How seriously does Blizzard take the operation of private World of Warcraft servers? On August 10th the company was awarded a stunning $88,594,539.00 judgment against a woman who operated a business running her own WoW server and selling items via Paypal. That may seem steep, but over $3 million of that amount came from “inappropriate profits” the woman made from running the server. That’s right: her private server, run under the name Scapegaming, was a multimillion dollar business. It also made her a very attractive target for litigation.

The server in question was not a small operation—at one point it hosted 32,000 players in a single day according to court documents. In June 2008 there were 427,393 members in the website’s community. If you think the money awarded to Blizzard seems high, this is where the math comes in.

“Based on these allegations, it is reasonable to infer that Defendant has provided each of its users with anti-circumvention products or services on at least one occasion,” the document states. “Although Plaintiff is unable to prove this fact definitively, the Court must draw all reasonable inferences in Plaintiff’s favor on account of Defendant’s failure to participate in the litigation process.”

That’s right, since the woman in question never showed up in court, she was slammed with a DMCA violation for every single one of her users. After making a few million from running a private server, you’d think it would be a good idea to save a little back just in case the company in question decides to come after you.