'Call of Duty' Maker Goes To War With 'Parasitic' Cheat Developers in LA Federal Court (msn.com) 18
A federal court has denied requests by Ryan Rothholz to dismiss or transfer an Activision lawsuit targeting his alleged Call of Duty cheating software operation. Rothholz, who operated under the online handle "Lerggy," submitted motions in June and earlier this month seeking to dismiss the case or move it to the Southern District of New York, but both were rejected due to filing errors.
The May lawsuit alleges Rothholz created "Lergware" hacking software that enabled players to cheat by kicking opponents offline, then rebranded to develop "GameHook" after receiving a cease and desist letter in June 2023. Court filings say he sold a "master key" for $350 that facilitated cheating across multiple games. The hacks "are parasitic in nature," the complaint said, alleging violations of the game's terms of service, copyright law and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
The May lawsuit alleges Rothholz created "Lergware" hacking software that enabled players to cheat by kicking opponents offline, then rebranded to develop "GameHook" after receiving a cease and desist letter in June 2023. Court filings say he sold a "master key" for $350 that facilitated cheating across multiple games. The hacks "are parasitic in nature," the complaint said, alleging violations of the game's terms of service, copyright law and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Probably just the tip of the iceberg. (Score:2)
I suspect a similar operation is being carried out on both Splatoon 3 and World of Warcraft PvP games but they just haven't been caught yet.
Filing Errors? (Score:5, Insightful)
Code is speech (Score:1)
Yeah but we already covered this at slashdot with pgp.
Write the cheats as a poem. Write the runner to parse poems, then publish songs.
This is no different than banning pgp.
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Indeed, it is industry best practice to release all critical libraries of code as an album of little ditties sung by the developers.
We learned this 25 years ago when DeCSS lawsuits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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There was also another decision that was not taken in that he could have prevented this situation by not being a jackass. You want to take the weird intelligence agency angle but sometime the answer is just as simple as "don't be a dick."
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well i was talking about more than cheats but you're only gonna understand what you're able to understand
Re:body or subject (Score:4, Interesting)
Doesn't matter what the developer did or didn't do, this guy was being a dick and helping others be dicks.
What I'd like to see is for this to turn into a class action lawsuit with Activision and all the other players as plaintiffs, so all injured parties are involved. I wouldn't like to see the guy sued into bankruptcy though.
single player cheating does not hurt others (Score:2)
single player cheating does not hurt others
What else could he have written? (Score:4, Insightful)
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a way to get paid to be an incredibly massive tool and enable others to be incredibly massive tools.
You just also described anyone working on developing most social media sites, all of marketing, anyone in mergers and acquisitions, etc.
The fundamental issue is that in a free country one should be allowed to be a massive tool. The question in this particular case has deep implications - are ToS legaly enforceable, is cheating in games is the same thing as fraud, etc. This is by no means an open and shut case legally, because legality is not the same thing as morality.
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He could have made cheats for some other game. Maybe he could make the same cheats as open source. He could maybe have made some truly horrific malware.
Who knows?
EULA rules = Computer Fraud and Abuse Act hardtime (Score:2)
EULA rules = Computer Fraud and Abuse Act hardtime?
Demand the jury be read the full EULA in open court!
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Game Genie is legal! (Score:2)
Game Genie is legal!