

Blizzard Bans Starcraft Players Who Cheat in Offline, Single Player Games - NathanKP
http://www.cheathappens.com/article_blizzardbans.asp

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steve19
I believe that the majority of players will support Blizzard in this. Please
read the whole comment before you downvote me ...

SC2 players are very competitive and trust Blizzard to prevent cheating or
devaluing the Battle.net achivement system.

Single player games can be played offline (not logged into Battle.net) or
played online with cheats. Both of these situations do not reward players with
points or Achievements (badges for having accomplished something).

Blizzard is banning people who gamed the Battle.net reward system. They are
not banning people who played offline or played with built-in cheats.

If you mess with Battle.net, you will be banned.

~~~
stackthat
What you write is totally different from what article says. That article
states that Blizzard also bans people who plays offline/single player games,
I'm sure everyone is fine with banning online cheaters.

~~~
steve19
tl;dr: The article is deceptive. People where effectively cheating Battle.net.

Longer explanation...

The cheating appear to be people modifying save game files. They alter the
file and give themselves more resources, units, etc.

They _must_ have been logged into Battle.net in order for Blizzard to catch
them. Single player != Offline in SC2.

The _only_ reason to really cheat is to gain Achievements. As I said before,
there are cheat codes built into the game[1], they are perfectly legit, but
they do not give you any Achievements. This is why people were cheating - to
get the benefit of the legit codes, but still gain Battle.net achievements.

[1] [http://sc2.lancraftwc3.com/2010/04/starcraft-2-cheat-
codes.h...](http://sc2.lancraftwc3.com/2010/04/starcraft-2-cheat-codes.html)

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JeremyBanks
I have no knowledge to speak on this article directly but it's worth keeping
in mind that this is from some folks who sell cheats for money. Beware of
potential slant.

~~~
stackthat
Never heard anyone sells offline cheat for money? Care for an example if such
a thing ever happened?

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metamemetics
Blizzard already has built in cheats in single player. You just press enter
and type a few phrases. However the built-in cheats disable achievements when
activated.

~~~
ary
This is key. If they didn't strike out against this kind of cheating then
people wouldn't take any of the achievements seriously and the replay value of
the game would be diminished.

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cdr
Reddit:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/dphod/on_october_1_2...](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/dphod/on_october_1_2010_blizzard_began_the/)

Starcraft has built-in cheat codes, which disable achievements. You can play
on offline mode, which doesn't have achievements, and not have to worry about
getting caught with trainers et al.

Most likely, someone using a trainer is doing it to illicitly gain something
that has value in multiplayer.

~~~
nkassis
You can play the game in guest mode (single player only) if you want.

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sliverstorm
Bans? He got a 14-day suspension. Even if he was just using cheats for kicks
and Blizzard flagged him unfairly, it's just a slap on the wrist.

It's also worth noting this article uses boilerplate arguments that are the
hallmark of somebody with almost 0 defensible ground latching onto the only
available rock and spouting it left and right:

"Some people might be older or handicapped or simply not possess the fast-
twitch reflexes of a 12 year old which seems to be a requirement of some games
these days" - nice try, but that statement doesn't even begin to apply to SC2.

~~~
pyre
How about "I wanted to play the game on 'god mode'?" It seems a little harsh
to suspend/ban/whatever players to 'cheating' at a one-player game. That's
like trying to make it illegal to cheat at solitaire. The reason that cheating
is bad is that it is unfair to other players. In a single-player game, who
exactly is being cheated? The AI?

~~~
kevinh
The in-game cheats Blizzard supplies have all the functionalities of the
trainers (at least that I saw on a simple google search). The only perk of
using a trainer is to be able to get achievements while cheating. You could
make the argument that devaluing the achievements is cheating the people who
went through the effort of earning them legitimately.

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samlittlewood
Idle speculation:

Could a games publisher sell the 'trusted membership of the online player
community' property as a separate thing to the underlying game?

Maybe some sort of rework of the MSCE structure - 'SC2 Certified Player'

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abraham
_The company already had our money so they didn’t care about our accounts._

That quote was very much taken out of context in the article. With a title
calling out Blizzard glancing at the quote you assume it to be Blizzard but
the full quote reads as though it could very well be a different company.

 _The user has been through a similar situation before, with another game --
where he suspects the company had monetary motivations for the bans, “A bunch
of people’s accounts got hacked and used cheats, so we all got banned. The
company already had our money so they didn’t care about our accounts.”_

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DjDarkman
As many already said, SC2 has inbuilt cheat codes, there is no reason for
using hacks.

Blizzard can't catch them if they don't go online.

Another thing is that SC2 let's you change the difficulty in the middle of the
campaign, you are not required to restart the whole campaign if you get stuck.

So tell me: why the hell does someone need to cheat at all if not for the
achievements?

I think blizzard is doing the right thing.

~~~
Simucal
I don't like the precedent. There are lots of reasons a person may want to
modify game beyond the given cheat codes.

For example, the Starcraft (original) AI contest works by injecting a dll into
the Starcraft client which allows you interact with various elements of the
game. Most anti-cheating mechanisms would detect this and would flag the user
as a cheater.

The first interaction I had with programming came from writing hacks to Diablo
2. I started out writing save game trainers and simple memory modification
cheats. I graduated to more advanced hacks involving dll injection, OpenGL
hooks, etc as time went on.

This whole experience significantly influenced me into my current career. I'd
hate to know that the current generation of young hackers growing up won't
have the same opportunities to learn as I did.

~~~
DjDarkman
You could do that just write a hack that disables connection to battle.net and
you are good to go :)

You can do whatever you like just do it offline and you'll be okay.

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Elhana
Blizz is doing it right. Statement that WoW players using 3rd party programs
are only suspended are complete bullshit - they ban you right away even for
unattended fishing with autoit script. Besides there is a mode without
achivements - you can play play as guest without connecting to bnet and
without achivements if you wish to cheat.

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tired
They're using a Trainer. For Single player. Which is pretty common and quite
fine if you don't buy into the idea that EULA's and other shrink-wrap adhesive
contracts actually hold water in court.

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orangecat
Yet another reason I'm sort of glad that I don't have a computer capable of
running SC2 well; otherwise I'd have an annoying moral dilemma.

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drdaeman
Two-week bans? Huh.

It would be fun if they would SUE for license violations (so it's piracy,
yay!) next.

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NathanKP
According to the article:

 _On October 1, 2010, Blizzard began the unprecedented act of suspending and
banning players for the use of cheats and trainers in SINGLE PLAYER games of
Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty. Users found to be using cheats in SINGLE PLAYER
CAMPAIGN MODE and AI SKIRMISH mode were treated the same as if they had
cheated in a multiplayer online match. For some, their accounts were suspended
and for others their CD keys were disabled and they were completely locked out
of playing even campaign mode in their legally purchased game._

This seems utterly ridiculous to me. Players have already purchased the game,
and it seems to me that after that point Blizzard should no longer have
control of what they do with the game in single player mode, on their own
computer.

Perhaps since it keeps track of player rankings they are concerned about
cheating in local single player games artificially inflating the achievements
and gamer score of some players.

However, I still find it strange that Blizzard should take the stance that
they still own the software and can take away your access after you have
bought it, for doing something with it on your own personal computer, in
single player mode.

~~~
eavc
Single player mode unlocks achievements and special badges of honor. If a ton
of people are cheating, it devalues that prize and that accomplishment for
other people.

That's the only reason these people would use those cheats in the first place.
There are plenty of legal ways to cheat with codes in the game that won't
reward you with the badges.

