Blizzard files suit for copyright infringement against Overwatch hack developer

Blizzard's moving the payload forward on a new lawsuit aimed at stopping hackers in Overwatch. Last week, the company filed suit in California against a German company called Bossland GMBH, accusing them of copyright infringement and deliberately violating the EULA for the recently released shooter Overwatch.

The lawsuit accuses Bossland of "creating, distributing, maintaining, and updating malicious software products that are specifically designed to enable their users to cheat at the Blizzard Games, at the expense of Blizzard and its legitimate customers."

That accusation covers older Blizzard titles such as Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, and beyond, but then takes specific aim at a recently released set of cheats called "Watchover Tyrant" released shortly after Blizzard launched Overwatch.

The website for Watchover Tyrant offers players a means to gain the location, total health, and other vital info of every player on the map, which would give players a significant advantage over their Overwatch opponents. 

By creating and selling this software, Blizzard claims that Bossland has violated Blizzard's copyright on Overwatch, and is costing Blizzard thousands of dollars in revenue loss. Blizzard argues that the court should order Bossland to shut down all the hacks made for Blizzard games, and pay out damages for violating Blizzard's EULA. 

This is the latest lawsuit in Blizzard's attempts to take on Bossland. In an interview with TorrentFreak, Bossland CEO Zwetan Letschew says Blizzard has already filed 10 lawsuits against Bossland in Germany, and that this would be the first filed in the US.

Those legal entanglements previously included Blizzard suing a Bossland freelancer named Apoc for selling Heroes of the Storm botting software, and Bossland itself accusing Blizzard of acquiring the source code for that software in a deal with Apoc.

Blizzard isn't the only company going after German hack sellers these days. Epic Games recently filed suit against a separate German bot maker for creating hacks to help players cheat at Paragon.