Blizzard issues fatwa against Starcraft II cheaters Blizzard is threatening to permanently ban Starcraft II players, found to "be cheating or using hacks or modifications in any form. "This means that the player will be permanently unable to log in to Battle.net to play StarCraft II with his or her account,” Blizzard said yesterday. This is hardly new news as Blizzard already …
Anyone who plays WoW has heard this from Blizz before - every now and then they go all ranty and sometimes even ban a few goldsellers etc...
Ultimately, the bans (if they happen) are of little matter - Blizz want players subscription money, and this usually outweighs any moral dilemma of removing goldfarmers, cheats etc - until enough paying subscribers make enough fuss to get another of these token responses.
I believe it when (if) it happens...
When buying the game itself, presumably the player is not agreeing to these terms until they start paying for the online subscription. Because banning them would render the game worthless, and presumably the terms of this agreement would only apply to the online subscription, would they then be able to claim back the cost of the game (but not the subscription) from Blizzard? This is the sort of thing I'd like to see a test case for, to find out which way it would fall...
Except with star craft 2 you don't pay for online subscription, you actually rent it with a one off payment. You certainly don't own it.
You cannot play the game at all unless logged in, which is a pain as so far I have had two days where it can't find the server because it is busy, so I can't play the game I own.
And of course during play the servers time out, lose connection so nothing is recorded.
So the game is rendered worthless because of Blizzard simply having crap servers and requiring the login. Had this been very public I wouldn't have bothered, afterall it does say interenet connection required to play, but there is no offline version so don't think of playing it on a laptop in a hotel or if BT have issues with the copper wire etc.
"Except with star craft 2 you don't pay for online subscription, you actually rent it with a one off payment. You certainly don't own it.
You cannot play the game at all unless logged in, which is a pain as so far I have had two days where it can't find the server because it is busy, so I can't play the game I own."
I thought you just said you don't own it?
As for the original issue, if people are logging into Blizzard's servers, Blizzard have every right to ban people under whatever circumstances they feel appropriate.
Here in Mexico, the version sold in stores is a $300 MXN (about $25 USD) 6-month Starcraft Edition. That is, it will "expire" in 6 months, and you can buy it for another 6 months at the $300MXN price tag, or pay USD $60 for the unlimited game.
The Asia region has actually gone for 3-day, 7-day, 30-day Starcraft licenses as well.
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