Blizzard + SC2 Cheaters = Nuclear Launch Detected

Keero

Keero

Tribe of Judah Membership Administrator
Not all’s fair in three-way inter-species war. Blizzard PR sent out a warning today to all of those who would use unscrupulous means to win in StarCraft II. The gist: if they catch you cheating or hacking in any way, you’re in violation of the terms of service and your Battle.net account will be banned. It’s a tough-on-crime, one-strike-you’re-out policy that sounds good in principle – there’s nothing worse than being unfairly slaughtered in SC2, especially considering how often I lose legitimately.

But, false-positives aside (remember the Steam/Modern Warfare 2 banning fiasco?) there’s a slightly chilling part about this: with StarCraft II, you must sign into Battle.net just to play the single-player campaign or skirmish against the AI. If you’re banned from Battle.net, you would lose access to your game entirely, and your $60 purchase would be flat-out gone. Not that I feel sorry for cheaters, but is it perhaps a disproportionately cruel and unusual punishment? Should bad multiplayer behavior cost you your single-player fun too?

Read Blizzard’s full statement after the jump.

Cheating in StarCraft II
Blizzard Entertainment has always taken cheating in any form in Blizzard games very seriously, and that’s no different for StarCraft II. If a StarCraft II player is found to be cheating or using hacks or modifications in any form, then as outlined in our end user license agreement, that player can be permanently banned from the game. This means that the player will be permanently unable to log in to Battle.net to play StarCraft II with his or her account.

Playing StarCraft II legitimately means playing with an unaltered game client. Doing otherwise violates our policies for Battle.net, and it goes against the spirit of fair play that all of our games are based on. We strongly recommend that you avoid using any hacks, cheats, or exploits. Suspensions and bans of players that have used or start using cheats and hacks will begin in the near future.
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From PC Gamer.
 
Smack'em again harder! HARDER!

Personally I think a lot of the cheaters are little (unsupervised) kids with internet access and no care about viruses. Some of them hacked clients have to be chocked full of malware goodness otherwise I don't know of a good reason for them to be so distributed. I mean it makes little sense that most hackers would steal from one company to give to the public for free.
 
If a player is using multiplayer cheats, then chances are good that they'll just find and use the offline launcher if and when they're banned from Battle.net. They'll still be able to play the single-player campaign and matches against the AI, but that's about it.

Well, until someone puts out a Battle.net 2.0 emulator. But even then, players who play legitimately on Battle.net won't have to deal with the scr1p7 k1dd13z.

I'm glad to see Blizzard enforcing the ToS. I've read several complaints about hackers ruining MW2 (which just serves as additional proof that refusing to include dedicated server support for a first-person shooters is a foolish and short-sighted decision driven by greed rather than a legitimate desire to control the quality of the gameplay), so I'm glad to know SC2 cheaters are getting the boot.
 
Awww, you have to sign in to play single player? Is there an offline mode? What crappy decisions have been going into video game design lately!
 
DannyMeister said:
Awww, you have to sign in to play single player? Is there an offline mode? What crappy decisions have been going into video game design lately!
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/me points to Activision and EA

There are still amazing games being made, but larger publishers (like those mentioned above) have learned that they can disrespect PC gamers and still make serious cash. Why listen to your customers when you can just paint a fresh coat on an old franchise and rake in the cash?

EDIT: And yes, Blizzard still makes great games, but don't think for a moment that the decision to force players to sign in to Battle.net to play single-player (which is easily circumvented by an offline launcher) wasn't influenced at least in part by Activision.
 
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I'm all for cheats, mods, alterations on the original... etc... just don't use them against other players :p (without their permission at least, heh).
 
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