Let's have a look at MUD - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
So although a bot author invested time into coding something to work with the game, asking money for the bot could indeed be viewed as trying to profit off the game itself. Then again, the creater of UntzBot isn't asking to get paid, he's asking people to donate in order to get the full version. This right there is where it's going wrong.
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A MUD (play /ˈmʌd/; originally Multi-User Dungeon, with later variants Multi-User Dimension and Multi-User Domain),[1][2] is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, usually text-based. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat. Players can read or view descriptions of rooms, objects, other players, non-player characters, and actions performed in the virtual world. Players typically interact with each other and the world by typing commands that resemble a natural language.
Traditional MUDs implement a role-playing video game set in a fantasy world populated by fictional races and monsters, with players choosing classes in order to gain specific skills or powers. The object of this sort of game is to slay monsters, explore a fantasy world, complete quests, go on adventures, create a story by roleplaying, and advance the created character. Many MUDs were fashioned around the dice-rolling rules of the Dungeons & Dragons series of games.
Such fantasy settings for MUDs are common, while many others have science fiction settings or are based on popular books, movies, animations, periods of history, and so on. Not all MUDs are games; some are designed for educational purposes, while others are purely chat environments, and the flexible nature of many MUD servers leads to their occasional use in areas ranging from computer science research to geoinformatics to medical informatics to analytical chemistry.[3][4][5][6] MUDs have attracted the interest of academic scholars from many fields, including communications, sociology, law, and economics.[7][8][9] At one time, there was interest from the United States military in using them for teleconferencing.[10]
Most MUDs are run as hobbies and are free to players; some may accept donations or allow players to purchase virtual items, while others charge a monthly subscription fee. MUDs can be accessed via standard telnet clients, or specialized MUD clients which are designed to improve the user experience. Numerous games are listed at various web portals, such as The Mud Connector.
The history of modern Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft, and related virtual world genres such as the social virtual worlds exemplified by Second Life, traces directly back to the MUD genre.[9][11] Indeed, before the invention of the term MMORPG, games of this style were simply called graphical MUDs. A number of influential MMORPG designers began as MUD developers and/or players (such as Raph Koster, Brad McQuaid,[12] Matt Firor, and Brian Green[13]) or were involved with early MUDs (like Mark Jacobs and J. Todd Coleman).
I think I'm starting to see your point on this topic now. There's a server for the game "Freelancer". It's run by a private party and surviving only by donations. What I just now remember is a conversation I had with the server operator team. They said they couldn't charge players for playing on their server because Microsoft (the publisher) would likely see that as a 3rd party profiting off the game and sue the crap out of them.Quote:
Free Copyrights exist, but for a program that is illegally made to profit of a copyrighted game, you would just be looking to get sued by the creators. WoW has sued for BILLIONS over stupid shit, $100,000 off someone who only made about $200.
So although a bot author invested time into coding something to work with the game, asking money for the bot could indeed be viewed as trying to profit off the game itself. Then again, the creater of UntzBot isn't asking to get paid, he's asking people to donate in order to get the full version. This right there is where it's going wrong.
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Donations are given without return consideration. This lack of return consideration means that, in common law, an agreement to make a donation is an "imperfect contract void for want of consideration."