Read "Battle.net Goes to War" by Howard Wen.

As one of the millions of people around the world playing Blizzard's games, and as a high school junior in California, I must say that you at Salon.com have really overstepped your bounds. You are emphasizing the fact that bnetd is providing a free open-source program that is superior to Blizzard's own proprietary Internet gaming service. However, you fail to address in detail the point that Blizzard is the creator of the games, and so has the right to decide who can create add-ons to it and who can not. Since the games that Blizzard sells are commercial products that determine whether the company stays afloat, it is logical for them to react in such a way to this infringement by bnetd. When a third-party company creates software that can endanger the well-being of your company by failing to check for authenticity, thus promoting piracy, you react to defend yourself. What bnetd is doing is illegal and Blizzard, as the designer of the software that bnetd has decided to support in a flawed way, is perfectly within its bounds to sue bnetd. You are providing a flawed analysis for your readers in writing this article.

-- William Wu

Hello, I'm a longtime Blizzard customer (since '97) and I've been avidly following this case. A couple of things have occurred to me, and while I know that common sense has no place in a courtroom, I can't help but feel that this is a lot of drama over relatively little.

First, I'd like to point out that pirated copies of Diablo II can be played single-player as well as over TCP/IP. As such, why does Blizzard care if bnetd allows it? I could understand if you could only use pirated D2 with bnetd, but that's simply not the case. Literally two weeks after D2's release, there were CDkey generators floating around that would let you play the game illegally. My friend was forced to use one when he lost his old one and Blizzard refused to help him. If you're not using Battle.net, and are playing pirated software anyway, why should Blizzard care HOW you're playing with your pirated copy?

My second point is another common sense item. I would think that Blizzard would be happy to have people continue playing their games in a manner that does not stress Battle.net's bandwidth and server performance. Maybe if enough people did leave Battle.net, it would become playable again. I just don't understand what their beef is. Nobody's taking any money away from them. You'd think they'd be suing the hackers who regularly bring Battle.net to its knees. Instead, they attack people who are sick of those hackers and Blizzard's inability to deal with them. Seems childish, really.

I grew very frustrated with the original Diablo, in which hacking and game crashing were ridiculously prolific. I bought Diablo II for only one reason: Blizzard promised, explicitly, that the Realms would be governed and protected from these very things. They have utterly failed to do so. Long before this bnetd thing, I had already reached the conclusion that I would never buy another Blizzard product again.

-- Noah Barger

Concerning the statement made by "misinformed" or "ignorant" Blizzard company employees that bnetd allows people to play their pirated games while Battle.net does not: Bollocks. Bollocks. Absolute horse-vomit. I have seen several different people use pirated copies of Diablo II on Battle.net including myself (we'll say just to see if it would work). Even when Blizzard puts out a new patch to correct the copyright infringement, you can then download a counter patch within a week at most. The argument they made to justify (snicker) suing the creators of bnetd was completely ignorant. This all just shows how greedy they really are, because seeing those probably middle class programmers was totally unnecessary given the circumstances. I also conclude that this is also a way to bark like a dog to try and scare away anybody else who might try for the same productions in the future (a free Battle.net emulator). Therefore the common consensus I'm sure is that Blizzard Inc. always had a bad reputation, but now has a worse one.

-- Jeremy Jones

This is just to clear up a misunderstanding (actually, a factual mistake) in the article about the bnetd lawsuit.

Warcraft III has always been planned as, and will always remain, free to play on Battle.net.

World of Warcraft is an entirely separate game, currently in alpha stages of development. It is an MMORPG, along the lines of Everquest or Dark Age of Camelot, but set in the time line of the Warcraft series of games and novels.

It would be ridiculous to not charge a subscription fee for World of Warcraft. Such a game requires a dedicated staff of programmers and overseers, and has a much higher demand on server and network resources. There are no non-subscription MMORPG-style games that I am aware of.

Other Battle.net games are currently, and will always remain, free of any monthly or otherwise recurring charge.

I hold no opinion in the actual legal case, since I have neither studied the source code for bnetd nor examined the copyright claims that Blizzard has made. But the thought that this lawsuit is being provoked by a switch to a pay model for Warcraft III, well, it is a thought founded in a misunderstanding.

-- Henry Goffin

I just have one quick question about Blizzard's EULA [license agreement]. How does the following section affect the case against bnetd?

"3. Responsibilities of End User."

"A. Subject to the Grant of License hereinabove, you may not, in whole or in part, copy, photocopy, reproduce, translate, reverse engineer, derive source code, modify, disassemble, decompile, create derivative works based on the Program, or remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Program without the prior consent, in writing, of Blizzard."

-- Nick Ternes

Although I agree that it should not be illegal that the bnetd program exists and that the programmers are doing the right thing by defending themselves, your article leaves out one point that is very important. Besides the fact that Blizzard (actually a little piece of Vivendi-Universal BTW) is probably going to start charging a subscription fee for their Battle.net service in order to increase their revenue streams, you left out the fact that Battle.net actually makes a profit for Blizzard right now. Through advertising Battle.net was the first game server network that actually made money off of itself, rather than relying on just software sales to generate revenue. So in fact bnetd is actually attacking two revenue streams of the company, one in the future (subscriptions) and one right now (advertising). If there is a free alternative then Blizzard loses out two ways.

-- Kurt DeArellano

I must say that your article about Battle.net and bnetd is the best piece of journalism I've seen in a long time.

I've never felt such an urge to click on the "e-mail" button.

Clear and balanced, explaining exactly what and why, looking back and ahead in time, with both sides of the story: perfect.

Well done. Salon.com and Howard Wen just earned my consideration.

-- Bernard Hugueney

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