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.

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?

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?

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.