Blizzard Sues Warcraft Gold Spammers

Blizzard Entertainment announced on its forums that it has taken legal action against a “gold spammer” who advertises via in-game messaging. The announcement indicates that Blizzard isn’t targeting the group specifically for its sale of gold, but rather for its disruptive in-game advertising techniques. Here’s the text of the announcement:

“As many of you know, the latest content patch, along with many great new content additions, contains technical counter-measures designed to combat in-game gold spamming. Our efforts to reduce in-game abuse and create a fun, safe environment for everyone are never-ending. With that said, we felt that it was important to share with the community just how serious we are in our efforts to combat this type of abuse. Blizzard has filed a federal lawsuit against the operators of Peons4hire, a popular gold-selling organization which many of you have no doubt seen advertised. As part of the lawsuit, the operators of Peons4hire have been asked to immediately cease all in-game spamming efforts by all entities and websites under their control. If this organization refuses to act accordingly, further legal action will be taken. We’ll be sure to keep you posted on the progress of this topic.”

The new patch includes a “report spam” button. Posters in a Slashdot discussion thread says Blizzard has also blocked trial accounts from being able to send whispers (individual messages), limited the amount of text that can be included in a whisper message, and throttled the rate at which players can send whisper messages. One commenter noted that gold spammers have simply changed their tactics, and would continue to find ways to try and sell inside the game. An excerpt:

The real crux of the issue though is that spammers, and more generally, gold selling, wouldn’t even exist if people didn’t buy the services! Because demand is so high it is not reasonable to expect in-game ads to disappear completely. But what Blizzard has done is definitely a giant step in the right direction — IF you aren’t one of the large minority of people who have actually purchased gold. If you are, you probably liked the spam sometimes, because usually it provides up-to-the-minute price info and increases competition between the sellers.