Evony Awarded $300K From Hacker Who Probably Can't Pay It

That Evony hacker who showed up to federal court in sweat pants will likely be wearing them a lot longer - if not a barrel. A judge rather quickly ruled against him, finding that selling auto-playing bots and game maps violated Evony's copyrights, and awarded the game's owners $300,000.

Could be worse. Philip James Holland, 23, could be in hock more than $800,000 to Evony, but the federal judge found that some of Evony's claims against Holland overlapped, and the reduced judgment reflected that.

Holland, you may remember, retained no attorney and filed no response to Evony's complaint after it sued him for the creation and sale of his exploits through his Xandium Studios business name. That was probably a bad idea, as without a response the claims against him are presumed true. Thus the rather swift resolution of the case, unless Holland intends to appeal. Who knows.

Holland said he only made a few hundred bucks a month off the exploits. Evony disputed his self-portrayal as a simple unfrozen caveman botter, saying he used Evony source code to build the exploits and ran a private server through his website.

"Spam, theft, hacks and bots shouldn't be allowed in any game and we make every effort to make sure they are not in ours," Marco Mereu, Evony's general counsel, said in a statement. "While we unfortunately were left with no option but to litigate this matter, we agree with the Court that it costs less to obey IP laws than to violate them."

Mt. Lebanon man must pay $300,000 to gaming company [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]