Server Emulator - Legality

Legality

Emulating the server of the proprietary commercial game often violates EULA as many commercial MMORPGs require the user to sign a clause not to create or use server emulators. It may also violate DMCA and has all issues, typical for reverse engineering of any kind. The server may try to avoid violations by serving from the country where some intellectual property laws apply differently or not at all.

Another issue is a possible infringement of the game creator's copyright. If the complete emulator is a work of its own, copyright violation is not as obvious as EULA violation (see Lotus v. Borland case). However sometimes the original server software leaks out of the company that created the game, for example AEGIS (Ragnarok Online). Use or distribution of leaked code is widely held to be copyright infringement. There are cases where a game creator has effectively shut down private game servers by threatening lawsuits due to intellectual property violations, such as offering a modified client (see information on NEXON v OdinMS) for download or offering downloads of modified files from the original game package.

In July 2011, Nexon has threatened to take MMORPG development community RaGEZONE to court over users creating and sharing custom emulated servers. Nexon claims to file legal proceedings against all parties involved in the MMORPG development scene. Disney has also fought against custom servers for the online game Club Penguin, shutting down the most popular server, iCPv3 in October 2010, which had over 100,000 users when Disney filed a cease and desist notice against the game. This left Club Penguin without a custom server for 2 months, when they came back.

In August 2011, a California Central District Court awarded Blizzard Entertainment $83 million dollars in a lawsuit against Scapegaming over copyright-infringement. Scapegaming’s violation involved operation of an unauthorized copyrighted version of World of Warcraft. Scapegaming ran microtransactions encouraging players to donate money to advance in the game resulting in $3,053,339 of inappropriate profits. This is one of the first big cases implemented against server emulation.