Blizzard Squeezes 88 Million From Private Server Owner

Private World of Warcraft server operators may wish to cease their illegal operations. Yesterday.

Don't mess with Blizzard, ever. You should not even entertain the thought. If you do, you could end up like private server company Scapegaming, which was running at least one private World of Warcraft server and has ended up being charged $88 million for it.

Private servers are unofficial portals through which to play MMOGs. Sometimes they're free, sometimes they're not, but they're just about always illegal when running a retail product. Scapegaming's World of Warcraft private server was reportedly using a microtransaction model that would allow players to purchase items.

Blizzard didn’t like this at all, so it sued Scapegaming (aka Alyson Reseves). Blizzard was awarded $88,594,539 by a final judge last week. All about private wow servers Wow!

This amounts to $3,052,339 "disgorged profits", $85,478,600 statutory damages, and $63,600 attorney's fees. The $85million in statutory damages makes the attorney's fee seem almost insignificant. To make matters worse, she also has to pay interest "at the rate provided by law until paid in full." Reeves may appeal the amount, but she's not going to get off easy no matter what she does.

It's hard enough to pay off a $10,000 car loan, so I can't imagine what it'd be like to have an $88 million dollar debt on your head. If Blizzard wanted to make an example out of Reeves for other private server owners, it's done that quite well. You don't want your copyright infringed and Blizzard on your radar. It will shut your down, crush you soul, crush all of your soul shards, then sprinkle them on Bobby Kotick’s cone of ice cream.