The Enemy

Odditorium

I don't know if this violates the TOS but I used google to find these d-bags:

The Elder Scrolls Online Bot, Hacks and Cheats [TESO]
Are you looking for The Elder Scrolls Online cheating software like Bots, Hacks or Exploits? If so, then you have found the right place. *******.net is a community of Cheaters dedicated to releasing the latest Cheating Software for popular MMOs. If you are looking to BuyTESO Hacks or FarmingBots, then you might want to check out our hacks and bots Reviews. In order to get the latest TESO hacks, head over to our forum and Sign Up to Download our Cheats.

Can't Zenimax have them shut down? They blatantly advertise that they sell hacks. Isn't hacking illegal?

Turelus

Try submitting a customer service message, not sure if ZOS has a security department that handles phishing emails or exploit sites but CS should be able to forward it to the correct place if they do.

Odditorium

Done

Odditorium

Check this out:

******.net is providing educational content for the purpose of helping people to cheat in games. Using game video, audio and image content is fair use in this context. We are not causing developers or publishers any financial harm, since the cheater demographic is considerable (between 2-5% and growing) and only the existence of cheats for a game persuades a good part of them to even buy a game. However, if a game developer or publisher still feels that we are causing them harm, please send us a letter explaining the situation and we will try to cooperate.

They claim that their programs are for educational purposes only. That's like selling brass knuckles as paperweights.

starkerealm

Yes. Though the laws that allow it are dubious, and good luck getting an extradition case out of China, or anywhere the US has been spying on via the NSA for that matter, on a CFAA charge. It is the CFAA, right? I'm remembering the name correctly?

Squishy

We can all agree the bots are disturbing the peace. That's our first legal ground in virtually any countries. Second, they sell a product, that is knowingly allowing people to break the EULA, which is a legal agreement, so there is association to commit an illegal act. Next, they offer the means to break a legal agreement. There are probably other offenses that can be added.

Legally, there are probably courses that could be taken in virtually all western countries. If Zeni or other major MMO makers were actually bothered, they could get the makers of the soft, and the botters to court, since quite a few people are quitting some MMO's due to spam and bots. Count the accounts lost to bot/spam, adds the total, go to court. They have websites, so the owner is identifiable. I don't know why the MMO companies are not taking legal steps against the people making those soft, there are a few possibilities *shrug* go figure.

If you have the website address of a goldseller / the botters, you can check out the registry sites, here's an example using the elderscrollsonline record:

http://www.who.is/whois/elderscrollsonline.com

You can see who the registrar is etc, so finding who should go to court is not really a massive issue .

If they are going thru a 3rd company, they usually will tell the botter to go away from their hosting sites to avoid facing legal pressure from a software giant (which usually includes some pretty hefty downtime for the seller' site, and for those guys, that could put them out of business quite quickly, especially if you keep going it as soon as they pick a new host).

then, depending on the bot softwares, which I am not familiar with, they might have needed to do terrible things to the software itself (decompiling), which as far as I know is illegal thru IP laws, but that I guess would depend on the software itself, if it is only macroing, probably not, but the teleporting harvesting bot, chances are fair on that one .

KiwiKutKu

I'm surprised no one has made a system to detect bot programming in the mods and remove them. All bots require a certain amount of AI programming and as long as the validation process was done right macros wouldn't be affected,

Though I guess that is just what I'd of done

KerinKor

WarlordsOfMarsub17_ESO wrote: »

Can't Zenimax have them shut down? They blatantly advertise that they sell hacks. Isn't hacking illegal?

Assuming they're hosted on Chinese servers what do you think ZOS can do about it?

And no, 'hacking' in this context isn't illegal in any jurisdiction I know of, least of all China. It's against the TOS and your account can be closed, but it's a Civil issue not a criminal one and legal sanctions are limited.

As far as I know Blizzard is the only company to have successfully taken action against a supplier of game hacks and IIRC that was only possible because the 'hacker' was in the US and Blizzard were able to use Copyright law or somesuch, they couldn't take action against 'hacking' per se.

Shanna

their angle to game manufacturers is interesting..."2-5% of your sales likely come from our "graduates," so you should probably consider this a marketing partnership..."

Odditorium

As I've said in other posts; block China.