Blizzard has confirmed a widespread purge of over 320,000 Warcraft III and Diablo II accounts that were found to be violating the (rather extensive and boring) Battle.net Terms of Use.
First time banned accounts are expected to be suspended for 30 days, while repeat offenders will likely find their keys permanently blocked.
“We would like all players to remember that abuse of unintended mechanics and/or use of third party programs is a violation of the agreement made when signing on to Battle.net, and can subject your account to disciplinary action up to and including a permanent ban of its access to the service,” Blizzard lectured in an official forum post.
“These types of activities can severely impact the stability of our servers, and we’ll continue to aggressively monitor Battle.net in order to protect the service and its players from the harmful effects of cheating.”
It should be noted that “many account closures” were implemented as a direct results of tips e-mailed to Blizzard’s hack team by supposedly “legitimate” Battle.net users.
320,000 accounts? For a couple of harmless hacks and cracks? Will this go down on their permanent record?
Oh, yeah, well, don’t get so distressed – did I happen to mention I’m impressed?
Yeah, Blizzard, you can just kiss off into the air!
