The Small Print Project                            

A collaborative document of experiences with agreements in the digital age.

October 29, 2006

Blizzard Bounces WoW Cheats — But Do They Go to Far?

Posted to EULAs by Andy Sternberg




Thanks to Joey for this one:

URL of EULA: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/eula.html
Product: World of Warcraft http://www.worldofwarcraft.com

Lowpoints: A few months ago they introduced a launcher program that acts to snoop out any possible cheats or hacks that someone is using, and report back to the server. I’ve heard that it goes as far as to scan the names of any windows you have open – thus catching any WoW cheat sites you may be visiting. This information can be used to close your account. But it makes me nervous if I’m visiting a web site with some bad keywords in its title.

Terms of use located at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html are useful but most users won’t read the game’s rules which are just a bunch of fine print.

Highpoints: It allows Blizzard to catch people who do harm to the game by cheating.

I play this game all the time and I’ve seen how “gold farmers” can ruin a server’s economy. Blizzard closes lots of accounts, but they can’t possibly catch everyone who breaks their rules.

And… thank BoingBoing for getting me to visit your site!

——

Thanks, BoingBoing!. I’m soliciting more input on issues regarding MMORPG-related EULAs, etc. I obsessively study social networks and virtual worlds, etc, but thank God I haven’t let myself get addicted to playing (yet). form | e-mail.

* Comments(3)

  • http://www.valdyas.org/foundobjects/index.cgi Irina

    They also forbid names “belonging to any religious figure or deity”; are we supposed to know every name of every religious figure or deity of every culture in the world? And can someone call themself “Michael” even though that’s the name of an angel (i.e. a religious figure)?

  • Jim

    I’ve got a priest alt named “Bennedict” after the pope. The miss-spelling was actually my fault (I didn’t notice I had two ‘n’s until it was too late) and it is probably the only reason I get away with it. A guildie uses the name “Buddarh”, Blizzard forced the change from “Buddah”.

  • Jim

    The launcher program can be bypassed by simply running the Wow.exe
    Also, I was given to understand that the real purpose for the launcher is to warn you about potential problems before you actually run the game, because while the game is actually running, they perform the same scans and then use that to chase cheaters.