Blizzard issues fatwa against Starcraft II cheaters
Virtual death for virtual dishonour
Blizzard is threatening to permanently ban Starcraft II players, found to "be cheating or using hacks or modifications in any form.
"This means that the player will be permanently unable to log in to Battle.net to play StarCraft II with his or her account,” Blizzard said yesterday.
This is hardly new news as Blizzard already has long reserved such powers in its terms of use.
But the fact that the company feels the need to wield the Big Stick in public suggests that there is a lot of cheating going on right now.
And it is quite a Big Stick, as lack of access to Battle.net means that the money you spent on buying Starcraft II has gone. The ban is game-specific: transgressors will still be able to play World of Warcraft, Blizzard told PC Gamer.
COMMENTS
Gold farmers
I wish someone would ban the gold farmers. Their Auction House market manipulation is ruining my attempts at Auction house market manipulation.... :-P
It is an interesting point.
Except with star craft 2 you don't pay for online subscription, you actually rent it with a one off payment. You certainly don't own it.
You cannot play the game at all unless logged in, which is a pain as so far I have had two days where it can't find the server because it is busy, so I can't play the game I own.
And of course during play the servers time out, lose connection so nothing is recorded.
So the game is rendered worthless because of Blizzard simply having crap servers and requiring the login. Had this been very public I wouldn't have bothered, afterall it does say interenet connection required to play, but there is no offline version so don't think of playing it on a laptop in a hotel or if BT have issues with the copper wire etc.
Dear Friend
well said marcus - hate gold farmers ...dear friend if I could just trouble you a second.
these people are no friend of mine!
Yaaaaaaaawn....
Anyone who plays WoW has heard this from Blizz before - every now and then they go all ranty and sometimes even ban a few goldsellers etc...
Ultimately, the bans (if they happen) are of little matter - Blizz want players subscription money, and this usually outweighs any moral dilemma of removing goldfarmers, cheats etc - until enough paying subscribers make enough fuss to get another of these token responses.
I believe it when (if) it happens...
Slight problem
The game will refuse to work without a B.net connection. Well, there is offline mode, but I'm not sure if that one works on an unlimited basis. IIRC, most of these type of games need the server connection to properly work!
