Blizzard Cracks Down With Battle.net Ban

[Nathan Meunier]

Blizzard Cracks Down With Battle.net Ban

Apparently, not only are people actually still playing StarCraft and Diablo II, they're cheating to boot! Well, not anymore.


As part of an ongoing effort to keep online matches of its games held on purged [www.battle.net] a massive swath of cheaters from its midst this week. Over 350,000 accounts for StarCraft and Diablo II were shut down, after they were found to be using third-party hacks. That's a lot of cheaters.

"As a reminder, we reserve the right to close the accounts and ban the CD keys of players who are caught cheating on Battle.net," Blizzard noted in a ban policy update for the two titles posted on Blizzard.net Tuesday. "Cheating ruins the game experience for legitimate players, and we will not tolerate it."

The offending users in Diablo II will have the CD keys associated with their accounts restricted from Battle.net for about 30 days. Blizzard plans to shut out repeat offenders permanently.

Diablo II [http://www.blizzard.com/us/starcraft/] is not far behind. Both titles were mega hits and terrific games in their heyday, and both are now showing their age. Call me naïve, but it's a bit surprising to hear so many players are still logging on to Battle.net to duke it out at some of the oldies. Perhaps the impending yet distant releases of StarCraft II and Diablo III have reignited old flames. Either that or some PC gamers continue to forsake the advent of burgeoning technology.

Just for chuckles, take a gander at StarCraft's system requirements:

Windows 95/98/NT 4.0
Pentium 90 or higher
16MB RAM
SVGA Video Card
Microsoft-compatible Mouse
50 MB free HD pace
DirectX 2.0 or higher




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[Milkman Dan]

Maybe they just like playing a fun, well-designed game. There aren't as many of those as you might think, especially when you look at the stinkers that get released these days.

 

[milomalo]

i still play diabloII and starcraft...¬¬ and ok cheating its bad, but a 30 days ban seems a lot to me.

 

[Calamity]

You would be surprised how many still log on battle.net to play a few games of the Blizzard oldies.
It was very common in my WoW guild whenever a group of us wanted to do something different for a while.

 

[Baby Tea]

Isn't is kind of funny that PALM devices have better system specs then Starcraft requires? I wonder if anyone has made a port...

*Searches*

Naah, just a tech demo. Too bad. Oh well, I bet it'll happen someday.

 

[Dele]

i still play diabloII and starcraft...¬¬ and ok cheating its bad, but a 30 days ban seems a lot to me.

Diablo II is built around cheaters so banning them is just for the show. It would be mathematically impossible to gain some of the top tier stuff if it wasnt for cheaters hell they even built SoJ/Torch system around cheaters selling duped items so community gets an useful super charm everytime enough SoJ get sold on certain IP.

 

[ffxfriek]

I play starcraft still that game owns

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

i still play diabloII and starcraft...¬¬ and ok cheating its bad, but a 30 days ban seems a lot to me.

Same here, but I don't think it's harsh enough. Character deletion imho.

 

[Aries_Split]

i still play diabloII and starcraft...¬¬ and ok cheating its bad, but a 30 days ban seems a lot to me.

Same here, but I don't think it's harsh enough. Character deletion imho.

They should put a fine in there.

CHILD:Blizzard, why are we going bankrupt?
BLIZZ:Cause you cheated as our game! We charged your credit card 20 times the limit. Read the ToS next time biotch.
CHILD:WAAAH

 

[Zer_]

I still have StarCraft installed.

 

[milomalo]

i still play diabloII and starcraft...¬¬ and ok cheating its bad, but a 30 days ban seems a lot to me.

Same here, but I don't think it's harsh enough. Character deletion imho.

funny 30 days ban seems a lot to me but the character deletion i think is a good choice for punishment because whit the ban... you can still play but the character build whit cheats and being keep imo is still cheat.

 

[Amnestic]

16MB RAM

I giggled slightly.

 

[Emperor Inferno]

I like this, it's good that Blizzard wants to keep gaming fair and fun. And people still play them because those of us who do are of the opinion that despite all modern advances in gaming, they (Diablo II for me) are still some of the most fun games there are. A truly great game like Diablo II never gets old, and apparently Starcraft fans feel the same way.

 

[Cousin_IT]

I wish games today had spec requirements like that. Im scared to load alot of new games incase they leave me feeling emasculated by saying my PC is too crap to handle them :-(

 

[Imitation Saccharin]

I giggled slightly.

Unrelated to what he quoted. A caterpillar just walked across Amnestic's hand.

 

[Dectilon]

People still play chess? Hah, noobs! Get on the technology train, losers : P

At least this is less ambiguous than "we might ban you if we don't like you". Kids who use hacks generally are assholes too, so I can't really feel sorry for them : )

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

16MB RAM

I giggled slightly.

Shush..I was brought up with 16K RAM.

 

[Greyhawk]

16MB RAM

I giggled slightly.

Shush..I was brought up with 16K RAM.

Back in the days of 5.25 drives and handset modems. When the pasty faced and socially withdrawn delved in the depths of Zork by the light of green phosphorus screens. When 1Mhz was an obscene speed and a single chip of RAM sold for more than a human kidney in Bangkok.

Good times, man... Good times.

 

[Amnestic]

I giggled slightly.

Unrelated to what he quoted. A caterpillar just walked across Amnestic's hand.

If only.