Can it be morally defensible to release a program which games an MMORPG?

Question

I have written presumably some of the first code to modify the memory of a popular new MMORPG in such a way as to create a macro framework, allowing for advanced automated reactions, skill/level gain, large scale data retrieval, and botting.

It's my supreme pleasure to automate tasks in this way, I can't help but think of any manual approach as "broken". In fact I find myself rather unable to complete even single player games before dissecting their mechanics and gaming them, in a specifically read-only (not cheats, per se) mouse and keyboard input only fashion. Supplementing my advancement toward a game related goal with my own programming knowledge seems natural, it's really not fun otherwise, like ignoring your firearm in an FPS.

Since I love this form of reverse engineering I assume others do as well, they'd appreciate the end result at least. I tend to feel a project should somehow "ship": be sold, open sourced, or freely distributed. "Happiness only real when shared." Otherwise it's just me and my timesink.

The problem is that there are several moral stances involved with a project of this nature:

1. An evil is released upon the virtual world. Those with the program have an advantage, the game is unbalanced, you've got to use, simply to be on equal footing. It's no longer about the game, but the tools, an arms race. It's like every other MMORPG. Therefore, keep the code private.

2. The above is inevitable, so release a peremptory free distribution to give players equal access to the advantage and potentially deny someone else a more evil™ (e.g. elitist, commercial, etc.) release. Between evils the least is selected, though its necessity is disagreeable.

3. Sell the program, reap the benefit of your proclivity, it's work for which you deserve recompensation, fair trade (and regardless of ToS violations). Follow the likes of WoWGlider. Is it better in fewer hands?

4. Keep the code private. Respect at least this much of the company's Terms of Service you agreed to.

What is a morally defensible approach? What haven't I considered? In my experience ToS agreements are a largely ineffective form of dissuasion, and the gaming of MMORPGs (and subsequently results described in #1) is indeed inevitable, but there's something to be said in not pulling the trigger yourself - or is it not so bad?

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I did a poor job on the original phrasing/titling of this question, I was really looking to see if there were special circumstances when it could be morally defensible, not whether or not it would normally be, in hope my code could have constructive purposes.

As a new user I didn't realize 99% of the responses would be immediate, before my update. That said, I still received some very helpful answers regarding commercialization and the original question merited the answers provided, so: well done on that front.

I do have my answer, thanks all!

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11/7 For those interested I posted a follow-up with my decision and how I reached it on my blog.

Answer 1

The ToS holds no one back? Check with Blizzard, they are not pleased by such things It's definitely in their ToS not to run any programs that mess with WoW). The companies running these MMO's try pretty hard to stop such programs because they lead to unfair advantages and ruins the economies.

Answer 2

If you been following the Blizzard versus MDY case, and the recent outcome, I would strongly recommend you to keep code in private if you're located in the US, or any country with Intellectual Property laws.

Also #3 , selling it will only get you into trouble. MDY went bankrupty, is not allowed to sell their product anymore, had to hand over the source code, and pay Blizzard 6 million USD in damage.

The author, Michael Donnelly, is likely to end up in dept for the rest of his life.

I recommend you keep it private.

Answer 3

You need to tread very lightly.

MMOGlider was a popular WoW bot up until recently. I wrote an addon for it in C# called GliderTools (GliderTools.net) and this paid for several years of college tuition for myself. So it is safe to say I was very active in the botting development community.

Blizzard recently sued MMOGlider for $6 million dollars and won. There is legal precedent now against the writing of bots and commercially selling them. The monetary damages associated with doing this are staggering. It worth noting that the crime Blizzard was able to get MMOGlider on wasn't "botting" but instead, copyright infringement. They claimed that because the bot client had to access and copy certain parts of the running games memory that this constituted copyright infringement.

Considering MDY (creators of MMOGlider) made less than $2 million dollars, they have a heavy price tag on their heads. Michael Donnelly the original creator and founder of MDY was not protected under his LLC license and he is personally liable for those $6 million dollars. This kind of debt does NOT go away with bankruptcy. He has it for life. Once you add on legal fees, appeal, etc this is a dangerous game.

I personally love writing bots. To me a game isn't fun unless I've dissembled it, wrote a patcher for it or automated it in some way. This what makes the game fun for me, not the game itself. Seeing your bot run autonmously for the first time is a real high. However, if you make a commercial product and sell it to others it becomes a different matter.

So, if you decide to make a bot I strongly suggest you either release it from outside the United States or keep it private among friends.

Answer 4

Earning money on annoying million of other players, on something that's close to be taken for illegal won't look good on your resume either.

Use your skills for good™, not evil.

Personally I see botting software for populare games, is like writing botnet worms. You waste other people's time and efforts (and often money).

Would you write a virus to earn money?

Answer 5

If you've described your true feelings here, then the fun was in solving the problem, not in creating a product. If others appreciate this kind of thing they'll do it themselves.

In my opinion, you cannot have a morally defensible position when in order to being solving the problem interesting to you, you agreed to terms and conditions prohibiting you releasing your work.

Answer 6

Just because other people will make similar bots does not make it morally OK.

These games are, at the end of the day, supposed to be fun. As you said, bots turn the game into an arms race, especially if the game has any competitive component.

Here's an example from my experience with World of Warcraft: I wanted a specific item crafted. The materials for this were hideously expensive on my server; the large number of rich players (who may or may not have gotten their gold legitimately) had pushed the prices up to a point where I couldn't afford it.

My only option was to farm the materials myself. Many of these required killing huge numbers of monsters for days at a time. One particular item had something like a sub 1% chance to drop. And almost every single farming spot was being run continuously by bots.

It's hard to compete against something that doesn't sleep or take breaks. You can't simply wait for them to go away because they don't. Because I played by the rules, my goal was made far harder than it should have been.

It's hard to have fun in the game if there are people willing to ruin your experience out of laziness and greed.

So no, I'd say it's not morally defensible. You know full well that what you create is going to harm people.

The real question is, do you have a problem with that?

Answer 7

As opposed to Blizzard and WoW, take a look at Ultima Online and OSI as to they allowed 3rd party tools, and even supported them (Tugsoft's UOAssist).

To me it's morally fine, if the game is designed in such a way that grinding one thing only leads to grinding another thing, and if the grinding in general is done in really unpleasant manner then, hey, why not? If it's allowed, everyone has an equal chance, as everyone can use the particular supported 3rd party product, this is a chicken-egg question.

It's mostly forbidden because it reduces the time you need to spend in the game, effectively reducing the time you're paying them for their service, so, greed or fun?

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As a sidenote, I'm all against unattended macroing, it's a huge difference between attended and unattended.

Answer 8

In my opinion a ToS holds no one back [...]

So, by using the MMO, you agree to the ToS; but it's OK to break the rules, because you don't agree with the ToS? Nice doublethink, but the court would probably ROFL at such argumentation.

You see, the basic idea of ToSes everywhere is "it's our way or the highway" - by using the service, you agree to play by the service's rules; if you don't like the rules, nobody is forcing you to use that service, you can freely walk away.

Also, don't try to be "clever" and release the bot in Elbonia just because its jurisdiction allows that: the ToS probably states that server's jurisdiction applies (which can bite you if you ever decide to visit the country in question, or even another country which has extradition agreements with it).

Disclaimer: IANAL

Answer 9

Progression requires unethical choices. My advice is Go Ahead and "reap the benefit of your proclivity, it's work for which you deserve recompensation [...]". Why are you ever worried about this? Release the hounds and let others fight it if they can. Take a history book to see thousands of similar decisions made. It pushes humankind forward.

Answer 10

The problem with this is that it reduces most of the game down to just one thing: end-content.

Take World of Warcraft for instance, I love playing that, and I love leveling up a character. Sure, there are some tedious points in the process, but by and large, it's fun.

Now, if I had installed a bot and just put it to work leveling up my character, at least doing all the repetetive work and leaving me with just visiting a trainer NPC and getting my new skills once in a while, then all I had left was the things I could do at level 80.

Additionally, all the skills I, as a person (not my character) should've learned along the way goes out the window.

There are two types of people that are beyond good in Counterstrike, as an example, it's the people that use bots, and it's the people that have just played so much that they are that good.

Once you resolve to using bots, you're pretty much doomed to keep using them, and trying to automate your end-content playing as well, since you really don't have the experience to play at that level.

So basically, you're reducing the whole game down to a programming contest.

Even if you keep you code only to yourself, all you've proven is that you can program. You've yet to prove that you can play the game.

So in the end, what actually is the point of you playing that game then?

As others have said, there's many options available to you if all you want to do is create software to automate things.

Having said that, I share some of your joy of controlling my environment. I use regularly quite a lot of addons in World of Warcraft, but they don't give me an advantage over others in the same way a bot would. They might make it easier for me to organize my inventory, let me keep notes inside the game, or just prettify the user interface, but in the end, it's still me that pushes the buttons in response to game events.

And that's what gaming is about for me.

Answer 11

Yes, it is fun to reverse engineer games and to do automation. From your question it sounds like you're asking where to go from there.

A) It violates the ToS, so you shouldn't use it yourself.

B) It violates the ToS, so you shouldn't sell it.

My impression is you're looking for an OK to do one of those two things, while admitting that the fun was in writing it. I would suggest you take the entertainment value from writing things for what is, and assume your "fun" time is not worth any money. Particularly at the expense of others.

Answer 12

I'm a big multiplayer gamer myself, and played so many MMORPG.

When I see someone cheating in an online game only one sentence is out of my mouth "What a wank*r!"

Morally it's wrong to mess up other people's fun, and if you try to make money out of it it's not any better than running a SPAM company.

To be honest personally I don't care about farming bots, playing a game which requires constant farming sounds stupid to me anyway. But still there lots of people out there who cares, and you these tools definitely spoiling their fun.

I understand it's a fun challenge, keep it private have your fun, tell your friends and show off, but do not kill other people's fun.

Answer 13

I've been building (but never selling) bots for online poker and chess for over a decade (insert promotional web link here) so this question caught my attention. I agree with @Simucal in that you need to tread lightly, especially where MMORPG's are concerned. Blizzard in particular has a draconian stance towards automation.

4.5 million copies of EULA-compliant spyware

Then again, the idea that a private company's TOS/EULA = LAW is a bit of herdthink. The moreso when that company markets to a worldwide audience across international borders. This introduces additional complexities into the TOS/EULA, which is already a vague piece of legalistic verbiage in the first place. The common practice is to structure the TOS/EULA to make it as aggressive, all-encompassing, and wide-reaching as possible. This is just good legal sense. It doesn't necessarily mean that every line of the TOS is legally binding. A TOS is a deterrent and the company will insert whatever language they think they can get away with, and hope it holds up when/if it's tested in court.

Nothing wrong with this.

At the same time, building a bot is, in and of itself, neither morally or ethically wrong. There's a very strong and convincing argument to be made that provided your bot doesn't actually "hack the servers", you have every right to run whatever piece of software you like on your machine in the privacy of your home. This is especially the case when the servers are inundated with bots anyway, so by not running a bot you put yourself at a disadvantage. Everquest PVP (for example) has been dominated by botting pretty much since the beginning.

Anywhere, there are two important criteria to consider:

• Does the bot depend on information which other player's don't have?
• Does the bot enable superhuman reactions, stamina, or coordination?

This puts wallhacks (unfair information) and aimbots (superhuman reaction) firmly in the "unfair/cheating" category. On the other hand, a simple farmbot is most probably NOT cheating, because the bot doesn't have access to any insider information and it doesn't allow you to do something you couldn't otherwise have done. You could, if you wanted to, sit there for 10 hours a day and farm ore or roots or whatever. It's not much fun, but you could easily do so.

This is a good acid test for whether your use of automation has crossed the line. Trying to cheat people is a bad idea. But writing a bot to essentially ward off carpal tunnel is understandable, and it can actually be a rewarding project.

But again, I wouldn't advise actually selling a bot. Because if you make any money on it, you open yourself up to the sort of retaliation @simucal mentioned.

Answer 14

If you like doing these kinds of things, you can also look at non-MMOs. There are plenty of games (e.g. TES:Oblivion and Fallout 3) that have very active modding communities which are tolerated and even supported by the game developers.