Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-26829117-20180113095630/@comment-26829117-20180116172410

I read the ruling and Yash Gosai is not being accused of 'creating' an exploit but 'developing' an exploit. The extent of his involvement has been to explore the game, find an exploit and develop the process for repeating it reliably. He hasn't written any code and isn't hacking the game.

What he did do was to create a YouTube video that advertised, promoted and demonstrated the exploit. Epic are claiming this is an infringement of their copyright over the game content and are suing him for copyright infringement, not stealing.

I doubt any sensible court would find a case of stealing in this respect but you never know (note: courts are not always sensible). However, they issued a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notice to YouTube and they took the video down. What Yash did was to issue a counter-notification to YouTube. In doing so, he accepted the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court in which YouTube is located (you guess it, California).

So the moral of this story, if there is one, is don't use game content to advertise, promote or demonstrate exploits and if you live outside the US then don't challenge a DMCA takedown notice. If Yash hadn't challenged the takedown notice then I suspect that Epic could never have filed a sensible claim that would have been cost effective.

Aren't facts so much more sexy than assumptions?