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Instead of donating to charity, they should have given it to the gamers who had their computers illegally used. They do not realize the criminal and civil actions that can arise from this.


Are you sure there are grounds for a criminal case? When you install and run a piece of software on your computer, you grant it a fairly wide license to run. Very little actual harm was done (I can't think of anything beyond power consumption and perhaps an infinitesimal amount of wear and tear), and certainly much less than a bug that causes the computer to crash. If crashing the user's computer could be grounds for a criminal case if would have very far-reaching consequences.


If crashing the user's computer could be grounds for a criminal case if would have very far-reaching consequences.

It's not "crashing the user's computer". The guy intentionally added hidden functionality to his company's software that he knew would cause an extremely high load on the client. It's the difference between a mistake and deliberate sabotage.


I'm aware it didn't crash the computer, it's an analogy.

Also, "sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction". Clearly not what's going on here, and it's this kind of hyperbole I'm arguing against.


Supposedly some peoples video cards got overheated and were destroyed.

I would seriously consider participating in a class-action lawsuit if this happened to me.


If a piece of hardware accepts a valid API software command that will destroy it, the hardware is faulty, not the software.


It made $3700 and 14,000 users were affected. I doubt any of the users would care about the ~25-30 cents they might get from this...


$3700 with the matching donation would make it 50-60 cents with your estimate. With a group lawsuit, the payout would be much greater.


The payout to the users would be greater or the payout from the company to the lawyers would be greater? The latter I agree, the former, I doubt given the paltry amounts that most class actions suits return.


Especially considering some people have said their GPUs burned out during that time (even though lpkane said it didn't optimize to use the GPU). His response when somebody asked him what they should do about the RMA "lol, I wouldn't tell them you were mining". He did offer everyone a free month of premium (a $7 value)


They're providing a premium account the the affected users.




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