I'm bringing an OwnedCore exclusive interview with the CEO of Buddy products, Zwetan Letschew, also known as Bossland.
I approached Bossland, we talked and discussed and decided to do a short (so it was planned) interview. We discussed history of the Buddy company, first steps towards today's greatness, current state of products, expanding to new platforms, and finally, the legal state the company is currently in.
Press Read More or click here to read the full interview.
Maccer:Hello Bossland,
To provide our readers with a casual and calm introduction, tell me, how are you doing on this fine day?
Bossland: Besides answering my daily support tickets and planing our new games, that we work on, I am happy to share some information on our next bot plans with Ownedcore.
Maccer: That's how it is.
To clear some things up, tell us a brief history of yourself and your company in general. How did your company even start in the first place?
Bossland: I am now 36 :/
Never finished my bachelor's degree in business mathematics, had more interesting things to do, like running two internet cafes with 3 other students ten years ago, going into gold selling business with Glider.
Glider was quite fun, as I used my old internet cafe computers, took 12 computers and of course 12 CRT monitors, placed them in my kitchen and ran 24 bots for leveling and gold farming, in times where you could sell 1.000 Gold for as low as 30 $. Later, this all evolved into 3 computers on 1 monitor with around 64 bots. Then Glider died, and here we are.
Some lucky circumstances managed to bring together Hawker and me, and with some great help from Bravesoul and Nesox, Gatherbuddy was born.
Maccer: You have a very fun history I must say.
Was it your own idea to start with Gatherbuddy, or a common idea from both you and Hawker?
Bossland: Gatherbuddy was the evolved SuperYoink, a plugin that allowed Glider to use flying mounts, and SuperYoink was written especially for me from Bravesoul, who published Yoink on Glider forums.
So more or less, I had a plugin that I used to farm with, and that I increased in functionality. This plugin later on, I've even sold to gold-farmers, as it had all the functions you would need to farm herbs and minerals with a flying mount.
Then Glider died, but they did not shut down their authentication servers the minute they closed business, which meant I was able to farm for another month, until I pointed that out to Hamut ( you just had to let Glider open and pray your computer does no BSOD ).
So I had the plugin and Hawker had SotA bot-base he had made for ppather, another Glider plugin. We met, discussed, agreed, looked for awesome developers, started working, that was early 2009.
Maccer: And you evolved to this now. Based on just looking at the forum, you have a community with over million posts, 143.000 members, and 11.000 active members. That's quite impressive I must say.
Maccer: How much employees do you currently have?
Bossland: The number is fluctuating, since we also have a lot of freelancers that do forum support, profiles and plugins on monthly bases, but the core of people that work constantly for at least one year with us, is 10 employees, besides Hawker and me.
Forums do tend to have a lot of zombie registrations, automated scripts that try to create threads and post links. However we have seen over 1.7k users online short after MOP was released, now it is again a quite forum with 500 or more users online.
Maccer: I wouldn't call that quiet.
I noticed that you have published two games for iOS and Android platforms, which look very appealing and fun to myself personally. What's the story behind that, are you planning to expand your business to a wider region?
Are any more games in development now or are being planned?
Bossland: It is actually just one game, the first one was created to see which tools we should use to make games with. We tried different languages and frameworks. Epic Pirates Story is the first released game, and yes we plan to release 3 more till the end of 2013. However only one will be cross-platform, Epic Pirates Story II. It should run on iOS, Android, Windows and hopefully Linux too. Then we are developing Epic Car Story for Android and The Conquest, also for Android.
Game development is something we want to expand with, the first game was not really awesome, there where a lot of things that went wrong. Now we are trying to not make that mistakes again and present games that do make fun to play for more than 30 minutes. Graphically and sound-wise EPS is quite good, long time motivation does not exist.
So with releasing that 3 games this year, we will be able to see if we can exist in this market or not. And the idea behind is to make a franchise, by involving all the BuddyStaff into the games. You might have seen Mighty Hawker or The Kickazz or might even have gone as far as to get Cap'n Apoc in your party. So what I'm trying to tell is, we make bots, we make games, probably in some time, if we do it right, we could make our own MMO game
Maccer: Would be ironic if Blizzard made a bot for your MMO once it's made.
Bossland: They would have to compete with our build in bot :/
Maccer: Hahahah, yeah, that would be fun to watch.
So, let's move on to the network of Buddy bots. I saw that you're preparing a new bot which is currently in beta state, Winterbuddy? How is the development going so far? Who is working on the bot?
Bossland: Yes, Winterbuddy for Neverwinter Online, you might have seen the new forum section and the first bot that can be tried, leveling 1-10. Nesox is working on it and it is getting better and better on a daily basis.
http://www.thebuddyforum.com/winterb...k-preview.html
Maccer: There has been an increased number of recently banned accounts which have been using Gatherbuddy, what's up with that? I heard it's some sort of server-side seeking algorithm.
Bossland: The server-side algorithms have existed as long as I farmed, most likely many people do not know that in my active career I lost much over 500 end level accounts.
So whenever you start botting with more than one account, you increase your risk of being banned over-proportional with the number of accounts you run. Increased numbers of bans also come from the mechanism that Blizzard uses, they do not ban on sight, but ban in waves, which decreases the chances to find their algorithms and looks much more dangerous to the botting community.
More or less, I can only say, that I am sorry for every ban that happened, and that we do have customers, botting since the beginning, that never got banned once. This is most likely users with just one private account that they bot on.
Maccer: I see, thank you for your clarification.
How do you comment the recent failed attempt of Blizzard to detect your bots through the WoW client itself
(MSG_EnableHonorbuddyDetection thing) ?
Bossland: I must admit, I am the wrong person to ask, to get a very detailed explanation. However, when we saw this in the PTR, we got really scared, we spent a lot of time searching for EnableHonorbuddyDetection on all the following patches, for months. Now, recently, it was finally added, but by that time it was fully analyzed and has been handled. There is no higher risk of been banned right now, than it was before EnableHonorbuddyDetection.
Maccer: Good to know that the bot is still safe to use as it has always been.
Alright, let's move to the juicy stuff everyone wants to hear about, what's the current status with the court? Who's suing who and is anyone
"winning" currently ?
Bossland: Courts in Germany tend to do things slowly. So we are still in the process.
Let me sum up the cases. The regional court of Hamburg already made two decissions, a temporary injunction on Demonbuddy to not be sold in Germany and a court ruling on Honorbuddy to not be sold in Germany.
The Honorbuddy ruling did not become effective as of now, because blizzard has to pay 650.000 EUR to the court first.
Both cases are appealed on the Higher Regional Court in Hamburg, but as we already were told, there will be no court dates before mid 2014.
Another case is in Munich, where we are trying to get a clearance, if the TOS and EULA are part of the contract or not, when a user buys the game from a store. The court date is on 27th August 2013.
There is a counter case there being done by Blizzard, it will also be decided.
Another one is on the regional court of Leipzig. There, Blizzard is trying to sue me personally, but I doubt they will have great chances doing that, court date is end 2013.
That's it, summed up.
Maccer: Do you think that Blizzard is prolonging this just so they deplete your money that's being spent for the court and lawyer funding so you would finally back out yourself?
Bossland: It seems that this is the plan for now, they changed the law firm and with it the plan to handle us. But it is temporary, even if temporary means few years, in the end I am sure that we will write some law history in Germany.
Maccer: Good, how are the employees coping with the current legal situation?
Bossland: I inform them as all the community with the announcements in the legal section. Details are not important to trouble them with. It seems that in the worst case, we would not be allowed to sell our bots just in Germany.
So the financial situation is still fine. However, we do not want the worst case, that is why most of my time I discuss the cases along with our lawyers. In the end i would like to see Federal Court of Justice to resolve that legal situation. It will also resolve all the issues with TOS, EULA, software that does only what a user can do, and probably a few other interesting issues.
Maccer: Interesting.
What would happen if Blizzard lost this case? I'm sure it would cause an explosion in the botting community, bringing new botters and bots too.
Bossland: It would affect the whole gaming industry in Germany, all the publishers would need to change their TOS/ EULA to something that is not against the law or the transparency of contracts done with end users, the judicial control of general terms and conditions would then not only apply, as it does exist right now, just no one uses it. But it will also be ruled on it.
This would change the way how publishers sell games in stores. We have seen small changes already, VZBV vs EA, VZBV vs Steam.
http://www.gamebreaker.tv/game-indus...in-the-future/
http://www.telemedicus.info/article/...nickt-ein.html ( German only, there are no English articles. )
Maccer: Good. I think that's it Bossland. Do you have anything to say to the OwnedCore community before we say good bye?
Bossland: Happy Botting
To provide our readers with a casual and calm introduction, tell me, how are you doing on this fine day?
Bossland: Besides answering my daily support tickets and planing our new games, that we work on, I am happy to share some information on our next bot plans with Ownedcore.
Maccer: That's how it is.
To clear some things up, tell us a brief history of yourself and your company in general. How did your company even start in the first place?
Bossland: I am now 36 :/
Never finished my bachelor's degree in business mathematics, had more interesting things to do, like running two internet cafes with 3 other students ten years ago, going into gold selling business with Glider.
Glider was quite fun, as I used my old internet cafe computers, took 12 computers and of course 12 CRT monitors, placed them in my kitchen and ran 24 bots for leveling and gold farming, in times where you could sell 1.000 Gold for as low as 30 $. Later, this all evolved into 3 computers on 1 monitor with around 64 bots. Then Glider died, and here we are.
Some lucky circumstances managed to bring together Hawker and me, and with some great help from Bravesoul and Nesox, Gatherbuddy was born.
Maccer: You have a very fun history I must say.
Was it your own idea to start with Gatherbuddy, or a common idea from both you and Hawker?
Bossland: Gatherbuddy was the evolved SuperYoink, a plugin that allowed Glider to use flying mounts, and SuperYoink was written especially for me from Bravesoul, who published Yoink on Glider forums.
So more or less, I had a plugin that I used to farm with, and that I increased in functionality. This plugin later on, I've even sold to gold-farmers, as it had all the functions you would need to farm herbs and minerals with a flying mount.
Then Glider died, but they did not shut down their authentication servers the minute they closed business, which meant I was able to farm for another month, until I pointed that out to Hamut ( you just had to let Glider open and pray your computer does no BSOD ).
So I had the plugin and Hawker had SotA bot-base he had made for ppather, another Glider plugin. We met, discussed, agreed, looked for awesome developers, started working, that was early 2009.
Maccer: And you evolved to this now. Based on just looking at the forum, you have a community with over million posts, 143.000 members, and 11.000 active members. That's quite impressive I must say.
Maccer: How much employees do you currently have?
Bossland: The number is fluctuating, since we also have a lot of freelancers that do forum support, profiles and plugins on monthly bases, but the core of people that work constantly for at least one year with us, is 10 employees, besides Hawker and me.
Forums do tend to have a lot of zombie registrations, automated scripts that try to create threads and post links. However we have seen over 1.7k users online short after MOP was released, now it is again a quite forum with 500 or more users online.
Maccer: I wouldn't call that quiet.
I noticed that you have published two games for iOS and Android platforms, which look very appealing and fun to myself personally. What's the story behind that, are you planning to expand your business to a wider region?
Are any more games in development now or are being planned?
Bossland: It is actually just one game, the first one was created to see which tools we should use to make games with. We tried different languages and frameworks. Epic Pirates Story is the first released game, and yes we plan to release 3 more till the end of 2013. However only one will be cross-platform, Epic Pirates Story II. It should run on iOS, Android, Windows and hopefully Linux too. Then we are developing Epic Car Story for Android and The Conquest, also for Android.
Game development is something we want to expand with, the first game was not really awesome, there where a lot of things that went wrong. Now we are trying to not make that mistakes again and present games that do make fun to play for more than 30 minutes. Graphically and sound-wise EPS is quite good, long time motivation does not exist.
So with releasing that 3 games this year, we will be able to see if we can exist in this market or not. And the idea behind is to make a franchise, by involving all the BuddyStaff into the games. You might have seen Mighty Hawker or The Kickazz or might even have gone as far as to get Cap'n Apoc in your party. So what I'm trying to tell is, we make bots, we make games, probably in some time, if we do it right, we could make our own MMO game
Maccer: Would be ironic if Blizzard made a bot for your MMO once it's made.
Bossland: They would have to compete with our build in bot :/
Maccer: Hahahah, yeah, that would be fun to watch.
So, let's move on to the network of Buddy bots. I saw that you're preparing a new bot which is currently in beta state, Winterbuddy? How is the development going so far? Who is working on the bot?
Bossland: Yes, Winterbuddy for Neverwinter Online, you might have seen the new forum section and the first bot that can be tried, leveling 1-10. Nesox is working on it and it is getting better and better on a daily basis.
http://www.thebuddyforum.com/winterb...k-preview.html
Maccer: There has been an increased number of recently banned accounts which have been using Gatherbuddy, what's up with that? I heard it's some sort of server-side seeking algorithm.
Bossland: The server-side algorithms have existed as long as I farmed, most likely many people do not know that in my active career I lost much over 500 end level accounts.
So whenever you start botting with more than one account, you increase your risk of being banned over-proportional with the number of accounts you run. Increased numbers of bans also come from the mechanism that Blizzard uses, they do not ban on sight, but ban in waves, which decreases the chances to find their algorithms and looks much more dangerous to the botting community.
More or less, I can only say, that I am sorry for every ban that happened, and that we do have customers, botting since the beginning, that never got banned once. This is most likely users with just one private account that they bot on.
Maccer: I see, thank you for your clarification.
How do you comment the recent failed attempt of Blizzard to detect your bots through the WoW client itself
(MSG_EnableHonorbuddyDetection thing) ?
Bossland: I must admit, I am the wrong person to ask, to get a very detailed explanation. However, when we saw this in the PTR, we got really scared, we spent a lot of time searching for EnableHonorbuddyDetection on all the following patches, for months. Now, recently, it was finally added, but by that time it was fully analyzed and has been handled. There is no higher risk of been banned right now, than it was before EnableHonorbuddyDetection.
Maccer: Good to know that the bot is still safe to use as it has always been.
Alright, let's move to the juicy stuff everyone wants to hear about, what's the current status with the court? Who's suing who and is anyone
"winning" currently ?
Bossland: Courts in Germany tend to do things slowly. So we are still in the process.
Let me sum up the cases. The regional court of Hamburg already made two decissions, a temporary injunction on Demonbuddy to not be sold in Germany and a court ruling on Honorbuddy to not be sold in Germany.
The Honorbuddy ruling did not become effective as of now, because blizzard has to pay 650.000 EUR to the court first.
Both cases are appealed on the Higher Regional Court in Hamburg, but as we already were told, there will be no court dates before mid 2014.
Another case is in Munich, where we are trying to get a clearance, if the TOS and EULA are part of the contract or not, when a user buys the game from a store. The court date is on 27th August 2013.
There is a counter case there being done by Blizzard, it will also be decided.
Another one is on the regional court of Leipzig. There, Blizzard is trying to sue me personally, but I doubt they will have great chances doing that, court date is end 2013.
That's it, summed up.
Maccer: Do you think that Blizzard is prolonging this just so they deplete your money that's being spent for the court and lawyer funding so you would finally back out yourself?
Bossland: It seems that this is the plan for now, they changed the law firm and with it the plan to handle us. But it is temporary, even if temporary means few years, in the end I am sure that we will write some law history in Germany.
Maccer: Good, how are the employees coping with the current legal situation?
Bossland: I inform them as all the community with the announcements in the legal section. Details are not important to trouble them with. It seems that in the worst case, we would not be allowed to sell our bots just in Germany.
So the financial situation is still fine. However, we do not want the worst case, that is why most of my time I discuss the cases along with our lawyers. In the end i would like to see Federal Court of Justice to resolve that legal situation. It will also resolve all the issues with TOS, EULA, software that does only what a user can do, and probably a few other interesting issues.
Maccer: Interesting.
What would happen if Blizzard lost this case? I'm sure it would cause an explosion in the botting community, bringing new botters and bots too.
Bossland: It would affect the whole gaming industry in Germany, all the publishers would need to change their TOS/ EULA to something that is not against the law or the transparency of contracts done with end users, the judicial control of general terms and conditions would then not only apply, as it does exist right now, just no one uses it. But it will also be ruled on it.
This would change the way how publishers sell games in stores. We have seen small changes already, VZBV vs EA, VZBV vs Steam.
http://www.gamebreaker.tv/game-indus...in-the-future/
http://www.telemedicus.info/article/...nickt-ein.html ( German only, there are no English articles. )
Maccer: Good. I think that's it Bossland. Do you have anything to say to the OwnedCore community before we say good bye?
Bossland: Happy Botting
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