Blizzard Deletes 112,000 Diablo II Accounts

pixelblur writes "An update over at fan site DiabloII.Net points out that Blizzard has deleted 112,000 Battle.net accounts for Diablo II." The official post from the Battle.net team in part reads: "Numerous.. ..accounts were tied to the use of a hack or cheat program while playing Diablo II on Battle.net. In keeping with our aggressive stance against cheating, we have permanently closed over 112,000 of these accounts and documented the CD keys with which they were used." This clean-up comes ahead of the forthcoming 1.10 patch for the seminal title.

Comments

Re:Why just infrequent account purges?

[Babbster]

The fact that they haven't conjures up various conspiracy theories, or (in my opinion the more likely option) demonstrates that they really don't care that much about the problem despite their press releases.

Further, the two years without a patch, despite the myriad insecurities brought to light, gives further evidence of a lack of caring.

Forgive me for asking, but why SHOULD they care? Diablo 2 has been out for three years and the expansion has been out for two.

Now, I'll examine whether or not they do indeed care:

Since the game's release, people have been able to play through the entire game easily offline (in other words, no significant bugs that prevent such), they've been able to do matchmaking on battle.net AND they've even been able to play games hosted on battle.net servers. During that time, they've also been provided with new special items, enhancement and correction of unbalanced skills and repair of the serious playability bugs that existed. Even more relevant, Blizzard is STILL trying to address the problem of cheaters as is clearly evidenced by THIS STORY.

In short, Blizzard cares more about Diablo 2, a product over two years old that is now being sold at discounted prices, than most companies care about games in their first month of release. More importantly, they're demonstrating that they care about the people who are still playing by getting rid of cheaters and providing better customer care than some of the companies running MMORPGs which you actually have to pay monthly fees to play.

Even shorter: You're wrong.

Re:Good

[malakai]

What's even more funny about this reply is his signature:

...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.? - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)

So, who's speaking up for the 112k accounts that just got terminated? You think Blizzard was 100% accurate in numbers that massive? Some poor little kid just lost 4 months of hard earned levels/items.

mmmm... smell that hypocrisy...

-malakai