Blizzard Entertainment is stepping up its crackdown on unauthorized World of Warcraft servers by filing a lawsuit — that includes RICO conspiracy allegations — against the creators of the immensely popular private server Project Ascension.
Blizzard’s complaint, which was filed on June 12 in California federal court and reviewed by Complex, alleges that Project Ascension is an enormous copyright infringement operation that generated millions of dollars via in-game purchases by distributing millions of unauthorized copies of World of Warcraft.
The company said of Project Ascension that it’s a “lucrative way to exploit and profit from the popularity of the WoW game experience,” and named six defendants and several companies it alleges are shell companies with the sole purpose of being conduits “for monetary transactions and to avoid U.S. tax liability for revenue related to Project Ascension."
In the complaint, Blizzard takes issue with the project’s technical infrastructure, alleging that its servers are hosted on Aeza Group, a hosting provider that was previously sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department last year for supporting cybercrime. Blizzard also believes that Project Ascension’s developers modified game software that was copyrighted to create private server functions that don’t require players to have World of Warcraft subscriptions.
"Project Ascension also has caused significant and irreparable harm to Blizzard," stated the company in the complaint that features claims of copyright infringement, Digital Millennium Copyright Act violation, and false designation of origin. "This harm includes, but is not limited to, lost revenue from former WoW players who have been diverted to Project Ascension in order to avoid paying subscription fees to Blizzard and harm to Blizzard’s valuable intellectual property, which is being exploited, modified, and monetized without Blizzard’s consent and in ways that Blizzard disapproves of and prohibits. "
Blizzard also claimed that the developers of Project Ascension have ignored communications from them.
Project Ascension became one of World of Warcraft’s most popular private servers because it enabled players the ability to mix and match skills from different classes and create their own custom builds, as opposed to the official version of the game, where players are locked into fixed classes.
Blizzard’s move against Project Ascension is its latest attack on private servers. Earlier this year, Blizzard reached a settlement with the creators of Turtle WoW by securing a permanent injunction requiring its shutdown. Turtle WoW cancelled operations soon afterwards.
Though Turtle WoW shut down, its developers (who now go by Moonwhisper Games) have announced that they’re going to be making their own MMO.
