Home Gaming [UPDATE]: Rumour: Blizzard banhammer falling on SCII single-player cheaters?

[UPDATE]: Rumour: Blizzard banhammer falling on SCII single-player cheaters?

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Accounts being suspended or players being banned for cheating in multiplayer is understandable, but a complaint has surfaced from a StarCraft II player called gm0ney who claims Blizzard suspended his Battle.net account after he cheated in the game’s single-player campaign.

According to gm0ney he was accused of using an “unauthorised cheat program” or a trainer that was developed by CheatHappens.com. This sort of thing has happened to others and in the past Blizzard has defended their decision stating: “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”.

This is being reported by Kotaku, and while they are asking all sorts of questions about what “ownership” means these days, they are also remaining circumspect about the entire thing seeing as how they have yet to receive an official response from Blizzard. Should this be true however, and Blizzard really is bringing down the banhammer on single-player cheaters, then they will have certainly opened a can of worms for certain people.

There are cheat codes included in StarCraft II as it is (which I had no idea about), but trainers alter gameplay on a much deeper level and depend on third-party programs to be executed. Of course this, coupled with the achievement tracking defence, seems to justify Blizzard’s alleged actions in terms of players’ profiles on Battle.net and the EULA everyone accepts upon installing the game.

So far only one side of the argument has been compiled (you can read a fairly lengthy rant over on CheatHappens.com) and it does raise some valid concerns. The converse applies however: Blizzard has every right to protect their IP and the online systems it makes use of, and this all rests in the player’s acceptance of the EULA.

It’s an interesting topic and one that is sure to spark some lengthy debates. We’ll naturally keep an eye on things and update this post as soon as Blizzard responds.

UPDATE: Blizzard has responded with the following statement:

“Blizzard Entertainment is not banning StarCraft 2 players just for using single-player cheats. There’s been some confusion in the last couple of days about the suspensions and bans meted out to players caught cheating in StarCraft 2. It’s important to point out first, that many of the 3rd-party hacks and cheats developed for StarCraft 2 contain both single- and multiplayer functionality. In order to protect the integrity of multiplayer competition, we are actively detecting cheat programs used in multiplayer modes whether there are human opponents or not.

That said, players who opt to use any type of 3rd party hacks do so at their own risk — there are already built-in cheat codes for StarCraft 2 single-player that can be used safely. Blizzard Entertainment has always taken cheating seriously and will continue to aggressively crackdown on players who cheat in our games.”

Source: Kotaku

Update Source: Shacknews

Last Updated: October 12, 2010

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