Blizzard Vows to "Aggressively Defend" Its Games in Wake of Legal Battle With Bot-Maker

World of Warcraft and Diablo studio Blizzard Entertainment has promised it will "aggressively defend" its games and services as its legal tussle with a reported cheating company moves forward.

As explained by Kotaku, Blizzard filed a lawsuit recently against the German company Bossland, creators of "buddy" bots. These basically allow players to cheat in Blizzard's games, including Diablo III, World of Warcraft, and Heroes of the Storm.

TorrentFreak reports that Blizzard's legal team approached a freelancer working with Bossland and offered him a deal involving handing over source code for a Heroes of the Storm bot called Stormbuddy. But Bossland CEO Zwetan Letschew said in a statement that Stormbuddy was not his to give away.

"Today Blizzard acted in a manner as shady as possible for a multi-billion-dollar corporation," he said. "We were informed that the deal compelled [the freelancer James Enright AKA "Apoc"] to submit the entire source code of Stormbuddy, which is actually the intellectual property of Bossland GmbH, to Blizzard."

“Blizzard now possesses the whole Stormbuddy source code," he added. "There was no permission given by Bossland GmbH, nor were we contacted by Activision Blizzard, nor had Apoc the rights to give out our intellectual property."

Bossland has stopped sales of Stormbuddy and curbed ongoing development work, though bots for other games will remain available. The company added that it plans to sue Blizzard in Germany next week in an attempt to receive a copy of the deal Blizzard reportedly made with the freelancer.

A Blizzard representative provided a statement to Kotaku on the proceedings, saying the company does not tolerating cheating and will take all actions within the bound of the law to defend its games and services.

"Bossland's entire business is based in cheating, and the use of their bots negatively impacts our global player community," the Blizzard representative said. "That's why we do not tolerate cheating in our games, and it's why our players overwhelmingly support that policy. We've already won numerous cases against Bossland in Germany (where they're based), and despite their tactics to delay the ongoing proceedings and the related repercussions, we're confident that the court system will continue to validate our claims and ultimately stop the distribution of these cheating bots.

"We'll continue to aggressively defend our games and services, within the bounds of the law, in an effort to provide the best possible experience for our players. We want to use this as an opportunity to remind players who might not be aware--using bots, such as those distributed by Bossland, to automate gameplay in our games will result in a loss of access to those games."

For more, be sure to read the full reports from Kotaku and TorrentFreak.