about creating much in tf2 because it's not competitive and everyone just fills around.

 

But let's say for a second that none of these existed. With frequent steam sales, a lot of people for csgo for pennies. Blizzard dies but have these kinds of sales, so if someone is going to sink $40+ into a game, they're going to care what their experience is. To say that they won't is asinine. I would not have spent $200 on league of legends if cheating was an issue.

VAC is rubbish. Most people in the CS:GO community know that. Sure, it sometimes gets the job done but with people who constantly update these hacks to sidestep VAC bans, it's not all that effective. People pay extra to play for ESEA (EDIT: + FaceIt) because either they want to play at an arguably higher skill rank than what MM offers or to avoid hackers. I've seen the same hacker, with the same account, for the past straight four months in casual matches when I'm warming up.

 

On the opposing spectrum, Blizzard has a much better anti-cheat system. I recall the story of a person who hacked, got banned, and could not play ever again on another account. The 'once a hacker, always a hacker' is the best mentality to have. Valve attempts to remedy their hacking problems (Prime MM, rank 3 needed to play MM etc.) but it doesn't stop the problem of cheaters buying a new account and doing it again.

 

Yet, despite all the hacking, each company still has millions of players playing the game. CS:GO has developed its own market, to the extent where all these gambling sites are a fucking disease. IIRC, Blizzard has roughly 9 or so million players playing Overwatch?

 

So that brings me to my question, which I'm going to ask again. What game that has multiplayer doesn't have hackers? The answer is simple. There isn't. So if you're seriously thinking that you're going to have a hacker-free experience on a multiplayer game, you're dead wrong.

 

But some games do have better anti-cheat systems than others. I believe Blizzard fucking nailed it on that front.

[TheElt]

1 minute ago, ivan134 said:

How old are you? Only a child who has no idea how money is made in the adult world would say something this dumb.

Yeah, and that's you out of arguments to make. You can't sue for accused loss of optional payments because of their nature, they're optional, no-one is obligated to buy them and people chose to not buy them for more reasons than "I don't want to spend more money because hackers"

 

Unless Blizzard can prove that they lost sales of the game, this is probably going to be a loss for them

[Master Disaster]

12 minutes ago, TheElt said:

Yeah, and that's you out of arguments to make. You can't sue for accused loss of optional payments because of their nature, they're optional, no-one is obligated to buy them and people chose to not buy them for more reasons than "I don't want to spend more money because hackers"

 

Unless Blizzard can prove that they lost sales of the game, this is probably going to be a loss for them

Exactly, and without hopping to a parallel universe where hacks don't exist so they can gather data on how many copies were sold there's no way they can prove this hack lost them sales. Its the classic piracy argument, every copy that's pirated equals one lost sale except they can't prove those that pirated would of bought it or how many people bought it after pirating it. 

[Syfes]

39 minutes ago, TheElt said:

If you're using in-game purchases as an argument for them losing money, then you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel. By that logic, anyone playing any game that has microtransactions, but they chose not to pay, can be sued by the company for making them lose sales.

 

You play TF2 and don't buy anything? Valve can sue you for loss of revenue!

You play CS:GO and don't buy anything? Valve can sue you for loss of revenue!

You play World of Tanks and don't buy anything? Wargaming can sue you for loss of revenue!

You play Planetside 2 and don't buy anything? Daybreak can sue you for loss of revenue!

You play WoW and don't buy anything? Blizzard can sue you for loss of revenue!

You play Overwatch and don't buy anything? Blizzard can sue you for loss of revenue!

When a game developer / production house is having to pump literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in to anti-cheat counter measures, then that also directly affects their profits.

 

And you could argue their revenue as well. Maybe not as directly, but consider that they're now unable to put that money towards marketing or development. Improving on those two factors could directly improve revenue.

[ivan134]

16 minutes ago, HKZeroFive said:

VAC is rubbish. Most people in the CS:GO community know that. Sure, it sometimes gets the job done but with people who constantly update these hacks to sidestep VAC bans, it's not all that effective. People pay extra to play for ESEA (EDIT: + FaceIt) because either they want to play at an arguably higher skill rank than what MM offers or to avoid hackers. I've seen the same hacker, with the same account, for the past straight four months in casual matches when I'm warming up.

 

On the opposing spectrum, Blizzard has a much better anti-cheat system. I recall the story of a person who hacked, got banned, and could not play ever again on another account. The 'once a hacker, always a hacker' is the best mentality to have. Valve attempts to remedy their hacking problems (Prime MM, rank 3 needed to play MM etc.) but it doesn't stop the problem of cheaters buying a new account and doing it again.

 

Yet, despite all the hacking, each company still has millions of players playing the game. CS:GO has developed its own market, to the extent where all these gambling sites are a fucking disease. IIRC, Blizzard has roughly 9 or so million players playing Overwatch?

 

So that brings me to my question, which I'm going to ask again. What game that has multiplayer doesn't have hackers? The answer is simple. There isn't. So if you're seriously thinking that you're going to have a hacker-free experience on a multiplayer game, you're dead wrong.

 

But some games do have better anti-cheat systems than others. I believe Blizzard fucking nailed it on that front.

Yea, that people are wiling to pay more money to avoid cheaters should tell you something. I'd bet my left testicle that if ESEA wasn't an option, a significant number of those people wouldn't bother with competitive CSGO. I've already explained the psychology of the other people who "don't care" about cheaters in CSGO. I've never claimed that a MP game with no cheaters exists, I've said that people would rather not deal with it if it's a widespread problem. I already acknowledged that VAC can be slow, but it still gets the job done. Casual players, who make up the majority of any game, don't care especially if a lot of them bought the game pennies. They even have the ability to create their own servers which they can more easily administrate. Overwatch doesn't have this. Serious players have ESEA and for the other who don't want to pay more for ESEA, VAC works, albeit slow. Thinking about it again, you asked if there is a MP game without cheating, and the biggest one in the world, League of Legends, doesn't have any. You can make the argument that it's because it's free, but the counter argument would be the game would not grow to be this large if cheating was an issue. They're not the only free to play game in the world.

 

9 million seems like a lot of players for Overwatch until you consider that League of Legends has over 150 million players. Would you like to take a guess as to whether Blizzard would like their player base to grow to be at least a quarter of that? It's not about whether they have a good anti cheat system. It's about perception. Regardless of how effective Blizzard is at dealing with cheaters, people are going to apprehensive about dropping $40 for a game if they're going to run into cheaters. For people who have bought the game, if they keep running into them, they're not going to be willing to keep playing the game and potentially buy loot crates. ALL of these combined are potential huge losses for Blizzard. This should be clear without me having to spell it out.

15 minutes ago, TheElt said:

Yeah, and that's you out of arguments to make. You can't sue for accused loss of optional payments because of their nature, they're optional, no-one is obligated to buy them and people chose to not buy them for more reasons than "I don't want to spend more money because hackers"

 

Unless Blizzard can prove that they lost sales of the game, this is probably going to be a loss for them

I'm done talking to you. You've clearly shown that you're incapable of grasping the basic concept of what's being discussed here.

[TheElt]

2 minutes ago, Syfes said:

When a game developer / production house is having to pump literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in to anti-cheat counter measures, then that also directly affects their revenue...

Revenue != Net income. Blizzard spending their money on putting work into anti cheat measures is their choice, no-one is forcing them to do that, and even then that only effects their net income. They could spend everything they earn on the game but they wouldn't lose out on any revenue, if I'm making sense here.

 

5 minutes ago, ivan134 said:

I'm done talking to you. I can't come up with any arguments to refute the points you made so I'm going to rely on insulting your intelligence to make myself feel better.

FTFY

[Xorbot]

1 hour ago, Thony said:

I personally didn't buy the game because of the stupidly high price tag.

$40 is stupidly high?  I am very sorry, for you.

[Syfes]

1 minute ago, TheElt said:

Revenue != Net income. Blizzard spending their money on putting work into anti cheat measures is their choice, no-one is forcing them to do that, and even then that only effects their net income. They could spend everything they earn on the game but they wouldn't lose out on any revenue, if I'm making sense here.

 

FTFY

yah, that was a typo, check the correct post from 0.5 minutes later...

[Xorbot]

1 hour ago, ivan134 said:

What? Are you serious? How is cheaters buying the game over and over going to off set revenue lost from a larger number of legitimate players who refuse to buy the game because of cheaters?

Player A, called "Jimmy" tries out a new game called Overwatch.  Jimmy pays $40.  Jimmy has 5 friends who like to play online games.

 

Jimmy discovers that playing the game is not fun because it is overrun with rampant hacking.  After Jimmy plays for a few hours, he decides NOT to convince his 5 friends to buy Overwatch.

 

This is a fictional scenario which helps you understand an example of lost revenue.

[ivan134]

2 minutes ago, Xorbot said:

Player A, called "Jimmy" tries out a new game called Overwatch.  Jimmy pays $40.  Jimmy has 5 friends who like to play online games.

 

Jimmy discovers that playing the game is not fun because it is overrun with rampant hacking.  After Jimmy plays for a few hours, he decides NOT to convince his 5 friends to buy Overwatch.

 

This is a fictional scenario which helps you understand an example of lost revenue.

Maybe you should re-read what you're replying to. I'm saying the same thing you are.

[Master Disaster]

2 minutes ago, Xorbot said:

Player A, called "Jimmy" tries out a new game called Overwatch.  Jimmy pays $40.  Jimmy has 5 friends who like to play online games.

 

Jimmy discovers that playing the game is not fun because it is overrun with rampant hacking.  After Jimmy plays for a few hours, he decides NOT to convince his 5 friends to buy Overwatch.

 

This is a fictional scenario which helps you understand an example of lost revenue.

Prove that any of Jimmy's friends would have bought it after his recommendation. 

[Bouzoo]

1 hour ago, Thony said:

Hi Blizzard, now I'm certain u are a piece of shit. I was unsure until now.

 

Cheating should be punished and those making cheats too. They ruin any online game. Fuck them ! Hope Blizzard wins even though they claim cheating made hundreds of thousand of people to not purchase their game.

 

I personally didn't buy the game because of the stupidly high price tag. If CSGO (similar game really, two teams, no advantages by picking a certain  team. Balanced skill based) can cost as little as £10 ($15) then  game with little more effort can cost 4 times as much ! I would happily pay £20 ($30).

To be fair they aren't cheating anyone. It's purely their decision. They can price it $100 and it's their right. Do I think that the current price is good? Absolutely not. I am on the same boat, have no intention of paying for it that much money, I'll wait for black friday or some sale. Can we call them out for it? Absolutely yes. Is it their right to price it as much as they want? Even more so yes. And with current sales and the state of the game, I can't say that they are missing the two of us not playing. 

[HKZeroFive]

1 minute ago, ivan134 said:

Yea, that people are wiling to pay more money to avoid cheaters should tell you something. I'd bet my left testicle that if ESEA wasn't an option, a significant number of those people wouldn't bother with competitive CSGO. I've already explained the psychology of the other people who "don't care" about cheaters in CSGO. I've never claimed that a MP game with no cheaters exists, I've said that people would rather not deal with it if it's a widespread problem. I already acknowledged that VAC can be slow, but it still gets the job done. Casual players, who make up the majority of any game, don't care especially if a lot of them bought the game pennies. They even have the ability to create their own servers which they can more easily administrate. Overwatch doesn't have this. Serious players have ESEA and for the other who don't want to pay more for ESEA, VAC works, albeit slow.

The point was that Valve's VAC system is flawed, to the extent that people are willing to put in the extra money for the game. If it was more robust and secure like Overwatch, that's a different story. Another thing - what makes you think that casual players don't care? I'd be pissed if I was trying to play a casual match with rampant hackers, and that should be a universal mentality if you're playing games. Competitive or not, people care. And yet, despite all the hacking, it remains a hugely successful game with a massive player count.

 

On the opposing spectrum... Overwatch. Brand new game, still testing the waters, and already has a much better anti-cheat system than CS:GO (or most games). You create a secure anti-cheat and put up a $40 entry fee to make sure that the hacking problem isn't big. And so far, it looks like it's working. If Valve put in a similar effort, the hacking scene for CS:GO wouldn't be as big and people wouldn't resort to paying extra for ESEA and FaceIt.

1 minute ago, ivan134 said:

Thinking about it again, you asked if there is a MP game without cheating, and the biggest one in the world, League of Legends, doesn't have any. You can make the argument that it's because it's free, but the counter argument would be the game would not grow to be this large if cheating was an issue. They're not the only free to play game in the world.

Wouldn't call it cheat-free. Largely cheat-free? Yes.

1 minute ago, ivan134 said:

9 million seems like a lot of players for Overwatch until you consider that League of Legends has over 150 million players. Would you like to take a guess as to whether Blizzard would like their player base to grow to be at least a quarter of that? It's not about whether they have a good anti cheat system. It's about perception.

What if I say that a large reason of why LoL has 150M players is because it's free?

1 minute ago, ivan134 said:

Regardless of how effective Blizzard is at dealing with cheaters, people are going to apprehensive about dropping $40 for a game if they're going to run into cheaters. For people who have bought the game, if they keep running into them, they're not going to be willing to keep playing the game and potentially buy loot crates. ALL of these combined are potential huge losses for Blizzard. This should be clear without me having to spell it out.

A big reason why I'm stressing the anti-cheat aspect. If Blizzard wants to keep their community happy (they have so far, aside from that sudden death bullshit), to profit off it and to justify the initial investment $40, they need to create a environment where it's (for the most part) hacker-free. Even if people encounter hackers, I'd assume it's a rare occurance to the extent that it will not make people less motivated to play Overwatch (unless you have extremely high standards). For the most part, you cannot prove that hackers will directly cause Blizzard to lose profits.

[Misanthrope]

And I thought "piracy = lost sales" was a fucking reach and in come these fucking assholes of Blizzard. Cry me a fucking river if you don't want your games hacked, get good at coding.

[Bcat00]

I find it funny none of you noticed this but blizzard isnt out to win the lawsuit. They are trying to make a point to everyone as a form of marketing and sucking the opposition dry of resource so they go under.

[c00face]

20 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

And I thought "piracy = lost sales" was a fucking reach and in come these fucking assholes of Blizzard. Cry me a fucking river if you don't want your games hacked, get good at coding.

Cry me a river if stole your computer, should of put steel frames over your window.

[Misanthrope]

3 minutes ago, Supermangik said:

Cry me a river if stole your computer, should of put steel frames over your window.

The corporate apologist favorite false equivalency: piracy = theft!

 

No. Theft removes the owner from their property. Duplicating the property is counterfeit or piracy because of the disctinct difference of not depriving the owner of his property. It's why we fucking name it a different thing legally.

[c00face]

2 hours ago, TheElt said:

I've never heard anyone say "I'm not buying this game because there are too many cheaters" to one of Blizzard's games, the only one I've ever heard it said about is the older CoD games, which I personally have never had an issue with. People not buying a game because of hackers is pretty rare, especially on new titles that aren't abandonware

Yea? Well, you heard it from me. I didn't buy some games because I heard there were too many cheaters. And some games I did bought, I wish I never bought, because it literally is run by cheaters (CS:GO.) Haven't play CS:GO since, and probably won't. I ain't got time to deal with a game ruined by cheaters, and this idea of yours thinking people will still purchase regardless of hackers or Blizzard haven't lost revenues with cheaters is absurd. The amount of players who did quit because of hackers are your loss of revenues. Especially if the game has in-game currency/items that can be purchased with real money. Just because 10+ Million players playing a certain game, it could of been 15+ Million if hackers weren't ruining it. That doesn't include all the players who quit playing because they don't want to deal with that !#$!$ (including myself.)

[c00face]

8 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

The corporate apologist favorite false equivalency: piracy = theft!

 

No. Theft removes the owner from their property. Duplicating the property is counterfeit or piracy because of the disctinct difference of not depriving the owner of his property. It's why we fucking name it a different thing legally.

I have no idea what you're trying to say, but okay. I just quoted you on this,

 

9 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

Cry me a fucking river if you don't want your games hacked, get good at coding.

To tell someone to do something "better" because others were ruining it for them, is very illogical. So, to sum this up, I gave you your own analogy in my own terms,

 

Cry me a river if I stole your computer, should of barricaded your house with tanks, Avia B-534, clay mores, and a tactical knife. Maybe bar your window with steel frames next time if you don't want your computer stolen.

[Sauron]

3 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Good luck proving their hack code directly caused you lost sales Blizzard, that's an uphill struggle if I ever saw one. 

Doesn't seem like us courts have a problem with charging people for lost sales when they pirate games, which is just as impossible to prove, so maybe these guys will get what they deserve. I don't think so though since they aren't in the us.

[Thony]

1 hour ago, Xorbot said:

$40 is stupidly high?  I am very sorry, for you.

It's £44 in here which is $60, that triple A title price which I also think is stupidly high.

 

And for Overwatch even $40 is toouch for what it is. That specific game isn't that valuable to me.

[spartaman64]

3 hours ago, HKZeroFive said:

Doesn't Blizzard have a no tolerance approach towards cheating for Overwatch? Regardless if you buy another copy, you're still banned...

 

If anything, it's making them more money.

i think in the long run they loose more money ask people stop playing the game and tell their friends it full of hackers and them not to buy the game

[spartaman64]

46 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

And I thought "piracy = lost sales" was a fucking reach and in come these fucking assholes of Blizzard. Cry me a fucking river if you don't want your games hacked, get good at coding.

um this isnt about piracy but people making client cheats like aimbots wall hacks etc and considering that almost every game has cheats i dont think blizzard can code to completely eliminate them

[Master Disaster]

8 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

um this isnt about piracy but people making client cheats like aimbots wall hacks etc and considering that almost every game has cheats i dont think blizzard can code to completely eliminate them

They don't make wallhacks or aimbots, they make automation bots which play the game on behalf of the player. Some of these bots can use known exploits to dupe or farm items but it's mostly just grinding XP and gold/loot stuff. 

[spartaman64]

4 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

They don't make wallhacks or aimbots, they make automation bots which play the game on behalf of the player. Some of these bots can use known exploits to dupe or farm items but it's mostly just grinding XP and gold/loot stuff. 

oh ok misread the article still very annoying. if the bots are good then its annoying for the opposing team if the bots are bad then its annoying for the bot's team