The creators of Evony have won a default judgment against an alleged bot-maker but they may have trouble squeezing blood from this particular stone.
Evony LLC and Regan Mercantile LLC, the creators of the infamously boobtastic online game Evony, are seeking $825,000 plus legal fees from 23-year-old Philip James Holland, who they claim facilitates cheating through his website at Xandium Studios. Holland allegedly offers a complete map of all Evony servers, created a bot that automatically plays the game (and which presumably short-circuits much of its microtransaction-based revenue stream) and operates an unauthorized version of the game on an independent server called Evony Second Opinion.
Evony’s lawyer claimed that Holland’s entire operation is “devoted to infringing on Evony’s copyrights and trademarks,” while Holland countered that what he offers “is no more than [players] could do on their own, given time.” But Judge Terrence McVerry ruled in Evony’s favor yesterday because in the nearly two months that have passed since the suit was originally filed, Holland hasn’t hired a lawyer or even filed an answer to the claim.
Holland, who arrived late and came to court dressed in “sweats,” said he’d been unable to find a lawyer he could afford and claimed after the fact that he was “barely surviving” on the income he makes off the Evony map. But that didn’t earn him any sympathy from the opposing legal team, who want him to pay statutory damages of $825,000, plus interest and legal fees. They also asked the court to order Holland to take down his website.
Holland said he wished he had that kind of money to throw around. A ruling on the damages and the request for an injunction is expected to be made “soon.” A full copy of the lawsuit in PDF format is available at Scribd.
Source: Post-Gazette.com
Published: Mar 17, 2011 04:58 pm