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What was left out of the story IS the difference
Logging into Battlenet causes your installed version of a Blizzard game to be authenticated. This is a way Blizzard makes sure one and only one valid copy of a game is played on their multi-player service. The other service accepted the CDKey algorithm hash, and then automatically responded with a OK code. However, the other service emulated Battlenet in every other aspect - providing advertisement popups, allowing semi-permanent teams to form, score keeping, team matchups etc. Those are NOT done on a LAN setup - someone hosts, others join, but it does not have the depth provided by the Battlenet or other service.

Also, it was more than just reverse engineering of the Battlenet protocol that took place - games were illegally copied, attempts were made to reverse engineer the games themselves, data dumps were made of Battlenet files (which alone should be causing a lot of the usual suspects here in the talkbacks to be screaming about how their 'privacy' was violated) so that comparisons could be made between how users connected, and what happened later between the two services, etc.

My guess is that the biggest problem Blizzard had was in regards the authentication - in that numerous illegal copies of their product could be played on the other service.
Posted by: quietLee   Posted on: 09/02/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use
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Why do they care  thk123 | 09/02/05
they're redirecting traffic . . .  tmurph1810 | 09/02/05
I'd have to disagree  el1jones | 09/02/05
Read the case first, you would be surprised  quietLee | 09/02/05
so what?  rafe01 | 09/02/05
but, did they identify themselves as being associated with blizzard?  engrmerc | 09/02/05
Because they collect a fee ...  ShadeTree | 09/02/05
Who collects a fee?  quietLee | 09/02/05
Understandable  opensourcepro | 09/02/05
why?  rafe01 | 09/02/05
Biting the hand that feeds me ????  mrlinux | 09/02/05
Extremely unlikely!  ShadeTree | 09/02/05
Only one game...  thetargos | 09/02/05
"Free"  Font | 09/02/05
Indeed  Anti_Zealot | 09/02/05
What's the difference?  bad2thebone_z | 09/02/05
What was left out of the story IS the difference  quietLee | 09/02/05
Olive branch?  Font | 09/02/05
Don't play video games but...  JJ Brannon | 09/02/05
Class action anyone????  Dazza_z | 09/02/05
Wishes only come true in fairy tales  John Zern | 09/03/05
I didn't agree to being cheated.  Dazza_z | 09/04/05
Seems to me your choices are:  No_Ax_to_Grind | 09/04/05

What do you think?

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