Linux Users Accuse Blizzard of Unfair Bans

[DancePuppets]

So they tried to run Diablo III on a computer that didn't meet the system requirements (by virtue of not using a supported OS) and then try to act like it's Blizzards fault when it doesn't run?

Umm, how did you get to that conclusion? That is way far off from what happened.

Well I think the point is that those who are playing Diablo III on Linux are playing it on a system that is not officially supported and doesn't meet the printed system requirements, as such there is no reason for Blizzard to care whether it works or doesn't. In this case (according to Blizzard) those banned have been caught cheating; however, even if it were to turn out that they weren't they wouldn't be entitled to a refund as the game doesn't claim to work on their system.

 

[Aeshi]

Well I think the point is that those who are playing Diablo III on Linux are playing it on a system that is not officially supported and doesn't meet the printed system requirements, as such there is no reason for Blizzard to care whether it works or doesn't. In this case (according to Blizzard) those banned have been caught cheating; however, even if it were to turn out that they weren't they wouldn't be entitled to a refund as the game doesn't claim to work on their system.

This is what I meant, more-or-less.
.

Roll on the tedious and predictable I HATE BLIZZ AND DIABLO3 SUCKS posts. yawn.

And a flood of "Gee, I'm glad I didn't buy this game'

Don't forget the 'So glad I bought/am buying [generic Diablo II Clone]' mudslide!

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

So they tried to run Diablo III on a computer that didn't meet the system requirements (by virtue of not using a supported OS) and then try to act like it's Blizzards fault when it doesn't run?

Well I think the point is that those who are playing Diablo III on Linux are playing it on a system that is not officially supported and doesn't meet the printed system requirements, as such there is no reason for Blizzard to care whether it works or doesn't. In this case (according to Blizzard) those banned have been caught cheating; however, even if it were to turn out that they weren't they wouldn't be entitled to a refund as the game doesn't claim to work on their system.

"Not supported" doesn't mean "ban your ass". It just means not supported. They may not be entitled to a refund, but they certainly wouldn't deserve to have their account banned. I can't help but feel Blizzard is serious when it says everyone who was banned was a cheater, but I've learned not to take companies at their word about things like that. Asking "why would they lie?" gets you into trouble too often. So I will never be 100% sure.

 

[DancePuppets]

So they tried to run Diablo III on a computer that didn't meet the system requirements (by virtue of not using a supported OS) and then try to act like it's Blizzards fault when it doesn't run?

Well I think the point is that those who are playing Diablo III on Linux are playing it on a system that is not officially supported and doesn't meet the printed system requirements, as such there is no reason for Blizzard to care whether it works or doesn't. In this case (according to Blizzard) those banned have been caught cheating; however, even if it were to turn out that they weren't they wouldn't be entitled to a refund as the game doesn't claim to work on their system.

"Not supported" doesn't mean "ban your ass". It just means not supported. They may not be entitled to a refund, but they certainly wouldn't deserve to have their account banned. I can't help but feel Blizzard is serious when it says everyone who was banned was a cheater, but I've learned not to take companies at their word about things like that. Asking "why would they lie?" gets you into trouble too often. So I will never be 100% sure.

However, if the reason they're being caught for cheating is because Blizzard's anti-cheat software has difficulty with Linux machines then Blizzard is under no obligation to sort it out as you don't meet the system requirements on the box.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Blizzard could have avoided a lot of its problems by allowing you to create and online character and an offline character.

The offline character could be modded and cheated as much as you wanted, while the online character would have access to all the online features.

Banning people from playing a game that they play themselves without a refund is unacceptable.

I love how you completely make-up a false scenario just so you can have an excuse to bash on Blizzard. Unless you spoke to every one of the Linux users who were banned, you have no fucking idea how they were playing the game.

And that too.
Even if you get caught speeding drunk they don't take your car. You might lose the licence to use it in public but what you do with it on your private land is your own damn thing.

Here, watch this:

Even if you get caught cheating on B.net, they don't take your PC. You might lose the license to use it on B.net, but what you do with it on the rest of the internet is your own damn thing.

So... yeah. Moral of the story? Don't drink and Diablo. Erm... wait... I think I got something mixed-up in there...

 

[Gennadios]

Moral of the story, don't buy Diablo III if you plan on using unsupported system specs. Or if you don't like the always on DRM. Or if you don't like Blizz in general.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

Blizzard could have avoided a lot of its problems by allowing you to create and online character and an offline character.

The offline character could be modded and cheated as much as you wanted, while the online character would have access to all the online features.

Banning people from playing a game that they play themselves without a refund is unacceptable.

I love how you completely make-up a false scenario just so you can have an excuse to bash on Blizzard. Unless you spoke to every one of the Linux users who were banned, you have no fucking idea how they were playing the game.

And that too.
Even if you get caught speeding drunk they don't take your car. You might lose the licence to use it in public but what you do with it on your private land is your own damn thing.

Here, watch this:

Even if you get caught cheating on B.net, they don't take your PC. You might lose the license to use it on B.net, but what you do with it on the rest of the internet is your own damn thing.

So... yeah. Moral of the story? Don't drink and Diablo. Erm... wait... I think I got something mixed-up in there...

I am simply saying that by adding an offline single player feature that is completely independent of online features then everyone would be happy. People could cheat to thier hearts content, servers would not get overloaded and those who are running Linux could play the game without fault (If their is in fact a problem with Wine and the bans did not come from cheating)

 

[Atmos Duality]

Oh, Blizzard, Blizzard...

You may be able to spit in the faces of your Mac/Windows costumers, but beware. YOU DO NOT MESS WITH LINUX USERS!! EVER!! They will find you and they will DDOSs the crap out of your severs.

It's a good thing we're a rare breed then.
Because I've seen the amount of damage some pissed off Linux users can do.
*glares at Sony and last year's PSN debacle*

 

[direkiller]

I am going to have to side with Blizzard on this one. Naturally there are going to be cheaters regardless of what OS they run. If this was a sudden mass ban on everyone running Linux then it would appear to be a error. But the fact is others are currently playing still without a problem shows it isn't false flagging them for that reason.

So they tried to run Diablo III on a computer that didn't meet the system requirements (by virtue of not using a supported OS) and then try to act like it's Blizzards fault when it doesn't run?

Umm, how did you get to that conclusion? That is way far off from what happened.

People will claim anything to avoid being banned, there's an entire website dedicated to collecting e-mails sent to xbox LIVE staff in attempts to be un-banned. http://whywasibanned.com/
It's about 70 pages of people who don't know that the XBLPET team have files on why their accounts were banned,

Isn't this a possible violation of the privacy policy they have? Perhaps against the law as well, a company does not have the legal rights to just go and show anyone without good reason about any information regarding their clients unless given consent by the client. I really doubt Microsoft has hidden in the terms of agreement that any message sent to staff can be shared openly online.

no it cannot violate privacy policy as they are all messages from the public forms.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

From my expirience: Consumers lie about 200 times more often than companies. They lie at every chance they can get, even if they are totally wrong. Why? Because they think "I am consumer so I am king and can do what I want". Companies on the other side rather tend not to tell the whole story.

May I also quote from the news: "A number of Wine users have since spoken up to confirm that they're still playing without impediment"

So yeah, I'd go that far to simply say: Those guys were cheater and try to lie their asses out on basis of a gullable community who take every straw to shit on Blizz. Seen this way too often back then in WoW (was a active community poster in the GM part to help people with small problems due to day-long waiting times. Did it mostly for the laughs when the not-so-rare cases of lieing assholes appeared and got told by the blues with details what they did and why they got the ban / item taken / character renamed.

That's why my gut feeling is Blizzard is telling the truth. I just have no basis for certainty. If Blizzard cannot prove it for practical reasons fine, it will remain unproven.

However, if the reason they're being caught for cheating is because Blizzard's anti-cheat software has difficulty with Linux machines then Blizzard is under no obligation to sort it out as you don't meet the system requirements on the box.

Of course they are. "Not supported" means it doesn't work on your machine. It doesn't mean your account gets banned. Suppose they start playing on Windows, leaving their account banned would be a really shitty thing to do. If I get banned because Blizzard's anti-cheat doesn't like the cut of my jib I hope they would fix it.

 

[ivc392]

It's a good thing we're a rare breed then.
Because I've seen the amount of damage some pissed off Linux users can do.
*glares at Sony and last year's PSN debacle*

Yep, I don't usually use Linux for gaming, but I'm having a hard time figuring out why the hell didn't Blizzard release D3 port for Linux. I mean, there is a Mac version for Christ sake.
At some point Blizzard is going to piss off the wrong people and their servers (and paying customers) are going to suffer for it.

 

[Starke]

I'd love to see then screw this "privacy for our users" with the banned ones. There surely is some tasty data proving the cheating.

It's more likely they don't want to give away how they're catching the cheating that is happening. If they say how they're catching the cheaters, the rest can adapt their methods. This is also a large part of the reason they don't ban people as soon as they have verification, and prefer to use mass ban waves - so you can't correlate your activities with what is getting you caught as easily.

"Protecting" user privacy doesn't quite stretch far enough to cover "These users were cheating via X method, and here's the anonymized proof/logs".

Here's the element of this that's bugging me, though. The unwillingness to say "this is what they were doing" suggests that they cannot prevent cheating in that venue, and this isn't like codebreaking in intelligence, actual cheaters who are banned can report to one another that they were banned. So if a cheat is no longer undetectable, then that information will be distributed back to the community.

Now, I'm not a software security expert, but if there's a vulnerability they can't address, why the hell would I give these idiots money for a game I can only play when they feel like letting me?

 

[beef623]

I saw another article on this this morning and read through the forum posts where it began. It sounds like there were only 3 or 4 people that were actually banned. Whether or not they were actually cheating is between them and blizzard, but it looks like they were just butthurt about being banned and trolled the right places to make people go nuts over it.

 

[Strazdas]

This story is not new. You cheat. you get caught. You try making up any escuse you can think off to get unbanned because "it wasnt my fault" always has to work.
In this case, your attacking a touchy topic for people, and thus the drama.

In any way system requirements said windows so you cant complain to begin with.

Here's the element of this that's bugging me, though. The unwillingness to say "this is what they were doing" suggests that they cannot prevent cheating in that venue, and this isn't like codebreaking in intelligence, actual cheaters who are banned can report to one another that they were banned. So if a cheat is no longer undetectable, then that information will be distributed back to the community.

however if the cheat community does not know the method Blizzard uses it is far harder to become undetectable again than if they knew how they got caught. trust me, i been part of a bot community for a certain mmo for years and we been fighting detection all the time. and the worst part is you dont know how they detect it so you have to go though everything every time.

 

[Charli]

Yeah I call bullshit on the whiners on this one, as much as I dislike D3 at the moment, It was running fine on my little try-out of Linux + Wine.

This is just some people who obviously made a bit of money with the RMAH with cheating and now are crying because they can't claim it and have a questionable vantage point in which to yell foul.

All 3 of Blizzards franchises work fine, If D3 is using the same cheat capture system as WoW then all the kinks were worked out a while back. The last issue of Linux clashing with anything Blizzard related was ... a good few years ago.

 

[Petromir]

I'd love to see then screw this "privacy for our users" with the banned ones. There surely is some tasty data proving the cheating.

It's more likely they don't want to give away how they're catching the cheating that is happening. If they say how they're catching the cheaters, the rest can adapt their methods. This is also a large part of the reason they don't ban people as soon as they have verification, and prefer to use mass ban waves - so you can't correlate your activities with what is getting you caught as easily.

"Protecting" user privacy doesn't quite stretch far enough to cover "These users were cheating via X method, and here's the anonymized proof/logs".

Here's the element of this that's bugging me, though. The unwillingness to say "this is what they were doing" suggests that they cannot prevent cheating in that venue, and this isn't like codebreaking in intelligence, actual cheaters who are banned can report to one another that they were banned. So if a cheat is no longer undetectable, then that information will be distributed back to the community.

Now, I'm not a software security expert, but if there's a vulnerability they can't address, why the hell would I give these idiots money for a game I can only play when they feel like letting me?

AS has been said, if you aren't banned at the time you were doing it cam mask what methods were used to catch you. Cheaters can say they were banned to each other but the amount of useable data on what they were doing when they were dictated makes it harder to adapt. It's a bit like seeing a thief stash his goods before you catch him and instead of retrieving the stash, let him think you missed it so you can catch his accomplice later when its retrieved.


The only way to make a software system un-hackable is to seal it in a lead box with no holes or cables leading in or out and prevent all physical access to it.