Earlier this month, Blizzard sued Justin Marshall and five unnamed defendants, accusing them of creating a way to play StarCraft II on illegal "rogue" servers. A week later, the suit was dropped.
On April 12, StarCraft developer Blizzard filed suit against six individuals, alleging that they created circumvention technology that allowed multiplayer games of the StarCraft II beta on "rogue" servers. But one week later, court filings, obtained by Gamasutra, show that Blizzard dropped the suit against the group, calling itself "StarCrack." The company originally sued John Marshall (A.K.A. "usmc23") and five unnamed defendants for "direct and indirect copyright infringement" that violated copyright acts including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Blizzard's complaint also alleged that Mashall and his cohorts trafficked "technology for the purpose of circumventing copyright protection systems," as well as breach of contract. The complaint alleged that the "SC2 Pirate Community is working in concert, largely over the internet, to obtain and access unauthorized or 'cracked' game clients and develop an unauthorized, pirated version of [Blizzard's proprietary online platform] Battle.net, with the goal of enabling members of this community to benefit from Blizzard's development of SC2 without paying for it." An individual under the screen name "usmc23," Marshall's purported online name, has been posting detailed progress of Battle.net hacks in an online forum. Blizzard and its lawyers dismissed the suit on April 19. Court documents did not give a reason as to why the case was suddenly dropped, although we've contacted Blizzard's lawyers for more information.
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