
Report: Blizzard Banning Diablo III Players For Using Linux - evo_9
http://kotaku.com/5923068/report-blizzard-banning-diablo-iii-players-for-using-linux
======
forrestthewoods
Urgh. People like jumping to conclusions way too much. This is like the 3rd
time for Diablo 3 there has been internet outrage for reasons that turned out
to be completely wrong.

"We’ve extensively tested for false positive situations, including replicating
system setups for those who have posted claiming they were banned unfairly.
We’ve not found any situations that could produce a false positive, have found
that the circumstances for which they were banned were clear and accurate, and
we are extremely confident in our findings.

Playing the game on Linux, although not officially supported, will not get you
banned – cheating will."

[http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5978861022?page=21#40...](http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5978861022?page=21#402)

~~~
derpmeister
Oh lookie, another Blizzard apologist. Wine triggers the VMM detection script
in the warden, it IS a false positive.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
I'm willing to accept that if you have more than an anecdote to support your
position?

~~~
chris_wot
He's provided as much proof as Blizzard.

~~~
pyre
1\. Blizzard has their name / track record to stand behind.

2\. derpmeister has a month-old HN account, which is backed up by/linked to
nothing else.

3\. (for example) If Linus Torvalds had posted what derpmeister had, I would
be more inclined to take it at face value.

4\. derpmeister's post automatically takes itself into 'troll' territory by
starting off with the 'Blizzard apologist' comments. This makes the anecdote
seem less believable without anything else to back it up.

~~~
chris_wot
Nothing you said negates my comment.

~~~
anotherthrow
It all suggests derpmeister should be taken as a less reliable source than
Blizzard, which does count against your comment.

Sure, it's not a deductive proof that Blizzard is right and derpmeister is
wrong, but it would be unreasonable to require such a thing.

~~~
chris_wot
Agreed. Probably was a worthless comment.

------
naitbit
It's unfortunate that I was right
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3889127> If they use white list approach
for their DRM it is not surprising that they flagged wine, but keeping in mind
it is permanent ban and there is no way to play D3 offline, and that they
refused to give refunds there are reasons to be angry at them. Fortunately
personally I did not "bought" d3 because i don't like renting games(and
requiring constant connection to server makes it renting).

I also found it surprising that it is apparently possible to modify client to
teleport, move faster, and see data that is not allowed by standard client[1].
One would thought that after they went such a lengths to make it online only
(making even map generation on server side) they would not trust a client. But
apparently not.

[1] <http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5978861022?page=1> "These programs
may increase movement speed or teleport heroes from one place to another
beyond what is allowed by game design. It also includes any programs that
obtain information from the game that is not normally available to the regular
player"

~~~
altrego99
> i don't like renting games(and requiring constant connection to server makes
> it renting)

You could try the cracked version. I heard that removed this 'feature' from
Assassin's Creed, and it is very likely then they will remove it from D3 too.

Of course, chances are that you may not be able to log in from cracked version
- and will have to play as a single player game.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Unlikely. All of the "business logic" of the game takes place on the server.
Eventually server emulators did pop up for D2, but it took a long time.

~~~
viraptor
Mooege is out already. Not sure how good it is, but it seems to be out for
over 6 months now (started before open beta).

~~~
jamesaguilar
AFAIK, it doesn't _do_ anything. You can use it to connect to a server and
spawn monsters that stand still.

------
joshschreuder
A community manager from Blizzard's response:
[http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5978861022?page=21#40...](http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5978861022?page=21#402)

"Playing the game on Linux, although not officially supported, will not get
you banned – cheating will."

~~~
reitzensteinm
Which sounds perfectly reasonable, but it's not necessarily the truth. As
another commenter posted here, this has happened before with WoW users [1].

They claimed that they tried and failed to replicate the failure, but anyone
who's done any kind of software development knows this is far from conclusive
proof.

A post mortem on the logs of the banned accounts is absolutely necessary. If
they're not willing to do that, they should at least refund the accounts.

[1]
[http://www.linuxlookup.com/2006/nov/22/blizzard_unbans_linux...](http://www.linuxlookup.com/2006/nov/22/blizzard_unbans_linux_world_of_warcraft_players)

~~~
brainfed
They're claiming it's not the same thing.
<http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5978861022?page=23> Seems like they're
confident that the people involved were cheating.

Also, other WINE users are posting saying they've had no issues.

The story's being spread around now, so I guess we'll see one way or another
because other users with the issue will either show up, or they won't.

~~~
makomk
There are multiple versions of Wine out there, and the exact results
potentially depend on the user's Linux distro, the exact versions of packages
installed, the compiler version it's built with, ... One of the problems Wine
developers have is that DRM is often very fragile and sensitive to software
changes that are outside their control.

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cbg0
This happened before with World of Warcraft and the users were unbanned:
[http://www.linuxlookup.com/2006/nov/22/blizzard_unbans_linux...](http://www.linuxlookup.com/2006/nov/22/blizzard_unbans_linux_world_of_warcraft_players)

Still, you would think they learned after the first time.

------
btipling
Don't rush to judgement. I doubt this is about DRM, this is probably more
about protecting players from hackers. Clients have to be analyzed for
modification, it's the same as what any Punkbuster game goes through. Banning
wine may just be a consequence of Blizzard keeping the game safe, which is a
worthwhile effort.

Diablo games are notorious for being hacked, and I assure you that if you
happen to lose valuable items or characters due to a hack, you will not be
happy.

If wine users are unfortunately axed because of this they could be angry at
Blizzard not having a Linux client (which they shouldn't because I doubt it
would be worth their while to support) but they should not be angry about not
being able to use Wine.

~~~
viraptor
Not sure I buy this argument. "Clients have to be analyzed for modification" -
why? PB works mainly on FPS-style games where you don't want people to run
around with auto-aim bots. Does it still matter in Diablo?... maybe to a small
extent, but I wouldn't care that much.

"Diablo games are notorious for being hacked" - do you mean server security?
This has nothing to do with the client.

"I assure you that if you happen to lose valuable items or characters due to a
hack, you will not be happy." - yes, I would not be happy, I would be furious
if they allowed it, since it's the server that should control and verify those
kinds of issues, not my client. If I don't explicitly allow a transfer, server
should deny it. If someone tries to kill me in a way that game-physics
disallow, server should deny it.

It's not like you need the official client anyway - the way to interface with
the server is already known. There's an unofficial game server available and
being developed since late 2011
([http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?813096-SPO...](http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?813096-SPOILERS-
Update-on-the-Diablo-3-server-emulator-%28Mooege%29)).

In short - I don't believe disabling the client on one specific platform will
help anyone in any way. People can and will write bots that work around such
protection. This is more like DRM.

~~~
sirclueless
The basic problem is autopilot bots. If you don't have rigorous protection all
the way down to the operating system, it's not particularly difficult to make
a bot that will run Diablo 3 bosses for you. If Diablo 3 were merely a single-
player game this wouldn't matter, but they have made the auction house and the
game economy an integral part of progression in the later stages of the game.

Bots may not be as directly harmful to other players' experiences as
instagibbing anyone that pops up on the hacker's screen, but anyone who can
successfully run an autopilot bot is devaluing the game for everyone. There's
a real and measurable difference in the accomplishments of farming and selling
a rare item for $50 on the auction house and selling the same item with the
same time investment for $5. Because Blizzard wants the time people spend
playing Diablo 3 to have more worth, they must aggressively police any
automated bot activity, which might mean hitting some false positives here and
there.

~~~
Retric
Humans play something like 1 million hours a week at lvl 60 and people running
bot's want them to also have good items to farm faster so it's not clear that
bot's harm the economy as they would buy and sell just like a person who plays
a lot. Assuming bots gather both cash and items the only possible issue is
they are a larger drain on blizzards servers, but I have a hard time believing
it's that significant as the player base has already been cut in half.

~~~
pyre

      > the player base has already been cut in half.
    

By? Am I missing something?

~~~
Retric
The end game is not all that fun so it's been losing 10% of it's population a
week. Granted, there is no subscription costs so you can come back at any
time.

<https://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5968886836>

------
pieter
Blizzard is pretty strict with the anti-cheating checks, which may be part of
this. It's also very annoying that you can't run Diablo 3 on OS X if you have
Filevault enabled, for example.

~~~
benologist
That doesn't sound right, I've had Filevault on the entire time I've been
playing Diablo 3... unless that's come in on the latest update cause I haven't
played it in a couple weeks.

~~~
timdoug
Unsure if it's new or not, but it's on their website:
[http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/diablo-iii-
installat...](http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/diablo-iii-installation-
troubleshooting-mac)

"This error is caused when FileVault options are enabled, or if a volume is
formatted as case-sensitive. These options are not supported for
installation."

"If FileVault is enabled, then Diablo III will not install."

------
talloaktrees
Nice title. Makes it sound like they are checking to see if the OS is Linux
and banning based on the result. More likely they are just checking for 3rd
party programs, assuming they are hacks/cheats, and banning, catching WINE
along with the riffraff. HN needs less sensationalism.

------
jiggy2011
The bigger news here for me is that Diablo 3 runs on WINE at all, I've had
very limited success with games on WINE in the past and never rely on anything
that I run with WINE continuing to work long term.

Are these permanent bans and if so how do these affect other blizzard games
that people might be using with the same account etc?

I would imagine the logic behind this is that WINE re-implements many of the
Windows APIs and a common vector for game cheats is to run modified versions
of DLL files that contain extra functionality to read "hidden" gamestate etc,
so it becomes difficult to differentiate a cheat from a WINE lib.

~~~
mike-cardwell
There are 5459 "Games" listed on appdb.winehq.com, including all versions of
Diablo:

[http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application...](http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&sTitle=Browse%20Applications&sOrderBy=appName&bAscending=true)

~~~
jiggy2011
I'm usually dubious of that list. From my experience their "gold" standard
often means "basically runs but with frequent graphical glitches, 50% of the
original framerate and occasional segfaults"

------
leif
Lock out under wine seems reasonable. Ban under wine seems unreasonable.

Oh well, looks like it's time to go steal a copy of windows.

------
Tichy
Is the corollary from this that Diablo III installs a rootkit? Or is that not
necessary for checking for 3rd party software?

~~~
wsc981
I don't think the tech Blizzard uses is called a root kit, but judge for
yourself: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warden_(software)>

------
kevinsd
Within Wine lies the secret of bypassing blizzard's always-online requirement.
;)

------
Mythbusters
Sad how the headline is just an attention grabber.

------
zeru
This is confirmed to be bullshit. That sensationalism... sad HN. Not even sure
how people can believe something so stupid so fast and jump on the hate train.

~~~
defective
Oh, great! Do you have a link to the confirmation?

~~~
zeru
[http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5978861022?page=21#40...](http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5978861022?page=21#402)

~~~
sgift
"This is confirmed to be bullshit." - Where? For a real confirmation I always
use the Wikipedia check: Reliable third party. Sorry, but Blizzard is not a
reliable source for an conformation in this case.

~~~
zeru
If blizzards confirmation isnt enough then who are you even going to believe?
I can't think of anyone whos actually more reliable blizzard in this case. You
prefer to believe random angry people on the internet who got banned for
cheating?

~~~
corin_
I completely believe Blizzard, but are you seriously suggesting that any time
anyone is critical of that company, if the company says "not true" they must
be correct?

~~~
zeru
Im simply saying that blizzard wouldnt lie when they say that playing on linux
will not get you banned. I did say "in this case" specifically, because im not
going to claim that they never ever would lie.

