Blizzard Removes 400,000 More Battle.Net Accounts

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to the Battle.net announcement that Blizzard has removed over 400,000 more accounts from their online gaming service, due to cheating. This comes after earlier similar action in June closed over 112,000 Diablo II accounts - this time, it's been announced: "In keeping with our aggressive stance against cheating, we have permanently closed 276,000 StarCraft accounts, 86,000 Diablo II accounts, and 41,000 Warcraft III accounts." It's also mentioned that Battle.net has "identified the Diablo II accounts with which a 'map-hack' program is being used", and banning is threatened if players don't stop, another sign of Blizzard's continuing, active anti-cheating stance.

Comments

How long until a new map-hack?

[Knetzar]

I give it a week.

Even though I know that new hacks will come out, I am really glad that Blizzard is doing something about this. They seem to be responding to this previous article on online gaming.

Re:How long until a new map-hack?

[horcy]

So you'll give it a week eh. But these people if they are repeated cheaters, their key will be banned for life or at least for a whole lot of months. They'll have to spend some money to go back and play by buying a new copy in the store. And if they cheated like 3 times and they had static ip's, perm ip ban. Blizzard is going to win this.

400,000 Scum Bag Subsidy

[!the!bad!fish!]

400,000 is a lot of scum bags to ban.
What more, it takes a serious degree of selfishness and dedication to cheat, these scum are often heavy users.
Guess who's going to end up paying more?

Re:400,000 Scum Bag Subsidy

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

I think the parent's point was that Blizzard will spend less money to run Battle.net with 400,000 fewer heavy users.

Ah ha!

[heldlikesound]

This explains my dismal 0 - 41,000 WarCraft record!

I knew I wasn't THAT bad.

Going after the wrong people..

[doubleyewdee]

I don't know about the other games, but I play Diablo 2 and I lost an account for 'botting.' Yeah, I ran a bot about 3-4 hours a day. Not one of those 24/7 guys.

Now I know someone is going to jump me for running bots period, but before you do consider the competition. I'm playing with (and against) a ton of people with hacked items. It's virtually impossible to find or trade for good items that are legit on battle.net unless you're running a bot or duping/hacking. Legit items (unided) carry a ridiculous pricetag because the problem of cheating and duping is so bad. But instead of fixing a dupe/hack problem that has been rampant in d2 for *years* Blizzard finds it better to go after people who are trying to compete against the dupers/hackers.

Let me ask, who is doing more harm? The guy who runs a bot for a few hours to improve his chances of finding an item that doesn't suck or the guy who puts together a 100% illegal item and then uses it to run around PKing others or generally gaining illegitimate advantage in other ways?

Got on bnet today and saw the same people trading occy rings and ccb garbage. These people are without fear, because Blizzard seems more interested in harassing those who use maphack or a pindlebot. They feign a desire to keep people from cheating, but the most rampant cheaters remain totally unpunished. These people ruin the closed battle.net economy, and by doing so take a good deal of enjoyment out of the game for a large majority of users. No d2 player likes having to fork over extra stuff just because they want an unid'd item so it doesn't get deleted on them. Unfortunately, because of Blizzard's totally lax stance on the real problem this is the way the d2 economy works.

I really love d2, but if Blizzard keeps going after small frys instead of the big cheaters I'm just going to toss my copy of d2, and I certainly won't be looking to buy/play any other Blizzard games.

Re:Going after the wrong people..

[rhuntley12]

Cheating is cheating, it's too bad a small time cheat instead of a big time cheat got busted, but you were still cheating. ANYBODY cheating ruins the game for others.

Re:Going after the wrong people..

[OldMiner]

I play Diablo 2 and I lost an account for 'botting.'

So you cheat, as defined by the game's creators.

a dupe/hack problem that has been rampant in d2 for *years*

But you don't cheat in that way? What gives? Doesn't seem like you have an issue with playing the game on your own terms. Why don't you dupe if it's such a long standing issue that's simply not punished?

Re:Going after the wrong people..

[Apreche]

man I played Diablo 2, 4 years ago, when it first came out. It didn't take me more than 2 or 3 times on the battle.net to realize that it was crap. Let's spend all day clicking on monsters, then they die, then I click on monsters, and then they die. Pretty frickin' boring if you ask me. Not much game there. Hell I could write a program where stuff appears, you click on it, and then it dies. It's not much of a game.

But as for cheating, all cheaters of all sorts need to be banned. I'd go so far as to say game companies should share cheater information. Gamers usually play more than one game, and someone who cheats at CS probably cheats at WC3. There should be an international video game cheater black list.

You might say, that's not fair! They paid for the game, if they want to play it that way, let them. Well here's the thing. If you cheat at say a 1 player game, you're only hurting yourself. I will lose a lot of respect for your gaming skills, but it's not hurting me so I don't care. In multiplayer online games when you cheat you hurt the community and others. If 20 guys are playing CS and one of them has the aimbot the game is ruined. Now one team has a serious advantage and the game is no longer fun. If no admin is around the cheater will continue. The only choice is to quit playing. When you're a game company and 19 people quit playing because of 1, well the numbers speak for themselves. Ban the 1, keep the 19.

If ever I take part in creating or running an online type game I will have the harshest penalties on cheaters. Especially if it is a game that costs money. I think a great idea would be to put a clause in the EULA. Confirmed cheaters will be permanently banned with no second chances. They will also be required to pay a fine of $X. Make this policy well known and I guarantee a huge decrease in cheating. Especially if you make use of it fairly often. Heck, the money from catching the cheaters could pay the salaries of 1 or 2 guys who can spend all day catching them.

Man, I could talk all day about cheaters. Pretty much all there is to it is that if you cheat at video games in any way shape or form you suck ass. Be ashamed, your video game skills are so weak that you depend on something else to do the game for you. I'll tell you what, next time you buy a game and you just cheat and have the computer beat it for you, call me. I'll take the game beat it for you and give it back. I'll save 50 bucks and you'll save yourself some embarassment.

Why Blizzard is scum

[0x0d0a]

See, some folks *want* to run a damned bot. They aren't really interested in spending their life poking around doing the janitorial portions of the game, building up. They're interested in the more exciting portions of the game.

Some games recognize this (Open Source and community-driven games are particularly good here) and try to minimize the amount of drudge work a player must do, if he so desires. MUD clients contain triggers. The roguelikes derived from Moria contain the Borg, a built-in-bot and a large number of automation features.

Now, it's entirely understandable that Blizzard wants to provide an option to allow players to play with other players who are under some constraint (not use use bots, or what have you). The other players want level footing without using a bot, and they should be provided with such an opportunity. However, Blizzard enters the arena of being reprehensible when they *also* try squashing bnetd, so that the people that purchase a copy of Diablo 2 cannot go elsewhere and play their game in such a manner as *they* would like to do.

Plus, I hold a firm conviction dating back to the Starcraft/Total Annihilation days that Blizzard is a wonderful marketer, yet mediocre developer.

Re:Why Blizzard is scum

[Edgewize]

See, some folks *want* to run a damned bot. They aren't really interested in spending their life poking around doing the janitorial portions of the game, building up. They're interested in the more exciting portions of the game.

Everybody understands that, when you're in somebody's house, you play by their rules or you're not welcome to play at all.

Well, when you're playing on Blizzard's Closed Battle.Net servers, you're in their house. If you don't like their rules, then you can play Diablo II off-line. You can play it on a LAN. You can play on Open Battle.Net. Nobody cares what you do in private company.

But you DAMN WELL better play by the rules if you're going to play it on Closed Battle.Net. Blizzard has every right to throw you out and ban your CD-KEY.

Some games recognize this (Open Source and community-driven games are particularly good here) and try to minimize the amount of drudge work a player must do, if he so desires.

Will you please tell me what the hell is left when you take out the point-and-click from Diablo II? Isn't the whole levelling process the point of the game?

Blizzard enters the arena of being reprehensible when they *also* try squashing bnetd, so that the people that purchase a copy of Diablo 2 cannot go elsewhere and play their game in such a manner as *they* would like to do.

Way to confuse the issue. Last time I checked, you didn't need a Battle.Net clone to start a TCP/IP game. If you want to play the game by your own rules, find a forum somewhere and list your game IPs.

Preferred servers

[bhima]

The way I see it, these people have paid to cheat or run bots or whatever, but I don't want to play with them at all. So it seems to me (bandwidth issues aside) it would be a better solution to dump all of the known cheaters into their own server as they are identified leaving the folks that don't cheat to play in peace. Probably the servers for the cheaters would become overloaded but hey it's a small price to pay in order to use the game in an unintended way.

from the do-we-really-need-subjects? dept.

[InsaneCreator]

Blizzard Removes 400,000 More Battle.Net Accounts

Now that's what I call bad weather!

Re:Sounds like...

[doubleyewdee]

Thing is, I'm not saying that it was unfair. All I'm saying is that Blizzard is going after the jaywalkers and letting the grand larsonists go free. They have every right to drop my accounts with or without cause. Hell, they can do whatever they want with their games and company. However, I am also free to comment on the sudden decline in quality that Blizzard is showing. My comment was simply that Blizzard is not being at all even-handed in their distribution of punishment, and that this shows the decline in quality of the products the company claims to support.

As far as good ethics.. Blizzard has shown a distinct lack of ethics in effectively lying about their stance on "cheating." The only "cheating" they care about is any activity which might cost them some money. They're entited to feel that way, but ethically speaking they should come out and admit that they don't care about people cheating as long as the cheaters don't add any load to their servers. When Blizzard shows me good ethics, I will be more than happy to exercise good ethics in my dealings with them. For a long time I was a religiously ethical Diablo 2 player. Then I learned that Blizzard just didn't care, and that anyone who didn't help themselves was going to be screwed as far as playing/enjoying the game, because Blizzard didn't have any interest in fixing what was wrong or even letting anyone else fix it either (bnetd). So until the time comes (if it ever does) that Blizzard is either honest with their customers about their motives, or their motives change, I will do what I can to continue enjoying the product I paid for, even if Blizzard doesn't care for it.

Good to See

[vjmurphy]

Always good to see Blizzard close the old barn door after the cows have gotten out, killed the local population, ran back to the barn to party, and left the barn again to poop.

Really, though, Blizzard really needs to tighten security on Battle.Net: I know I won't be buying their online game, knowing their record on security.

Re:Diablo 2 and cheating

[akiaki007]

Personally, I've ran the maphack while playing Diablo2 and I don't exactly feel bad about it. I don't do PVP at all, so no players are being cheated; just PVM, and we all know how mindless D2 monsters are. Quite frankly, I'd be hard pressed to classify the maphack as a cheat

Just because you don't call it cheating doesn't mean it's not cheating. By the rules, IT IS CHEATING. You can't decide what the rules of the game are. If you create it, then you get to decide. Since you didn't you either do what they say, or you're a cheater. There is NO grey area here.

Since D2 is a game that involves very little skill just a lot of mouse clicking, there is little lost; you are playing in the same 4 (or 5) areas over and over again, fighting the same exact monsters.

Then don't play.

Maphack actually increased my enjoyment because I didn't have to spend as much time playing the areas I do not like since I could navigate out of them quicker.

So because you cheated and got to the final goal quicker, it made the game more fun. Well, because someone else cheated and got the coolest items in the game, they had more fun. What's the difference? It's still *cheating.* Stop pretending you're better than all the other cheaters. Just because you do it at a lower level doesn't make you any better.

A thief that robs a bank or steals from a grocery store is still a thief.

Only one real reason they did this.

[Neck_of_the_Woods]

They have a MMPOG coming out soon. They did not thing about this kind of shit for 2 years.

MMPOGS as in DOAC/SWG/EQ don't handle a little hack as well as something like Diablo/warcraft/starcraft. Blizzard has always had the out of "free service" we do the best we can.

They will charge for Worlds of Warcraft. They need to show "we are serious" about cheating. LOOK what we did! It cost them nothing and was a great PR move. Even if it was 2 years late, mark my words you will see it in print to prop up the hipe on WOW.

They did not do it to stop cheaters in Diablo/war-starcraft. They did it to sell there new game because they know people in that area of gaming will not live with it, they will leave. Unlike the people that play currently on BNET. No one pays to play in a hacked world....

Re:Once again

[Xenothaulus]

I have specific individuals in mind, who have actually bragged about exploiting on the boards, and the devs have done nothing about it. As you're obviously a subscriber, you probably know the people I'm talking about, or at least some of them. My actual point was that Blizzard's support record, (tech, customer or otherwise), is much better than SOE/Verant.