Blizzard has Unlawfully Obtained our Intellectual Property - Press Release Stormbuddy

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A complaint was filed against one of our freelance workers, Apoc, on November 9th. The complaint accused him of being the head and owner of Honorbuddy, Demonbuddy and Stormbuddy, 3 bots designed to automate game-play with three different Blizzard games.


Source: https://www.unitedstatescourts.org/federal/cacd/632543/1-0.html


On the same day Rod Rigole, General Legal Counsel at Activision Blizzard Inc., visited Apoc and threatened to sue him if he would not sign a document forcing him to stop using their games. The lawsuit targeted Apoc personally.


We were informed about the situation and commended Apoc to take the deal. US law system can bankrupt one for nothing more than an accusation. The last thing we would like to do is to cause Apoc great distress and harm by forbidding him from signing the deal. We were at no position to do so in the first place, especially since he is just a freelancer and works on projects outside Blizzard games, except Stormbuddy.
For this reason we commended him to take the deal even if the grounds of the complaint are factually incorrect. Activision Blizzard is fully aware that Bossland GmbH, and not Apoc, is the owner of the IP of Honorbuddy, Demonbuddy and Stormbuddy, considering that there are 6 cases that are still in progress between Activision Blizzard Inc. / Activision Blizzard France SAS and our company, Bossland GmbH, in Germany.


Today Blizzard acted in a manner as shady as possible for a multibillion-dollar corporation. We were informed that the deal compelled Apoc to submit the entire source code of Stormbuddy, which is actually the intellectual property of Bossland GmbH, to Blizzard. We understand that Apoc still had no choice but to take the deal or spend many months, probably years, personally battling a multibillion-dollar company.


Blizzard now possesses the whole Stormbuddy source code. There was no permission given by Bossland GmbH, nor were we contacted by Activision Blizzard, nor had Apoc the rights to give out our intellectual property. They - a multibillion dollar company - obtained the source code by threatening a freelancer with a personal lawsuit would he not oblige.


Stormbuddy is software that automates the game-play in Heroes of the Storm, and allows a user to let his character be played by Stormbuddy in bot versus bot games.


We have been developing Stormbuddy now for half a year and invested hundreds of hours into increasing the artificial intelligence of it. Out software is able to use all game mechanics and has a win ratio of almost 100% in bot versus bot games.


Today however we are no longer the ones that have exclusive ownership of Stormbuddy and its superb AI. Blizzard took that without any permission from us.


We do not know the outcome of this, but we are sure that Stormbuddy can no longer be developed as it is, and that it can no longer be sold. We have no idea what Activision Blizzard will do with the source code. Being extra precautious this means that active from this moment Stormbuddy is no longer for sale or in development.