A company built around cheating in video games has struck back at a legal attack from Blizzard.

Blizzard filed a lawsuit last week against Bossland, a company that makes "Buddy" bots that help players cheat at various games, including Heroes of the Storm and World of Warcraft.

But Bossland has now claimed Blizzard stole its IP via an underhand deal with a freelancer working with the company.

"Blizzard acted in a manner as shady as possible for a multi-billion-dollar corporation," said Bossland CEO Zwetan Letschew.

"We were informed that the deal compelled [the freelancer] to submit the entire source code of [Heroes of the Storm cheat bot] Stormbuddy, which is actually the intellectual property of Bossland GmbH, to Blizzard."

Letschew says Bossland intends to take Blizzard to court over a loss of sales of Bossland's bot software.

Blizzard responded by reiterating that "Bossland's entire business is based in cheating," adding that it is "confident that the court system will continue to validate our claims and ultimately stop the distribution of these cheating bots."

The two companies have been doing battle since 2011; use of Bossland automation bots in Blizzard's games is a bannable offense.