Blizzard Attacks StarCraft II Cheat Developers

[Iscin]

**snip**

Seems like you're saying Blizzard is being greedy. Is it greedy to go after people who make money off of something you created that are committing a form of plagarism?
This is something Blizzard has done before, even previous to the merger with Activision. (see one of my previous posts involving bnetd). Blizzard seems to care very much about reverse engineering of their games and use of 3rd party programs to enhance or change the gameplay. The fact that they're applying it to single-player is only due to the single-player experience affecting multiplayer. Whether or not the effects are "game-breaking" they still affect the mp experience thus giving single-player cheaters an advantage over non-cheating players. Even if it is just "portraits" or other goodies, it still is changing the game to give themselves an advantage.
Note also that "evil" Blizzard actually promotes game addons for WoW as long as they aren't game breaking.

Did I ever call Blizzard evil? I believe I used the word greed once, that is all. I understand the situation well enough friend, but I am considering this lawsuit combined with the permanent bans and general aggressive stance Blizzard has taken here. In my view, as a single individual and not a big corporation, Blizzard appear to have gone a bit too gun-ho in this.

If you disagree that is fine, but I do NOT believe Blizzard is evil, nor that they are any more greedy than any other company that has to meet the demands of their investors. I just think that this is going too far, and regardless of how legally righteous Blizzard are, it is still the paying customers more than anyone else who are suffering from this. Don't forget that all the people (and you know that there are plenty) who pirated Starcraft 2 and use trainers and whatever the heck they want are going on just peachy with no lawsuits trying to take down torrent sites this time.

Having said all of that, I do expect Blizzard to do things and personally I believe temporary (14 days?) bans and contacting the programmers (as they already did) should have been sufficient at this stage. However the company has now set loose the dogs of lawsuits and frankly that is ridiculous overkill this early on in my humble opinion.

 

[Littlee300]

Activision is throwing around their weight too much, they're turning into bullies and what we must ask is how long before they start targeting innocent people.

How did you get out of the basement? Get back down there and don't come back up until you brought you're rationality!
_____________________________________________________________
If the player disables the achievement things he should be allowed to cheat. So Blizzard should stop using the greedy approach and use the friendly approach.

If someone buys a game than it shouldn't matter if they cheat in single player,.

The weird thing is that Blizzard actually MAKES cheats for single player.
Here is a like for proof of my crazy claim
http://www.mahalo.com/starcraft-2-wings-of-liberty-cheats

 

[Reveras]

They did the right thing, anyone actually doubting that is ignorant and/or one of the many cheaters that can't even beat SC1's campaign without using cheat codes.

 

[Jorias]

I think Blizzard not only has the right, but also the duty to snuff out these people. Any good programmer will tell you, that messing with someone else's code without permission is really taboo. I mean if left unchecked, these people can start hiding key loggers and whatnot in cheat programs they develope, i can't count the number of times ive tried helping my friends secure their computer, and they tell me "oh hey look at this neat little cheat thing i downloaded for WoW"....

 

[Pebkac]

How do you guys know all the banned single-player cheaters used the cheats just for the achievements and leaderboard status? Maybe they suck at finding cheats as much as they suck at the actual games, or that the built-in cheats didn't meet their needs.

If the game in fact becomes unusable, even for playing single-player, then banning users for single-player cheating seems pretty extreme.

The lawsuits against cheat creators will be interesting - if it goes anywhere. For what it's worth, these lawsuits sometimes go somewhere.

Recently, a Canadian Facebook spammer/password-harvester got his ~$1 billion fine upheld in Canadian court:

http://www.techspot.com/news/40553-facebook-spammer-fined-1-billion-for-over-4-million-posts.html

To these hackers video games are their life. They're their job security is similar to drug dealers that get money off people for their next fix. While a video game doesn't seem like a big deal for you let's put this in perspective. A Starcraft tourny player a prestigious one makes most of his money off of his skills. he goes to tournaments both local and international to make enough money to make ends meet. However some tournaments are reputation only. If this guy gets destroyed by a cheater he could have very well ruined this honorable player's life as well at least for a little while. There is no excuse for doing something that you already know is against the law it wasn't like this law popped up yesterday. I hope Blizzard dicks them something good!

P.S Activision could take a lesson from blizzard considering they're merged (Fucking mw2 modders with your wall hacks!)

Hahahahahaha. This is a joke, right?

 

[linwolf]

Activision is throwing around their weight too much, they're turning into bullies and what we must ask is how long before they start targeting innocent people.

How did you get out of the basement? Get back down there and don't come back up until you brought you're rationality!
_____________________________________________________________
If the player disables the achievement things he should be allowed to cheat. So Blizzard should stop using the greedy approach and use the friendly approach.

If someone buys a game than it shouldn't matter if they cheat in single player,.

The weird thing is that Blizzard actually MAKES cheats for single player.
Here is a like for proof of my crazy claim
http://www.mahalo.com/starcraft-2-wings-of-liberty-cheats

And if you wishes to do something that are not on that list?

 

[Nailz]

"Blizzard recently made headlines for banning StarCraft II players that used third-party cheat modifications in single-player games."

They are suing people who made single player cheats ? This I think is fucked up. Multiplayer cheats are fair enough for a ban. But just ban them. If its an issue with "points" then take away points. This is why there are moderators. To sue someone who makes mods. Are you crazy? This sets the worst precedent for anything ever. This is super dangerous and scary.

This article smells pretty damn biased too.

Why is this now an issue? Remember wc3? Maphacks would only be banable in ranked matches. The mod community itself dealt with the problem, creating in game mechanisms to boot hackers.

Suing people who made single player hacks is not the blizzard I know and frankly I'm glad I haven't bought anything blizzard since the first wow expansion. Every new thing I hear is pretty much indicative of the company's once positive and expansive game philosophy being corrupted and flushed down the shitter.

R.I.P Blizzard, I hope someone brings the holy water to deal with this freak Activision-Blizzard zombie that has risen from your once sacred carcass.

Edit: You want to deal with the leaderboard problem? Make ranked single player required to authenticate through battle net, moderate that, and have a non ranked single player option. To tie the single player irreversibly to the multiplayer... what a stupid fucking thing to do.

 

[Littlee300]

Activision is throwing around their weight too much, they're turning into bullies and what we must ask is how long before they start targeting innocent people.

How did you get out of the basement? Get back down there and don't come back up until you brought you're rationality!
_____________________________________________________________
If the player disables the achievement things he should be allowed to cheat. So Blizzard should stop using the greedy approach and use the friendly approach.

If someone buys a game than it shouldn't matter if they cheat in single player,.

The weird thing is that Blizzard actually MAKES cheats for single player.
Here is a like for proof of my crazy claim
http://www.mahalo.com/starcraft-2-wings-of-liberty-cheats

And if you wishes to do something that are not on that list?

Like what?

 

[llafnwod]

Permy was "summarily destroyed"? Christ, I'll go tell him.

 

[Elhueno]

Can someone please accurately specify whether these cheats are singleplayer/multiplayer and payware/usuall freebie?

It matters really.

The lawsuits deal with trainers and hooks created by 3rd party developers and then sold to players. The nature of them means that while they are intended for single player, they can also be used in multiplayer.

What really annoys me in all of this, is all the hate on blizzard suddenly and the thought that its because of activision. Thats stupid. Anyone remember WoW Glider? Anyone remember the massive lawsuit that blizzard leveled at that guy? that was before activision.

Another thing, these are not the cheat codes of Age of Empires etc. Its hacks and memory editors that change values in the game, using external programs. Not simply hitting enter and typing a code.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

**snip**

Apologies are in order here for not parsing out enough the last statement as it wasn't directed at you but to the people jumping Blizzard for protecting their interests and comparing this to other forms of modding. I'm not on my own computer atm, and it keeps screwing with my posts so I have to copy/paste a lot and some things have been getting lost (edits mostly).

On the other side, I think this is Blizz putting its proverbial foot down and saying "Ok, you aren't listening to us. We've done this before, we've warned you." or "(We're) mad as hell and we're not going to take this anymore."
Pirates are harder to go after, but I'm sure if Blizz were able to find out just who pirated their games, they'd most likely go after them too. And I'd support them fully on that. I don't believe in pirating.

 

[NLS]

Whoever is dick enough to try and make money out fo selling cheats deserves what he gets.

 

[just ban me]

this is what you call a company protecting their product they are trying to sell.These companies are in this for money in the end, don't forget this

 

[Pebkac]

Activision is throwing around their weight too much, they're turning into bullies and what we must ask is how long before they start targeting innocent people.

How did you get out of the basement? Get back down there and don't come back up until you brought you're rationality!
_____________________________________________________________
If the player disables the achievement things he should be allowed to cheat. So Blizzard should stop using the greedy approach and use the friendly approach.

If someone buys a game than it shouldn't matter if they cheat in single player,.

The weird thing is that Blizzard actually MAKES cheats for single player.
Here is a like for proof of my crazy claim
http://www.mahalo.com/starcraft-2-wings-of-liberty-cheats

And if you wishes to do something that are not on that list?

Like what?

Back in the Diablo 1 days, there was a lot of talk about cheaters being able to turn into cows and shoot arrows out of their asses. There's quite a lot that cheater might want to do.

The first Diablo had a lot of cheating used simply to grief other players. I'm not just talking about killing a player (or rez-killing), but causing them to lose all their gear.

I really don't care what players do with their copy of the game, as long as it's offline.

 

[Dogstile]

Uh, what? Why is this a bad thing?

Because blizzard are going after single player cheat engine makers too. They connected single player to online so they can say the cheats affect the "online experience" when really, its people being able to cheat and get achievements for it.

In other words, big whoop, we can get achi- WHY ARE YOU SUING ME FOR A COUPLE MILLION BLIZZARD?

 

[sb666]

i didnt know they could do that

 

[Royas]

I'm not really understanding how Blizzard has any justification suing a programmer for making hacks for Starcraft, single or multi player. The only way I can see it being justified is if they are charging for these hacks, then maybe, just maybe, Blizzard has a leg to stand on. This isn't like the WoW lawsuits, where you are dealing with hacking a paid service and the like (although I still find the decision against Glide to be more than a little questionable. All right, I find it outrageously stupid), this is a single player/multi player game that people aren't paying anything to access beyond the purchase of the initial game.

Go after the cheaters in multi-player, sure. But the programmers.... I don't see this having good results.

 

[Magnalian]

Okay, so Blizzard, and Ubisoft games are off my list. Activision? Still undecided...

I can see now why Valve gets so much love.

Blizzard is off your list for... giving a fiscal middle finger to multiplayer cheaters?

Huh.

Oh noes, I should be able to pirate, hack, and do whatever I want to any game with no consequences!

They must be ebil to stop me!

/sarcasm

Seriously, pirate, cheat, and hack at your own risk, it's against the EULA, ToS and by tenuous extension, the law. So don't cry if you get caught and punished.

Still, Blizzard is surprisingly ferocious with cheaters. Not that I mind. Hell, I don't even play Starcraft.

 

[Iscin]

**snip**

Apologies are in order here for not parsing out enough the last statement as it wasn't directed at you but to the people jumping Blizzard for protecting their interests and comparing this to other forms of modding.

Might I remind you of what our Yahtzee once said about fanboys defending companies: They don't care.

I think customers should be as critical of these companies as we can be. I for one bought my copy of Starcraft 2 and as it turns out (shockingly, right) I was one of the people who messed around with a trainer in skirmish. As it so happens I have not been banned, but then I wasn't active when this banning was going off (I took almost a two month break from Starcraft 2). This, to me anyway, suggests that Blizzard are targeting active (maybe even addicted?) players who are likely going to buy the game a second time when they get permabanned.

So maybe now you can understand why I for one am being so critical of Blizzard. Let me explain my personal ethics a little: trainers and even pirating I support on certain levels like in single player messing around and judging a game before you actually invest in buying it. However I am also against any form of cheating in games and pirating game indefinitely whilst never giving back to the creators.

So for all of those players Blizzard banned for trying to cheat in multi? Good on 'em! However this overblown religious pursuit of hammering down on users and programmers who didn't steal anything? Well... a bit unbalanced there. So frankly, bad Blizzard! Bad boy! And put that EULA down, it probably has diseases or something!

Lighten up and join the anti-corporations wagon, because no one else will tell them to bugger off with EULAs, lawsuits, DRM, overpriced DLC and shameless sequels. And remember: Vote with your wallet.