Hacker News Reader

Seems a bit tin-foily, they state in the post: "...they were very concerned that our real time dashboard that can predict your opponent’s deck will break the game balance by giving that person (that is, whoever has the tool) an unfair advantage.

They also expressed concern that such a tool makes the game less fun by taking away some of the decision-making from the player."

Nothing in there indicates aggressive legal consequences for the author to me.

It seems fair enough - it's a game, and anything that would ruin entertainment value for players is obviously not something that Blizzard would want released.

I've spent 10+ years paying close attention to lawyer nastygrams to security researchers and academics, and that's exactly the type of language they would use. But as you say, perhaps I'm being too cynical in this case.

If they want to avoid ruining entertainment value, they should make a game that is not so easily solved by a computer program. They deliberately avoided mechanics that introduce complexity when designing Hearthstone.

I do not see why anyone other than Blizzard should be interested or required to cater to Blizzard's game design decisions.

No one is going to be "solving" Hearthstone using any of the analysis provided by the author here. The author is missing several huge pieces of the puzzle including card & deck synergy, synergy with hero power, option cards, meta-oriented target cards (aka tech cards), and most importantly, that cards themselves are a resource. You can immediately tell the latter isn't taken into account when you see cards like Shieldbearer, Voodoo Doctor, and Sacrificial Pact in the undervalued list (all low mana cards with little benefit). You won't find any of those cards in any legend-tier or professional deck at the moment because they provide very little utility or board presence. Nothing is shown in their research that provides any information that players don't already know.

He even mentions in the article that Blizzard is very supportive of their research on game and card balance, but they specifically mention that they are concerned about the real-time dashboard that can predict your opponent's deck. The prediction part probably especially puts them off considering there was a video released last week that shows someone allegedly using a network vulnerability to predict exactly what cards an opponent draws during a game.

> They deliberately avoided mechanics that introduce complexity when designing Hearthstone

...which is the exact reason it became so popular.

I don't think that's necessarily true. Hearthstone is made by a well-known company, polished, and most importantly free. There's not much else to directly compare it to.

However, the massive popularity of stuff like DOTA suggests that there's plenty of appetite for games with deep, complex strategy.

There are ways to add computational complexity to a game without making it more difficult for new players to learn. Witness arimaa[0] compared to chess.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Arimaa#Computer_perfor...

Awesome, they have a very popular game.

Someone who beats it with a computer program should not be negotiating with them for the release of the software. Especially with the nontrivial risk of lawsuit by a multi-billion dollar company hanging over his head.

*Edit - Just to be clear, there was no specific C&D made here. But I would definitely consider legal action a real threat when crossing Blizzard given how many times Blizzard has used legal tactics in the past. In additional to the aforementioned bnetd (which is a more defensible case), there was the implementation of the World of Warcraft clone in the Starcraft II engine that was shut down by legal action. That dude was a kid.

If Blizzard wants you to not do it, they will take legal action.

Look at the pros and cons from the researcher's perspective.

Pro

His professional and personal reputation is enhanced by his research findings, which do not depend on the dashboard. What does the researcher gain by releasing the dashboard? Not much.

Con

If he releases it, he potentially changes the character of the game if a lot of people start installing and using the dashboard. He makes life harder on the Hearthstone team, and Blizzard. Ultimately the risk is that the game see falling interest and support, and gets cancelled. So what does the researcher lose by releasing the dashboard? Possibly one or more aspects of a game he clearly likes.

It was probably not hard to convince him not to release it.

It is quite possible that they asked him nicely, and he agreed out of professional courtesy (I'd probably do the same in this situation).

>This time, I wonder if the decision not to release the utility was prompted by a friendly query from a Blizzard developer or a C&D nastygram by a Blizzard attorney -- with a lawsuit threatened if he didn't comply.

according to the article it was the former. And considering that the latter would be even better PR for the authors, I would assume the article to be true.

The article says only "Hearthstone team" and "they," which is ambiguous, especially given Blizzard's history in this area.