Legal Action Taken Against Cheaters

[Smurfzilla]

wtf happened to weekly updates..

[DeAceShooter]

Smurfzilla wrote..

wtf happened to weekly updates..

Maybe updates are not announced over mailing lists now.

[Pharlap]

Edited by [user="3256"] @ [time="1087981261"]

marc___1 wrote..

about time

even if they couldnt prove they violated the eula couldnt the sue over lost profits (less people buying game becuase of cheaters)

unlikely to be lost profits for valve, since many people will rebuy the game again and *might* decide to play fair this time round :)

I2o[G]uE TacT-X wrote..

You don't understand what I'm saying. That's completely wrong. You don't have to agree to the EULA to write a hack. So how can VALVe take legal action against people that write hacks?

maybe valve's cases will be thrown out of court. but how is a teenage (most likely american) hacker know how the intricacies of the legal system. mind you, the american system is so messed up, you can sue anyone for anything.



the mere threat of legal action is enough for any ISP to suspend or remove the offending cheat site. going after some nerd directly will not happen. look what happened to macdonalds when that fat kid sued them? forced them to clear up their act. no company likes to get involved with lawsuits.

[Mr Bond]

Edited by [user="6450"] @ [time="1087982475"]

marc___1 wrote..

about time

even if they couldnt prove they violated the eula couldnt the sue over lost profits (less people buying game becuase of cheaters)

"Lost profits", in this sense, aren't generally something you can sue over. In some circumstances you could bring an action in negligence (or as part of another criminial/tortious proceeding), or under specific anti-competition laws (or other legislation), but these are exceptions. Otherwise, almost anyone would be liable. For example, Doom 3 will most likely put a measurable dent in HL2's potential sales (compared to if it were never released). Should id be held to pay for Valve's lost potential profits?

[I2o[G]uE TacT-X]

Mr Bond wrote..

Should id be held to pay for Valve's lost potential profits?

Yes.

[Mr Bond]

Edited by [user="6450"] @ [time="1087984956"]

courts say no

[Tek]

the site that everyone is talking about was hosted by a German ISP, the action for injunction was in Germany as well.



German law says that a website with a sole intention to harm a company and this very company sues the site owner, this website has to be taken down until after the court decides upon the case. If the owner decides against taking down the website he will be fined.



On a sidenote, German law also says that a hoster can be made liable for the content of the hosted websites. Kinda bad idea to host a cheat website imho.

[muff99]

I dont like this, the hoster did nothing wrong. He is not the one coding or even using cheats. Valve doenst know how to get the people that are really repsonsible, so they start suieng some others ... if there in fact was that close relationship between Valve and the people playing CS (as Valve claims), they could simply use the community, but what do they do? Start sueing some other people. Great work, valve.

[Tek]

Valve always asked the community to send in cheats / beta cheats so they can be taken down ASAP.



get your facts straight ^^

[iainbax]

The question of the EULA and the agreement to it, or otherwise, on the part of those who create the cheat(s) is largely immaterial as the person creating the cheat(s) would have to have access to the code to manipulate it, either their own copy or an illegal one. Clearly, altering this code (or creating code specifially designed to do so) in a way not permitted by the publisher is a breach of copywright legislation, in the same way that if I altered the text of a book or article and re-published it I could be sued by the owners of the rights. (Not a great example, but hopefully you get the idea)



I see the question of juristiction as the main issue: the EULA is based in US law but the applicable conditions may not be enforceable or recognised in the country that the offence took place. (which assumes that it can be established when the offence did take place, eg when the code was written, published, used etc. My opinion is that they could not prosecute anyone for writing or publising a cheat, but only the user, which makes the whole enterprise a bit of a farce).



As rightly pointed out above, loss of earnings would not come into it as this would not be a civil action.



Also, the collective noun for those who cheat is 'cheats', not 'cheaters'. This really annoys me.



PS forcing offenders to hand over code would not be a deterrent. Tek's comment (#53) seems like sense to me.

[peagle]

XGT4 wrote..

What is with people and this cheating thing? You people do realize that if someone's cheating, they're doing it because they decided to, and they didn't mean to ruin it for you, they just want to win. There's actually a simple solution to this problem, known as ban/kick. You already have people that can spot hackers, why not just kick them out of a server? It's completely unnecessary to take legal action against people who make cheats for CS.

Are you kidding? They are deliberately ruining it for me by cheating, whether or not that is their desire.



Cheaters need to be put through electro-shock therapy until they realize that cheating just damages their own self-worth or until their brains are fried into a small lumps of coal. Either works for me.



Unless your server is populated by dedicated admins 24 hours a day, that isn't a viable solution, and I would deeply question Valve if they were expecting that to be the solution.

[Peter454]

They were talking about this on Half-Life Radio last week and which organizations like United Admins will cease to even exist after the Half-Life 2 engine comes out.



There was another post about it on Half-Life Source also.



One thing though, what legal action can Valve take against people who distribute cheats for a game? Are there really crimes involved?

[Deletable_Man]

So many people who know nothing about the the law trying to speak about "legal action". Only at CSN, man, only at CSN.

[CheesyPeteza]

German law would seem to provide the easiest target for Valves legal team, it will be interesting to see if they go for any US sites.

[lampwick]

The thing is, should the cheaters be operating in some Far East country they may not get prosecuted cos they may not have such laws as the US (and UK, where I'm from) have.



Remember some n00b who wrote the Love Bug (I think thats what it was called) virus, which brought down just about every server in the world (slightly exaggerating). He escaped prosecution cos his country didn't have the applicable laws.



Certainly web hosts are also at risk of prosecution cos they are providing the space to malicious causes. They are bound by law.