Blizzard declares war on Battle.net cheats

By Tor Thorsen, GameSpotPosted Mar 9, 2004 3:32 pm PT

The Warcraft III developer shutters nearly 300,000 accounts tied to illicit programs.

In what might be one of the biggest cheat purges ever, Blizzard today closed 282,000 Battle.net accounts associated with game hacks and illicit programs. "In keeping with our aggressive stance against cheating," said a post on Battle.net, "we have permanently closed 263,000 StarCraft accounts and 19,000 Warcraft III accounts."

In addition, Blizzard permanently banned 1,100 Warcraft III CD keys used with the shuttered accounts and forbade another 8,000 from ladder play for one month. "Repeat offenders risk having their CD keys disabled, which will result in the permanent removal of their copies of StarCraft or Warcraft III from Battle.net," said Blizzard, which also issued a stark warning to would-be cheats: "We will continue to monitor Battle.net for cheating and take action as needed."

Blizzard's actions are the latest in an ongoing anticheat offensive by developers of online games. At the end of January, DICE included Punkbuster anticheating software in the v1.6.19 patch for its ultrapopular online WWII shooter Battlefield 1942.

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ldavidtw2000
Posted Jun 20, 2008 2:09 pm PT

revineux your cd-key was stolen
i'm still playing and as of today and yesterday I still see a couple cheaters...
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Ravineux
Posted Feb 7, 2008 2:04 am PT

Argh. My StarCraft CD was banned. But its strange though, cause I didn't cheat. I just left it for 3 or 4 years and when I log back on, I'm banned.
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dinodefender
Posted Dec 31, 2007 3:42 pm PT

Those cheaters are paying :^)
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ruitaurus11
Posted Jul 18, 2007 6:53 pm PT

Well done. The cheaters take the fun of playing multiplayer games.
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934400
Posted Jun 30, 2007 5:09 pm PT

Thats why you don't cheat online.
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tolys
Posted Jul 3, 2006 4:24 am PT

[This message was deleted at the request of the original poster]
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comthitnuong
Posted May 30, 2006 9:45 am PT

FIGHT THE POWER
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yao1994
Posted May 22, 2006 12:22 am PT

oooooooooooooooooooooh very harsh!
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