The lawsuit, filed last week in Los Angeles U.S. District Court, accuses the three programmers of "creating and selling hacks for StarCraft 2 in violation of the end-user license agreement, Battle.net terms of use, and copyright law." The suit also sites "multiple counts of copyright infringement and is demanding damages and disgorgement of any profits reaped by the distribution and sale of the hacks," as well as asserting that the actions of the three defendants encouraged others to infringe on the copyrights.

Two Canadian programmers going by the aliases 'Permaphrost,' and 'Cranix,' and a third programmer, 'Linuxawesome,' from Peru are the suit's primary targets. The location of the alleged hackers might create some interesting jurisdictional issues for the lawsuit, given that StarCraft 2's EULA states that disputes would be handled by a Los Angeles County court.

According to the filing:

The harm to Blizzard from Defendants' conduct is immediate, massive and irreparable. By distributing the Hacks to the public, Defendants cause serious harm to the value of StarCraft 2.

Among other things, Defendants irreparably harm the ability of Blizzard's legitimate customers (i.e. those who purchase and use unmodified games) to enjoy and participate in the competitive online experience.

That, in turn, causes users to grow dissatisfied with the game, lose interest in the game, and communicate that dissatisfaction, thereby resulting in lost sales of the game or 'add-on' packs and expansions thereto.