Daybreak Sues The Heroes Journey EQ EMU Server Devs

mkopec said:

These Emus started way before daybreak took over. And of course they knew about them, but like I said if they didnt feel it in the bottom line, why spend the cash for lawyers for some piddly emus hosting 100 people? But once when that 4K server pops up and popularity soars at about the time you release a new product, its a problem.

Dont think of it as stealing a purse vs stealing a car. Thats a criminal matter, this is more of a civil suit. Think of your neighbor either having his dog shit on your lawn or one day he decides to paint swastikas on your garage door and you have it all on your ring cam. The poop you can let go, yorue definitely not hiring lwayers for that shit. But hes definitely getting sued for the defacing of your property and the damages.

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Correct. You are not required to go after every single infringement to retain your copyrights. The lawyers would love it if that were the case, but it's not. So companies generally leave the minnows alone because going after every one of them would bankrupt you quickly, even if you won every single case. You make an example out of anyone who hurts your brand in a way that costs you money, or someone who is *making* money off of your work. Those cases will result in damages that will be somewhat or entirely paid by the $$$ the infringer took in.

moonarchia said:

The entire work is copyrighted. The client. The art assets, the names, the story. All of it. You can't use any of that without permission from DPG, and you can expect to get sued if you are making money off of it.

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Sure, Daybreak owns the client, the code, and the art. But that’s just the legal side of it. EverQuest was built on the backs of community-driven MUDs like Diku and Sojourn which are games that shared ideas freely and let players shape the world. Without that open spirit, EQ wouldn’t even exist. Now Daybreak acts like they invented this stuff in a vacuum and no one else is allowed to touch it. That’s a complete betrayal of what made EQ special in the first place.


THJ wasn’t some big money-making scheme. It was a group of fans trying to keep the magic alive because Daybreak clearly doesn’t care anymore. The reason Daybreak went nuclear isn’t because they were losing money, it’s because they got embarrassed. A bunch of unpaid fans showed more love and vision for EQ than the official devs have in years, and JChan and her merry band of lesbians and neckbeards at Dreckpaw couldn’t stand that.


This isn’t really about copyright, it’s about control and ego. Fan projects like THJ are about preserving a world we all loved, not stealing it. Daybreak would rather sue and kill that spirit than admit they’ve let EQ rot. At the end of the day, they’re proving they don’t deserve the legacy they’re so desperate to lock down.

The amount of shit that EQ took from Sojourn they essentially had the core game already built. If you played any of those Diku/Sojourn games a lot of the way EQ worked mechanically is directly taken from them. Then they just looked at recent 3D sprite model RPGs like Ultima/Might and Magic and inspired the world design from there.

Old Man Potter said:

Sure, Daybreak owns the client, the code, and the art. But that’s just the legal side of it. EverQuest was built on the backs of community-driven MUDs like Diku and Sojourn which are games that shared ideas freely and let players shape the world. Without that open spirit, EQ wouldn’t even exist. Now Daybreak acts like they invented this stuff in a vacuum and no one else is allowed to touch it. That’s a complete betrayal of what made EQ special in the first place.


THJ wasn’t some big money-making scheme. It was a group of fans trying to keep the magic alive because Daybreak clearly doesn’t care anymore. The reason Daybreak went nuclear isn’t because they were losing money, it’s because they got embarrassed. A bunch of unpaid fans showed more love and vision for EQ than the official devs have in years, and JChan and her merry band of lesbians and neckbeards at Dreckpaw couldn’t stand that.


This isn’t really about copyright, it’s about control and ego. Fan projects like THJ are about preserving a world we all loved, not stealing it. Daybreak would rather sue and kill that spirit than admit they’ve let EQ rot. At the end of the day, they’re proving they don’t deserve the legacy they’re so desperate to lock down.

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Dikumud sued EQ back in 2000 over copyright. That was settled then.

The rest of your post is nice feely stuff, but has no legal weight. DPG owns the copyright. Simple as that. If you make money off of that copyright without their permission, they are in the right to sue the fuck out of you. Call it preservation (it wasn't, but it is fun), but THJ made money off of EQ without having obtained a license from the copyright owner to do so. May have been a sizeable amount of money, too. Fleecing memberberry addicts is a lucrative business model.

Copyright is always about control. That is the entire legal reasoning it exists. It gives creators the absolute right to control how their works are used, and who can profit from them. I am not a fan of copyright, but have worked in several roles where I had to deal with them, so I had to learn all this shit.

moonarchia said:

Dikumud sued EQ back in 2000 over copyright. That was settled then.

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What's funny was Brad admitted it was all "inspired" by Sojourn/Diku beforehand in interviews to promote EQ-- when in reality it was actually line for line.

A lot of these emu/AI projects use "inspired by" to try to protect themselves from a claim. If you google DND solo adventures et al, you'll see heavy use of inspired by. Which protects you from nothing if there is copyrighted material being used.

jayrebb said:

What's funny was Brad admitted it was all "inspired" by Sojourn/Diku beforehand in interviews to promote EQ-- when in reality it was actually line for line.

A lot of these emu/AI projects use "inspired by" to try to protect themselves from a claim. If you google DND solo adventures et al, you'll see heavy use of inspired by. Which protects you from nothing if there is copyrighted material being used.

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Yup. If you blatantly rip things off you can expect the legal hammer in your sphincter the moment you start taking in money. Donations or anything else.

Control said:

So I guess THJ will be in the clear as soon as they break out that licensing agreement that they've been sitting on?

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What the fuck does this have to do with what i wrote? You can make money off Copyrighted Material, steamers do it by streaming gameplay(often Implied licensing) react content(fair use). Corporations like Netflix do it by buying Licenses and selling the content.

In regards to the topic. Almost ever fucking person that has played EQ in the past has had a licensing agreement, that's what End User Licensing Agreements are.

Owning a Copyright doesn't give the holder the ability to change licensing agreements post hoc, that can be breach of contract. The ways you can use the software are covered in the EULA and just because Daybreak changes the EULA doesn't mean the courts will enforce those changes.

There is also something know as an Implied License. Which is stuff that isn't explicitly stated but rather implied by the behavior of the the copyright holder. Based on Daybreaks behavior the past 10+ years with private servers, acknowledging them, in p99 case promoting them and not explicitly saying not to do it IMO can potential be viewed as an implied license to do so, but that's up to the courts not me.

Mrniceguy said:

In regards to the topic. Almost ever fucking person that has played EQ in the past has had a licensing agreement, that's what End User Licensing Agreements are.

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Licenses that explicitly allow commercial use are entirely different than anything else you posted, and unless they have one of those, it's an entirely useless point in this context. And are you actually arguing that EQ's EULA specifically allows what they're doing? I'm certainly not going to bother digging up the eq eula, but feel free to post what makes you think that it's ok. I'm open to being enlightened, but otherwise, I'm going to keep thinking that you're pants-on-head retarded.

Even steamers do what they do at the pleasure of the ip holder since they can certainly be taken down when the ip holder doesn't like what they're doing. I'm sure they'll offer up those points as a defense, but a defense is all it is, not a license or right. Until a court upholds it, it's just grasping at straws. Although I can't imagine that they don't settle if it's in any way possible. It's not exactly easy for individuals to fund a proper defense against a big corp.

This is to say nothing about the morality of it. I like that emus exist, and I hope that somehow they can work out an agreement that benefits both parties. However, if it were my game, and someone was basically selling a somewhat modified version of it, I don't think I would like that at all, so I can certainly understand the other side too. Good luck to them though, I'm afraid they're going to need it.

Control said:

Licenses that explicitly allow commercial use are entirely different than anything else you posted, and unless they have one of those, it's an entirely useless point in this context. And are you actually arguing that EQ's EULA specifically allows what they're doing?

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I'm not saying the EULA allows it at all. You E Lawyers keep acting like Copyright law is very black and white and making false statements like "You can't make money off someone Copyrighted IP without their consent." When you absolutely can, there is all sorts of grey areas in copyright law. Another example is DOTA, you should look into have Value got the IP even though Blizzard wanted it and DOTA uses a bunch of Blizzards Copyrighted IP. Cover songs also don't require consent as a way to make money from someone elses IP, they just require you pay the Copyright holder a cut.

Mrniceguy said:

I'm not saying the EULA allows it at all. You E Lawyers keep acting like Copyright law is very black and white and making false statements like "You can't make money off someone Copyrighted IP without their consent." When you absolutely can, there is all sorts of grey areas in copyright law. Another example is DOTA, you should look into have Value got the IP even though Blizzard wanted it and DOTA uses a bunch of Blizzards Copyrighted IP. Cover songs also don't require consent as a way to make money from someone elses IP, they just require you pay the Copyright holder a cut.

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I'm not the one making legal claims, and the only thing I think is black and white is the likeliness of an individual getting fucked when basically running a business that's essentially a pirate server based on a large corporation's ip. Again, more power to them, and I wish them well, but theorycrafting excuses about how it might, technically, sorta, kinda, maybe be defensible? If it's so straight-forward, I guess you'll be picking up the sacks of money that THJ will be forgoing if/when they shut down?

The only thing that I don't understand in this whole ordeal is how running open source software that acts as a server is a violation of anything. I'm not even talking about THJ nor any emulator server directly. I am just talking about the idea of running server software in and of itself.

If I write an application that runs as a server and it listens for messages on a particular port, interprets them, and sends a reply back to the sender, then how is that violating any software license when the server software is something I wrote? Unless you was running server software that was written by another company, I don't get how running software you wrote is valid in a copyright lawsuit.

Are they saying that the emulation servers use the Everquest server software? If that was the case, then absolutely I could understand the lawsuit. But... if the server software was written from the ground up (albeit many years ago now) from scratch, then I don't see how any company can lay claim to that code.

Can somebody please explain that to me? What am I missing here?

Pharone said:

The only thing that I don't understand in this whole ordeal is how running open source software that acts as a server is a violation of anything. I'm not even talking about THJ nor any emulator server directly. I am just talking about the idea of running server software in and of itself.

If I write an application that runs as a server and it listens for messages on a particular port, interprets them, and sends a reply back to the sender, then how is that violating any software license when the server software is something I wrote? Unless you was running server software that was written by another company, I don't get how running software you wrote is valid in a copyright lawsuit.

Are they saying that the emulation servers use the Everquest server software? If that was the case, then absolutely I could understand the lawsuit. But... if the server software was written from the ground up (albeit many years ago now) from scratch, then I don't see how any company can lay claim to that code.

Can somebody please explain that to me? What am I missing here?

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Even if that were perfectly ok, has any emu ever started with a completely empty db with zero eq content/data?
(and even so, I'm not sure if it would be ok if the software is purpose-built to interface with and entirely relied upon an existing client. If that were a reliable defense, wouldn't it also apply to the bot tools like wow-glider?)

Control said:

Even if that were perfectly ok, has any emu ever started with a completely empty db with zero eq content/data?
(and even so, I'm not sure if it would be ok if the software is purpose-built to interface with and entirely relied upon an existing client. If that were a reliable defense, wouldn't it also apply to the bot tools like wow-glider?)

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To answer your first question, when I tried messing around with the emu a long while back, it did start with an empty db with zero eq content/data. The person setting it up can choose to make it all from scratch if they like, but most use a pre-existing database package as a shortcut.

As for your second question, wowglider directly interacts with the game client in memory. It is directly changing things in the game client. The game client was never designed to talk to wowglider. It's literally a night and day difference between wowglider and an emu server. They are nothing even remotely alike.

Pharone said:

To answer your first question, when I tried messing around with the emu a long while back, it did start with an empty db with zero eq content/data. The person setting it up can choose to make it all from scratch if they like, but most use a pre-existing database package as a shortcut.

As for your second question, wowglider directly interacts with the game client in memory. It is directly changing things in the game client. The game client was never designed to talk to wowglider. It's literally a night and day difference between wowglider and an emu server. They are nothing even remotely alike.

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Sure, you can start with an empty db, but does anyone actually do this? People aren't running eqemu because their want to make their own mmo from scratch. They're doing it because they want to run eq. (and that's aside from needing to point the data at client assets)

Let me educate you nerds with my godlike knowledge from my godlike education.

Kronos consumption = Revenue
Kronos generation = Cash

When a Krono is generated, cash is transfered from the consumer to Daybreak. They record the cash by the following.

Debit to Cash
Credit to Unearned Revenue

These are both balance sheets items. Unearned revenue is a liability on the balance sheet and represents future revenue for Daybreak.

When someone consumes a krono, even if they did not buy the krono themselves (such as trading fungi Tunic for 8kr to fuel their monthly sub for the tlp), revenue is generated to Day break. They record the revenue by the following.

Debit to Unearned Revenue
Credit to Revenue

If an account is paid directly with a monthly subscription, the accounting is just

Debit to Cash
Credit to Revenue


Now it gets a little more complicated in how Daybreak has elected to calculate Unearned Revenue/Revenue.

They could use the specific identification method which tracks every single krono consumption and recognizes revenue on consumption. Or they can use the concept of breakage and historical consumption rates to predict the consumption on average. Whichever method they choose, can not be changed without restating all the periods of their shown income statement (likely 3 years) and without specific criteria that allows them to elect a change in method.

Krono is similar to frequent flyer miles for American Airlines and your typical gift card usage for various companies when it comes to accounting.

While Daybreak might have good revenue, I suspect their cash flow is not so good. Remember, cash is only generated from the initial creation of the krono (or other random shop stuff).

If I was Daybreak and wanted to impact quarterly revenue, I would try to accumulate Kronos to a company run account and then consume the krono. I have long believed that SG bots and Rich Girly were Daybreak assets designed to funnel krono ownership back to Daybreak so they can recognize the revenue of krono through consumption.

This doesn't solve the cash problem though.