Poll: It's really time to stop supporting Blizzard

[Canid117]

Why would you cheat in single player? Are you really that bad at the game?

Achievements. They want online achievement and got banned......
There are build in cheat anyway (which disable achievements)

Yeah doing that means you deserve your ban.

 

[Tehlanna TPX]

You follow the rules or you pay the price.

I've been a blizzard follower since the first starcraft, I'm not going to quit supporting them now. Not even with them under the Activision umbrella.

Your loss.

 

[Exort]

I do. And it's not like they cant play on your account.

Then again I never saw anything moral about buying one copy of a game and then letting everyone you know put it on their computers.

Also, computer games have -never- been resellable. Without DRM everyone'd buy it, put it on their computers, and immediately sell the hard copy. Hell, that's what they -did- and that's why cd keys were made in the first place.

True,do you except thier to give youunlimit accounts? so you could sell them?

 

[MurderousToaster]

They shouldn't have cheated.

I love Blizzard, they're awesome.

Using external hacking programs to cheat is against the rules and they should have been aware of that when they clicked accept on the EULA and Terms and Conditions.

It's their own fault, and not Blizzard's. Blizzard was just upholding what was already stated when they signed up for the account.

 

[xxcloud417xx]

"the company claims that single player Starcraft 2 games have an effect on multiplayer. ?While single player games only appear to be you and a computer at first, your achievements and gamer score also carries weight and prestige for your online play,? read the email"

This is Bullshit I used cheats on a map and found that it blocked out achievements afterward!

Wow Blizz... This is why I'm quitting WoW at the first sign of Old Republic Online... (Valve needs to make an MMO, at least they don't seem as corrupt and money hungry as most other Devs)

I hate how they never want to hear anyone out. They seem to think that everything they do is pure gold and is best for everyone. If anyone here plays WoW and has read some of the Blue Posts for the latest patch you know what I mean. Their entire attitude is that the players don't know shit and that they are the only ones that can possibly be right about anything.

For those who haven't read the Blue Posts they go a little bit like this :

Player: "This is stupid you're nerfing tanks and healers to the ground and now Tanks can't hold aggro. Change the rotations and cooldowns please!"

Blizzard : "We understand your complaints, however the rotations we created are supposed to be flawless so you must all be doing it wrong." (aka "Fuck off you stupid shit we know what's better for you than even you do!"

 

[Loonerinoes]

Look...I'll be the first to admit that I'm peeved off by their banhammer tactics of righteousness and sickened by the endless waves of fanboy sheeps bleating to the validity of this as the only measure of justice possible. Sometimes it really *does* get as bad as the cheaters they're after. And heck, I don't plan to return to WoW either after a long time of playing, except maybe to check out Cata for 2 months.

But boycotting anything would have to be done as a result of multiple serious bad experiences as opposed to a slightly off undertone or due to motions that ultimately listened to customer feedback. So no...boycotting them is ultimately far too petty. Or to put it in another way, I can think of far many other companies than Blizzard whom I'd rather boycott than them.

 

[loremazd]

"the company claims that single player Starcraft 2 games have an effect on multiplayer. ?While single player games only appear to be you and a computer at first, your achievements and gamer score also carries weight and prestige for your online play,? read the email"

This is Bullshit I used cheats on a map and found that it blocked out achievements afterward!

Wow Blizz... This is why I'm quitting WoW at the first sign of Old Republic Online... (Valve needs to make an MMO, at least they don't seem as corrupt and money hungry as most other Devs)

I hate how they never want to hear anyone out. They seem to think that everything they do is pure gold and is best for everyone. If anyone here plays WoW and has read some of the Blue Posts for the latest patch you know what I mean. Their entire attitude is that the players don't know shit and that they are the only ones that can possibly be right about anything.

For those who haven't read the Blue Posts they go a little bit like this :

Player: "This is stupid you're nerfing tanks and healers to the ground and now Tanks can't hold aggro. Change the rotations and cooldowns please!"

Blizzard : "We understand your complaints, however the rotations we created are supposed to be flawless so you must all be doing it wrong." (aka "Fuck off you stupid shit we know what's better for you than even you do!"

That is not feedback. That is "tanks suck, change them". Despite everyone else being able to hold aggro just fine.

 

[Nautical Honors Society]

You break the rules, you get punished. Actions have consequences. When did this become such an alien concept?

This exactly.

Hmm so the decision here is between being able to cheat in single player mode and boycotting a video game super power that is responsible for creating some of the best, most popular, and beloved games of all time?

Yea I am not with you.

Blizzard has my money until they do something that truly deems the loss of my subscription.

 

[Nautical Honors Society]

"the company claims that single player Starcraft 2 games have an effect on multiplayer. ?While single player games only appear to be you and a computer at first, your achievements and gamer score also carries weight and prestige for your online play,? read the email"

This is Bullshit I used cheats on a map and found that it blocked out achievements afterward!

Wow Blizz... This is why I'm quitting WoW at the first sign of Old Republic Online... (Valve needs to make an MMO, at least they don't seem as corrupt and money hungry as most other Devs)

I hate how they never want to hear anyone out. They seem to think that everything they do is pure gold and is best for everyone. If anyone here plays WoW and has read some of the Blue Posts for the latest patch you know what I mean. Their entire attitude is that the players don't know shit and that they are the only ones that can possibly be right about anything.

For those who haven't read the Blue Posts they go a little bit like this :

Player: "This is stupid you're nerfing tanks and healers to the ground and now Tanks can't hold aggro. Change the rotations and cooldowns please!"

Blizzard : "We understand your complaints, however the rotations we created are supposed to be flawless so you must all be doing it wrong." (aka "Fuck off you stupid shit we know what's better for you than even you do!"

First of all, yea we all have hopes for Old Republic Online, but by now you have to skeptical or at least realize no MMO will kill WoW.

Second of all Blizzard does listen to their players, but a lot of wow players do not give good advice.

Finally, I can heal and hold aggro just fine...maybe it's time to look into your spec/gear/gems/rotation and stop blaming the game.

 

[Kelthurin]

http://www.cheathappens.com/article_blizzardbans.asp
I'm sure you all have seen this by now but for those of you who haven't get a look at what those bastards are trying to get away with now. I'm calling for an escapist wide boycott on everything Blizzard.

Now, WHO'S WITH ME!!!

I don't cheat. I don't even play Blizzards games anymore. This is about trying to preserve people single player freedoms. If we let them get away with this they'll just want more and more.

Inspirational speech isn't very inspirational. And you're getting fired up over something trivial. It's not about "Getting away with anything".

Blame the gamerscores and achievements. Blizzard is only swaying to the side of public opinion right now; All the gamers who actually give a toss about their gamerscores.

 

[loremazd]

DRM is there to put restrictions on you, the paying customer.

For example, if you want to play a multiplayer game against a family member in the same household, previously you could use on disc and play over LAN. Now, thanks to the new DRM each person must have their own copy and their own BNET 2.0 account.

Don't like SC2? Wanna sell it to someone else since you have no use for it? Nope, the restrictions are on you.

That's what DRM is for.

CD-key are DRM but it doesn't do what you say? Im really confused now...
Seriously, DRM is there to make pirate harder.
No you don't own the game content, because owning the game content means you have the right to distribute it, same household doesn't justify you to pirate the game. It is like renting house doesn't give you the right to re-rent the house. People are alien to that idea because they have been doing it for a long time. Selling game is basiclly a long term renting game service in term of law. It is called copyright.

Wait, so you think that each person in a household should buy their own copy of a game?

I do. And it's not like they cant play on your account.

Then again I never saw anything moral about buying one copy of a game and then letting everyone you know put it on their computers.

Also, computer games have -never- been resellable. Without DRM everyone'd buy it, put it on their computers, and immediately sell the hard copy. Hell, that's what they -did- and that's why cd keys were made in the first place.

Yes, there used to be a used PC game market.

I never said to pass it around to everyone I know, I said to install it on all the computers in my household (which is 3).

You know what, if I had bought Age III 3 times it would have cost me $330. Luckily, that wasn't necessary and I only needed to buy it once. If I had to buy it 3 times I wouldn't have bought it at all and that's $110 less than I would have spent on gaming.

Not where I lived, used pc games died in the early 90s because everyone bought the game, gave it to their friends, and sold it back to the place they got it from. It's nice that -you- would only give it to your family, but the world doesn't work on nice, self inflicted rules. In your world, sales would be low, resales would be 100 percent, and PC games would probably stop selling to retailers and only do online distribution.

 

[Exort]

So it is your belief that I am renting the game and therefore should not be able to let my GF or son play it unless I "rent" them a copy as well?

Does that work with other things? If I rent or BUY a movie can my entire family watch it or would we need to rent or BUY a copy for each member of the household?

I do hope that Bissel never finds out that we all use the same vacuum in this household. Oh no, we all use the same stove and refrigerator too.

This is all BS, why do so many gamers insist that the game industry deserves all this extra money that no other industry deserves?

This is why I didn't buy Starcraft II, the lack of LAN. I am not going to buy 3 copies of the game to play with family so therefore, I buy none at all. This nonsense doesn't help the industry.

Your refringerator doesn't have copyright (well it does but not that way)
Your movie example is a great example, but go check the agreement of your movie it should say for this household. Therefore they sell the agreement to a whole household, for private use. Therefore from legal standpoint, no you don't need sepert copy of movie for every member of the family. I hope that solve your question with Copyright, again I do understand it is a complex thing. Extra money for the industry? well, no one really stop you from give your account to your family member to play. The old DRM didn't. By the way, do you know how much people got layoff this year alone in this industry?

 

[mattttherman3]

Frankly, I can't keep playing the same game for more than a year, I don't understand how you can just keep repeating the same thing day after day, the same goes for counter strike source, I know a guy that has been playing that since it came out, and he plays for like 8 hours a day, I don't get it.

 

[Atmos Duality]

To control how you play, to ensure that everyone has to buy their own copy even within the same household and to ensure that you could not resell it.

Good. That's an answer. We finally have somewhere to start from.

To control how you play...

And why would this be important?
I do believe I've already addressed this..

1) People who willingly abused Blizzard's online systems before for profit. (Diablo 2, WoW)

To ensure that single player abuses could not be transferred to multiplayer, Blizzard designed the game to monitor the player even in single player. I do not contest that this sucks in practice, but this does establish that Blizzard is reacting to previous abuses by the players in the past.

Perhaps it's an overreaction on their part, but that wasn't the point I was trying to make in the first place.

to ensure that everyone has to buy their own copy even within the same household and to ensure that you could not resell it.

And...point 2...also addressed.

2) People who willingly pirated software (in the industry as a whole, not just Blizzard's games) to the point where Blizzard was forced to please their investors by forcing Bnet 2.0 (an entire online system that functions as DRM) on us. This decision probably came up late in development, and probably from someone high up in the company.

This is relevant, because Blizzard wouldn't fund (or release, take your pick) the game without this DRM in place. It's a measure done to please the investors, to make them feel more secure.
I do not deny that this negatively impacts the paying customer(s). In fact, I hate this move quite a lot. But I do see why it was done.

Blizzard isn't acting stupid here. They are protecting their investment, and this ties into their new policy.
This is relevant because like law, a policy is only as effective as its enforcement.

Put all of that together, and you have yesterday's (or whenever now) bannings suspensions.

Notice that I did not once support this DRM as a consumer. I hate it. I absolutely hate it.
I hate how that once I have purchased a game, I cannot return it if I am dissatisfied with it.

The point I'm trying to establish here is what kind of a company we are dealing with, and how they think rather than just ceaselessly bitching about what they do, like how most of this topic has done.

And I thank you for your patience with me.

 

[Best of the 3]

Yes banning them was harsh (reseting their progress would have been better) but cheating is still cheating, especially when they even have their own cheats in the game.

I won't be joining you I'm afraid. I'm still waiting in a WC4.

 

[Chewster]

I actually thought I covered everything you said quite nicely. However, we come to a crossroads: your idelogical view is different from mine. Unfortunately, that's just going to lead to circling. I believe freedom should be limited, as people as a whole are ignorant. I believe companies like Blizzard have a right to say what is and isn't appropriate on their game, especially when they give complete freedom to edit anything but the base engine of the game. I believe the law, in most cases, favours the just and the correct, though there will always be exceptions we enjoy focusing on.

No, you didn't cover anything I said (you didn't even bother to address my points individually). You simply repeated (to paraphrase) "they give you the means to mod and cheat and that should be enough, because everything else is spitting in the face of Blizzard".

That is not even remotely true, and you've yet to make a strong case otherwise. And we wouldn't be circling if you didn't keep repeat the same arguments but with different details.

Anyway, I'm just going to quickly shoot off what points I can and that'll be that. It won't make a lick of difference to keep this going because you seem to believe freedom should be absolute (or are playing Devil's Advocat to that end) and I believe freedom should be limited. They're core values and you can't change that.

I don't think it should be absolute. I never once said that. The freedom to use a trainer in the single player is not an absolute freedom and I never said it was.

People shouldn't be allowed to modify the game and then sell it for a profit, for example, unless they create a whole Blizzard sanctioned campaign, as was the case for the first game. You seem to think that limiting people when people's actions do no harm to anyone is a good thing, and for the life of me I cannot figure out why. What we are talking about is not giving freedom to people at the cost of Blizzard losing any freedom, so that line of reasoning is moot.

-In most cases, copywrite is applied fairly. There are exceptions. We are only human and humans make mistakes. If the laws didn't work, they'd be changed. There are just some things you need to get beyond questioning until something earth shattering happens.

You clearly have not read anything on copyright if you think this to be the case. Copyright limits have been disappearing for years, as large corporations have been lobbying to have them extended on behalf of their more valuable characters. So yes, the laws have been changing, but not in favour of the common man. You put too much faith in the legal system in this case. Why do you think I included a link to the Lessig book (it's free by the way, you can download a PDF).

Copyright, while useful as an incentive for creativity, must be limited to a degree to ensure that fair use actually happens and that creativity can continue into the future, and that has not been the case at all recently.

-"If Valve can do it, as has been pointed out, I'm sure Blizzard could have." That would be exactly why I put all that. People who seem to say "well just disable achievements" don't realise that there are people who pain stakingly work towards maxxing those little buggers out, cheaters included. As I said, it's not as easy as it sounds, I'm certain. I have had my hand in coding and even the most basic programs (like the Windows calculator) require hundreds of lines of coding. It's not a matter of laziness, just a matter of priority.

-No, they shouldn't because they've got much bigger fish to fry. I'm sure about half the team that coded SC2 has already moved on, where as the rest are working on important things like balance patches. Then you have community events, server maintenance and, yes, using the ban hammer on cheaters. If people want to cheat, regardless of how they do so outside of the boundries of the game, they should be banned. Simple as that for me. People who break the law should go to jail. People who do wrong should be punished. It's a very simple concept and overcomplicating it can blind you just as easily as oversimplifying it can.

What does how hard people work towards getting achievements have to do with getting them disabled? That argument doesn't follow in the least.

And you've again repeated yourself. I know that coding takes time, you've already said that, but if they cared about their customers or wanted a solution that could satisfy everyone, they'd take the time. That you apologize for them being lazy is unfortunate, as that is the place I suspect they want most of their customers to be at. That way, they can roll out whatever foolish measures they wish, and no one will bother to complain.

And I'm sorry, but the law is nothing but simple, and it should never be simple. These are complicated issues that should be talked through. Simplifying things is dangerous and lazy thinking and leads to things like stereotyping (like how all people who use trainers are cheaters, in your mind) and stereotyping leads to bigotry. This is small "b" bigotry, obviously and doesn't affect many in all likelihood, but that sort of mindset is a dangerous one, if you ask me.

-Well, how about you give someone a sandwich and then get spat in your face as they proceed to make their own sandwich. That's a fairly good comparison to what trainers are to the set up Blizzard has given players to "cheat". Believe it or not, people don't just make games for money. They have a passion for it and when programers actually take the time to consider how a gamer might want to dick around in SC2 and input somne cheat codes to do so, a player then using a trainer looks suspicious and feels like they're just punching the devs in the gut for being considerate.

More repetition. Most excellent.

No, that comparison is not "fairly good". It's not even remotely good. Wanting to tamper with something that someone has made for any reason is not the same as spitting in their face. You generalize, and generalizations only make your argument weaker, not stronger.

So, sorry but your argument is completely illogical. Tinkering with a game can happen for any number of reasons, use of trainers included. Naturally, various reasons were included in the article posted above, and those are just a fraction of the potential reasons.

Furthermore, people may be complicated, but going out and getting a complicated program and learning to install it instead of, I don't know, taking thirty seconds to look up the list of cheat codes seems very pointless if all you want is Godmode. It stinks of alterior motives and I believe Blizzard smells it too. Hoenstly, cheathappens.com is a fairly unreputable site from what I can see. People pay good money to feel like they're cheating someone, which just shows to me how morally inferior we are to previous generations.

Also, FYI, a trainer does change the source code by re-arranging it or turning certain integers on.

-That freedom you speak of, upon which video games were based upon, destroy it as well. I'd rather have limitations on stupid stuff like "not cheating" than have the entire market crash aagin because shovel ware becomes the norm. Also, saying that the map editor has limitations really speaks to that fact that you don't seem to have even played the game. Not sure why you're even arguing this with that lack of knowledge here, but anyway. The editor lets you do whatever the programers could, so that's a fairly straight-forward point. Anything else would be changing the engine and at that point you should just take up coding and make your own game from scratch.

Trainers, on the other hand, hack the source code directly and don't give you an understanding of how the game works, but rather crushes how it works into a "click here, you win" scenario. Trainers are used to cheat! Nothing more, nothing less. They're used to augment the game in your favour. I'm not sure how many times I need to repeat that before it sinks in. I'm not against innovation, I'm against cheaters that seem to have some alternate motive because all the cheats they could want were handed on a silver platter. The big issue is that trainers also don't trigger the achievement blocking code, which brings us back to one of my previous points about achievements actually being important to some people.

Holy fuck, how many times does it need to be said: not all people who use trainers do so just to win the game. Until you acknowledge that not all people of a single group are the exact same, all you've posted above is more repetitious narrow-mindedness and there is no point in even trying to chip away at is.

-The fact of the matter is, they want to exploit the product. There is no other reasoning. Every single cheat you could want is on there, plus the ability to edit anything ever within the engine, so whether it's the gamer themselves or the fine folks at cheathappens.com it doesn't matter. The fact of the matter is they have software that can cause issues with the multiplayer balance on their PC, ready to use, and have used it within single player to boost, because there's no other reason to have that software there but to cheat in multiplayer or boost. Period!

"There is no other reasoning."

This line basically sums up why discussing this with you is a waste of my time. You don't want to bother seeing other perspectives, and figure if you repeat yourself enough, people will see it your way. People who use trainers are cheaters in the absolute and Blizzard shouldn't have people shit in their cereal, because that is the equivalent of them using trainers. Never mind that not all people who use them are doing so just to cheat. Never mind that they have the resources to disable the achievements for those who do use them. Never mind the long history of tinkering that helped make this industry as powerful as it is today. Never mind that copyright is being used as a weapon by those with power and money. Never mind all of this, trainer users are all cheaters and wish to spit in the face of Blizzard.

Fortunately, most people realize (I hope) that this type of POV is extremely simple and narrow one. The world doesn't exist in a strict black and white framework and an inflexibility on such issues will only harm you in the long run.

And by the way, thanks for ignoring all the historical precedent that has already been set by the industry, in lieu of repeating yourself once more. I'd love to see a reasonable response, but I'm not responding if all I get is another wall of text filled with strange analogies and the repetition of the same points you've been saying all along.

 

[Brotherofwill]

Well... maybe you shouldn't cheat at all?

Eh, Blizzard is a part of Activision now so I guess that means I'm boycotting it anyway... well, except for Diablo...

Couldn't have said it better.