ScapeGaming owner order to pay ridonkulous damages to Blizzard

[Isphera]

Text taken from AddendaProvided:

When I woke up this morning, I discovered that the owner of a WoW private server company, Alyson Reeves (also known by in-game handle Payton), had been successfully sued by Blizzard Entertainment for copyright infringement, along with the extra money she made from micropayments. Whether this was to keep the venture going or to fund her own lifestyle, we may never know. But the final judgement is below.

ORDER RE DAMAGES by Judge Stephen V. Wilson,Based on Plaintiffs evidentiary submissions, the Court concludes that Plaintiff is entitled to default judgment in the amount of $3,052,339 in disgorged profits, $85,478,600 in statutory damages, and $63,600 inattorneys fees. The Court will file a separate judgment accordingly. (pj) (Entered: 08/11/2010)

FINAL JUDGMENT by Judge Stephen V. Wilson,Pursuant to the Courts July 22, 2010 and August 10, 2010 Orders Granting Plaintiffs Motion for Default Judgment, it is hereby ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that Plaintiff Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. shall recover $88,594,539.00, and post-judgment interest thereon at the rate provided by law until paid in full, from Defendant Alyson Reeves, d/b/aScapegaming. 24 . ( MD JS-6. Case Terminated ) (pj) (Entered: 08/11/2010)

Yes, you read those numbers right. All in all the judgement came to just over $88.5 million. Most of that for the actual rights infringement (other than one server altering drop rates and experience rewards, they were all identical in the code to actual wow servers), although $3 million came from the profits made on the ventue, but only $63k in attorney fees, although it was a default judgement, so that was likely to be the case, but I suspect the actual lawyer cost for Blizzard internally was quite a bit larger than that.

I'm in two minds about this. My normal, logical train of thought mind that believes believes that this is a very fine move on the part of Blizzard, and this go a long way to remove the private server 'plague'. However, I must stop and think with feelings for a sec. I've never used the ScapeGaming site, but I did visit a couple of times, and each time I read through it, I got the feeling that they were simply there as an overflow for WoW players who simply couldn't afford the retail subscription fee.

Most of the posts regarding future updates said it would be several weeks before they caught up to Blizzard, although it was so that it didn't become an alternative to the retail servers. In fact, a source of mine for this story (who did play on the Scape servers for quite a while after he lost his career and struggled for rent) said that when Wrath came out early last year, they actually held off updating the Scape servers for several months and were directing people to retail in order to play the new content.

As I weigh it up, I think Blizzard were right to do this in terms of protecting their intelectual property, along with the fact that, even though it's intentions were good, Scape was harbouring plenty of free riders who were perfectly able to pay the retail. That said, I do sympathise with the ScapeGaming community regarding it's obvious collapse, and hope that Payton can get the penalty reduced upon an appeal, because even I with my 'strict punishment for all crimes' stance believe this is way too high.