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[Time Kitten]

Guess this means no compleate custom campaigns, unless I get really creative on one map.

[Zangi]

Fun Update: Blizzard Bans Single Player 'Cheaters'

Yea, I disagree. 
"What I do in single player is my own business.  Not yours."

Probably a money grab?  They could have just disabled these 'achievements'... instead of banning single player mode.

They could also you know... tell them how they came about banning them instead of chalking it up as 'for privacy and security reasons'... who's privacy?  Blizzards?  And meh at security reasons


The problem I have with someone else controlling my ability to access a game, especially single player mode.  (Also why I am wary of Steam....)

[inteuniso]

Fun Update: Blizzard Bans Single Player 'Cheaters'

Yea, I disagree. 
"What I do in single player is my own business.  Not yours."

Probably a money grab?  They could have just disabled these 'achievements'... instead of banning single player mode.

They could also you know... tell them how they came about banning them instead of chalking it up as 'for privacy and security reasons'... who's privacy?  Blizzards?  And meh at security reasons


The problem I have with someone else controlling my ability to access a game, especially single player mode.  (Also why I am wary of Steam....)

Alright, at first, I was thinking of playing this. Maybe. Now, the only way I'm going to play this is if I pirate it. I do what I want with my game. If I paid $60 for a game, I should be allowed to cheat against the AI. This is just ridiculous. I'm not buying another Blizzard game. Ever.

[umiman]

It's probably the recommendation or mandate of Bobby Kotick. Reasoning: if you ban a cheater instead of suspending him, he's probably going to buy another copy of the game. Basically he gets a cassus belli to force you to pay double.

Considering his nature, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. After all, he's been trying to get people to pay subscription fees for FPS multiplayer.

[dogstile]

Its more to do that they can cheat using cheats that don't disable achievements.

Which is a dick move. Who the fuck cares.

[umiman]

I'm actually kinda curious why the "victim" paid money for a cheathappens.com trainer...

[Greenbane]

Its more to do that they can cheat using cheats that don't disable achievements.

Which is a dick move. Who the fuck cares.

That's right.

SC2 has plenty of valid, official cheat codes, but using them disables the earning of achievements. The only reason for trainer use (which is what got these people suspended/banned: the article linked used the term "cheat" very liberally, when in fact it's all about trainers) is to work around this limitation, effectively cheating through a good chunk of the achievements system. So no, it's not just innocently cheating against the AI.

[PrimusRibbus]

It's probably the recommendation or mandate of Bobby Kotick. Reasoning: if you ban a cheater instead of suspending him, he's probably going to buy another copy of the game. Basically he gets a cassus belli to force you to pay double.

Considering his nature, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. After all, he's been trying to get people to pay subscription fees for FPS multiplayer.

I'm not sure why you're blaming Kotick when Blizzard has had a reputation for being ban-happy for over a decade. To me, it just feels like an extension of their "ban everyone on the same IP as the duper, ban everyone in a game where a dupe happened, ban anyone who received a dupe in a trade" policy that went on during Diablo 2. If this were any other company I'd be surprised, but after my entire dorm was banned from B.net because our accounts had used the same IP address as a duper at one time or another, this doesn't seem out of character for Blizzard.

[Frumple]

The only reason for trainer use[...]

Objection! Use of only!

As a counterexample, I pretty regularly pull out the memory editor or (if it's convenient) a trainer for games that also have built in cheats. I've done it to the original SC a number of times. It's mostly a matter of convenience; typing in some unwieldy stream of letters every few moments/once per game (may go through quite the number in quick succession while cheating, remember.) versus the one/two button (often in-game) functionality of trainers or the (potentially) persistent effect of the memory editor.

Trainers are usually a lot quicker and more fluid in their cheat activation than anything the developers put into the game itself, at least when there's been any effort at all to implement a decent UI.

So I'd lay bets with you not everyone using them was trying to get around the achievement thing. Some just wanted to type less. Probably other reasons, too. Quite a few probably were trying to get around the achievement system, of course, but that only language gets you in trouble

Rest of conversation I guess doesn't really do anything for me. Won't be buying SC2 anytime this half of the decade (or this decade, period), no real interest in clearing out the HD space to filch it from somewhere. Maybe if I hear about something amazing coming out of the mapmaking stuff and the price went down, I'd fork out some cash, but... eh.

EDIT: Has anything really neat been produced yet?

[umiman]

If this were any other company I'd be surprised, but after my entire dorm was banned from B.net because our accounts had used the same IP address as a duper at one time or another, this doesn't seem out of character for Blizzard.

Blizzard only performed temporary IP bans in D2 for logging and creating games too fast. Hackers and cheaters get account bans, not ip bans. So if someone cheated using an ip that an ENTIRE dorm shared at one point (seriously?), you guys wouldn't be banned, only the account. Unless your entire dorm shared one single D2 account, none of you would have been affected outside of the entire dorm trying to play D2 at the same time on the same ip address. If you're claiming on the other hand, that Blizzard banned an entire dorm's worth of accounts (again, seriously?) because at one point in time all your accounts shared an ip the cheater used... well... that reminds me of a certain pokemon that wields a leek.

As for why I suspect (not blame) Bobby Kotick had a hand in this is because of his shining personality concerning the way Activision-Blizzard is run:
"The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games."
"There will continue to be opportunities for us to exploit the PC platform in ways that we haven’t yet."

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I see a connection!!!! *creepy music*

Edit: Frumple: Someone made a Dead Space mod of it. Looks pretty cool but I have no clue how they are going to circumvent the filesize limit in place. Probably pay Blizzard monies or give them the rights or something.

[Greenbane]

The only reason for trainer use[...]

Objection! Use of only!

As a counterexample, I pretty regularly pull out the memory editor or (if it's convenient) a trainer for games that also have built in cheats. I've done it to the original SC a number of times. It's mostly a matter of convenience; typing in some unwieldy stream of letters every few moments/once per game (may go through quite the number in quick succession while cheating, remember.) versus the one/two button (often in-game) functionality of trainers or the (potentially) persistent effect of the memory editor.

Trainers are usually a lot quicker and more fluid in their cheat activation than anything the developers put into the game itself, at least when there's been any effort at all to implement a decent UI.

So I'd lay bets with you not everyone using them was trying to get around the achievement thing. Some just wanted to type less. Probably other reasons, too. Quite a few probably were trying to get around the achievement system, of course, but that only language gets you in trouble

Rest of conversation I guess doesn't really do anything for me. Won't be buying SC2 anytime this half of the decade (or this decade, period), no real interest in clearing out the HD space to filch it from somewhere. Maybe if I hear about something amazing coming out of the mapmaking stuff and the price went down, I'd fork out some cash, but... eh.

EDIT: Has anything really neat been produced yet?

Well, I agree, it's a matter of convenience. And it's probably true not everyone was purposefully using trainers to cheat the achievement system, but the thing is Blizzard can't possibly tell if you're using an unlimited resources trainer function to have more fun against the AI, or more easily get the hardest achievement of the mission you're playing. The fact is these trainers work around the official cheat codes' achievement limitation and can be abused to commit foul play against the system.

The CheatHappens article is actually laughable. Who's really at fault here? The company who takes arguably harsh measures to defend its own, clearly-defined rules (EULA, which you have to accept to play the game at all), or the company that makes and profits* from tools they know the game itself forbids and are liable to get their users suspended/banned?



*The trainers in question are only available to CheatHappens users with paid memberships, so yes, the company's essentially profiting from them. They discretely covered themselves with the tiny "USE AT OWN RISK" sentence, and who knows how recent that is. Given the article's palpably defensive tone, I'd bet the tiny disclaimer wasn't there all along.

[dogstile]

Doesn't change the fact that Blizzards banning for achievement farming. Which is really silly.

[Zangi]

Eh, still douche to outright ban them instead of just disabling their achievements.

And EULA... players have to buy the game first before they can read that.... at least the boxed version.

[fenrif]

I'm pretty sure EULAs are of dubious legal standing precisely because you have to buy the game before you can read them, and the often dense legalese most people can't understand.

The CheatHappens article is actually laughable. Who's really at fault here? The company who takes arguably harsh measures to defend its own, clearly-defined rules (EULA, which you have to accept to play the game at all), or the company that makes and profits* from tools they know the game itself forbids and are liable to get their users suspended/banned?

Having not read the CheatHappens article, I'd say Blizzard is at fault for taking peoples money for a product, then not providing it. Obligatory car analogy: If I sell you a car, and say you can't listen to radiohead while driving it, then set fire to the car when I see you cruising around listening to Kid A... does that make radiohead the bad guy for selling you a CD? (If you want a really specific analogy then after you bought the car, you'd get home to find a note under the seat in french telling you what CDs were ok to listen to).

Once they've sold you the game then it is yours. Not theirs. You can take the code apart piece by piece if you want, swap out all the graphics for lolcats pictures, whatever. It belongs to you. Banning people who cheat online from the online part of the game is acceptable because you're connecting to their servers and services which they can refuse you access too. It's also ok for you to then find some way to connect to a 3rd party server and play the game that way.

Banning people from the singleplayer portion of the game because of something as innocuous as achievement whoring is downright criminal.

[Greenbane]

Blizzard did publically state they were going to be harsh on unauthorized third-party cheat programs.

And I hate it, but in some cases we no longer own the games we purchase: we buy a license for their use. StarCraft II's EULA leaves that pretty clear in the very first, all-caps paragraph, and there's no "dense legalese" there. And it seems that, while it's true you can't read the EULA before purchasing the game, you can get a full refund if you reject the terms of the agreement within a month of said purchase.

THIS SOFTWARE IS LICENSED, NOT SOLD. BY INSTALLING, COPYING OR OTHERWISE USING THE GAME
(DEFINED BELOW), YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE
TO THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO INSTALL, COPY OR USE THE GAME. IF YOU
REJECT THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT WITHIN THIRTY (30) DAYS AFTER YOUR PURCHASE, YOU MAY CALL
(800) 757-7707 TO REQUEST A FULL REFUND OF THE PURCHASE PRICE.

As questionable as it may be, if you agree with the terms presented in the EULA and stick with the game, then you can't really complain unless you really didn't infringe any of the stated rules.

As for the car analogy, that really doesn't work. The CheatHappens trainers were specifically designed for a particular version of StarCraft II, and the developers coded and essentially sold them knowing precisely that kind of tool was forbidden by Blizzard. A Radiohead CD has tons more uses than being played in, say, a very specific production line of 1994 Ford Escort models. It really doesn't apply.