Scapegaming was recently ordered to pay Blizzard Entertainment $88.6 million for violating intellectual property rights for allowing players to access a set of World of Warcraft emulator servers.

An emulator server (also known as a private server) refers to an Internet server that mimics the behavior of another server. In this case, Scapegaming’s emulator servers allowed people to connect to and play World of Wizard without using official Blizzard servers.

Blizzard successfully argued that the server emulators violated Blizzard’s copyrights, and that such use could lead to unauthorized use of its games, leading to poor quality or inconsistent gaming experiences that could damage the company.

The case was heard at the U.S. District Court, Central District of California. Judge Stephen V. Wilson announced the ruling. 

SOURCE: "Blizzard Wins Nearly $90 Million World of Warcraft Lawsuit," GameFreaks365.com, August 17, 2010.