Blizzard bans 350k from Battle.net

By Tom Bramwell Published 12 November, 2008

StarCraft and Diablo II hax0rs pwned.

Having banned nearly 8,000 people for cheating at Warcraft III a fortnight ago, Blizzard has now banned over 350,000 StarCraft and Diablo II accounts also "found to be using third-party hacks" on Battle.net.

"As part of our continued effort to ensure a fair and fun online experience for all Battle.net players, we have expanded our efforts to remove cheaters from StarCraft and Diablo II," the company said in a statement.

However, it's not a death sentence for the Diablo II cheaters, whose CD keys will still allow them to log in again after "approximately 30 days" and make a new account, in order to see if they've learned their lesson. If not, they and their pesky CD keys will be sent packing in a subsequent "ban policy update".

"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. Cheating ruins the game experience for legitimate players, and we will not tolerate it."

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (13) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Stardusted #1 3 years ago

    Yeah, log in again after the 30 days, and re-ruin the experience.

    ...btw first... :p

  • Pirotic #2 3 years ago

    But, Diablo II isn't a competitive event so I can see why they'd take a lighter approach to cheating there. WCIII and Starcraft cheaters have the CD-keys banned forever, but even then they can't just go out and buy new copies for $5.

  • Penguinzoot #3 3 years ago

    Yeah, log in again after the 30 days, and re-ruin the experience.

    ' [if they don't learn their lesson] .... they and their pesky CD keys will be sent packing in a subsequent "ban policy update".'

  • DoctorZoidberg #4 3 years ago

    It's good to see companies taking action.

  • SpyroViper #5 3 years ago

    Blizzard should ban their CD keys too, make the stupid W@nkers pay for another copy to learn how to play these games. They are probably those stupid kid n00bs who can't learn how to hotkey in Starcraft.

  • mingster #6 3 years ago

    I'm amazed both games still have lots of online players after all these years

  • Corben_Dallas #7 3 years ago

    pfff banning them and their CDkeys yeah good start.....


    But how about 550volts up the yazoo or setting their PC to self distruct.

    ...much more like it. ]:)

  • presh #8 3 years ago

    I'd love to see a proper psychiatric study into people who cheat in games. I'd make sure it includes a whole section on people who camp in FPS multiplayer, and the tw@ts who drive the wrong way around circuits in driving games.

    /is convinced they all have the mental age of a turnip

  • kangarootoo #9 3 years ago

    I played a demo of Battlefield on the XB360 ages back, and found the experience to be filled with kids who got their kicks by shooting members of their own team. Quite bizarre really.

    I guess a demo is free, and so people treat it differently. Not quite sure what actualy reward those players felt they were getting though. Maybe it just saved them the trouble of having to walk to the other side of the map to find enemies.

  • penhalion #10 3 years ago

    Wait...people are still playing Diablo 2?

  • SpyroViper #11 3 years ago

    ^ people are still playing Starcraft. Millions in fact, why do you think it's taken Blizzard over 10 years to get Starcraft 2 almost done? If there are millions of players playing your game after 12 years would you be in a rush to make a sequel..

    Blizzard are one fo the last great PC devs. /salute

  • 7creature #12 3 years ago

    "Wait...people are still playing Diablo 2?"

    Surprised, aren't you? .-)

  • FooAtari #13 3 years ago

    Blizzard are one fo the last great PC devs. /salute

    +1

    But how long before Activision drop SC and Diablo because they can't exploit the games on every format every 12 months.