Blizzard Jumps the Shark?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on October 11, 2010

Suspending or banning people and revoking their CD-Key for cheating in single-player against the AI?

If it’s for real, that’s beyond the pale. Maybe I’m just an old fossil who remembers some games that were so buggy and poorly balanced or just plain vicious that they couldn’t really be won without a little bit of not-so-clever trickery. But seriously, guys… it’s their game, they bought it, they should be able to play it however they want if they are playing by themselves.

Oh, wait, I forgot. That was the old world.

In this brave new world, you only rent your games from the publishers.

Screw that.

Filed Under: Biz, Mainstream Games - Comments: 10 Comments to Read

Chris W. said,

If this is real, Blizzard has just forgone the 120 dollars or so they would have had from my purchases of Diablo 3, Starcraft 2 and its expansions.

As someone who finds mods, fan patches, trainers etc. to be a large part of the fun from playing a game, I’m getting very tired of the ‘our way or the highway’ attitude from game companies.

I suppose there IS a silver lining – a broader selection of games. In the past, a Bioware or Blizzard game was an automatic purchase for me, and took up most of my available gaming time. Now I no longer have a ‘go-to’ release, and will end up looking through games I would otherwise never have played or considered.
droid said,

The reason Bnet is doing this is because people are using them to get achievements, which you can not do with the built in cheats. So responsible mods will still be ok if the mod has some way to signal that cheats are enabled and achievements should be disabled.

Still, this is absurd, a more reasonable approach would be to revoke badges, and if there is a reliable way to detect third party apps, disable achievements while they run. What would Valve do? For TF2 they took away hats for people that used a third party app to earn them without playing. I don’t think there were any VAC bans in that instance. And TF2 is a multiplayer game so it isn’t even comparable.
Andy_Panthro said,

This is a consequence of having these service platforms tied into single player games.

By which I mean Steamworks, Battle.net, that EA/Bioware thing and the Ubisoft thing.

It’s things like this that make sure I don’t buy games with these sorts of “services”. It’s all fine for multiplayer, but for a SP gamer like myself I find it unacceptable.

I agree with Chris W., that it makes me look around for those classic or independent games that I would have otherwise overlooked.

In the end I get a better deal, because classic and indie games are often much cheaper than those new AAA games.
LateWhiteRabbit said,

Sounds like another hoax to me, but if it isn’t, well, that’s pretty awful. To be honest, I haven’t had much love for Blizzard for a while now.

First, because I see so many people with WOW addictions worse than a drug habit (and I unfortunately know about drug habits from seeing them up-close in family members), but that isn’t necessarily Blizzard’s fault – they could just do more to help identify addictive behavior and take action against it. Second, since they were bought out by Activision, run by a certain foot chewing Bobby Kotick – I really can’t trust anything they say or do. Third, and possibly influenced by the second reason, the decision they made to break Starcraft 2 up into 3 separate games. I may change my mind depending on price points, but the way it looks now, we will be paying full price for those expansions – in the $60 range. And speaking of that, charging $10 more than any over PC game on the market – because they can. They essentially (or Activision) held one of the most popular franchises in gaming (especially in Korea) hostage in exchange for more money.

With Kotick talking to shareholders about having Blizzard repackage the cutscenes and cinema elements from their games and resale them as a “game movie” for $40, I have no trust in the direction the company is taking either.

Blizzard jumped the shark a long time ago, it just takes so long for it do anything that it took us this long to realize it has died and become a zombie.
sascha/hdrs said,

That reminds me how Apple tried to punish customers who jailbroke their iPhones. In the end Apple lost, a court has deemed that it’s not illegal to modify your own property.

The maintream industry will eat itself!
Ray said,

As I understand it, they also used the cheat in matches against the AI in battle.net matches – hance the ban.
Joe Larson said,

Blizzard jumped the shark when StarCraft 2 was nothing but StarCraft 1 with a new coat of paint. I’ve spoken about this at length elsewhere, but the short version is StarCraft 1 was innovation, StarCraft 2 was duplication and renovation. That was all the proof I needed that the Blizzard of yore that sat around talking about crazy ideas had been replaced with a soulless monster who sits around discussing how they were going to rape our bank accounts instead, and I poured out a 40.
Tesh said,

“In this brave new world, you only rent your games from the publishers.

Screw that.”

Indeed. I’m not playing that game.

Recettear and Minecraft for me, thanks.
Ed said,

This is a case of spin. Blizz includes “sanctioned” cheats along with SCII, so you can terribleterribledamage your way to victory if _that one level_ is giving you a hard time. You just can’t get achievements for levels you cheat on because… what would be the point?

CheatHappens sells trainers that allow you to get those achievements. They unlock multiplayer portraits & decals that, like TF2’s hats, are kind of a big deal as far as strutting your stuff goes. Blizz didn’t like that, so they suspended (not banned) trainer-users for two weeks.

CheatHappens didn’t like _that_, so they threw a hissy fit & the gaming press picked it up. I think this is a case of Blizz maintaining the integrity of it’s multiplayer portrait system, not some evil deed. Others however, feel differently. I respectfully disagree, but I hope they have all the facts and context.
Rampant Coyote said,

Good to know it wasn’t quite as bad as originally reported. Still… this is exactly the kind of issue we’re going to see more of as even single-player games become more tightly integrated with online presence. I’m of the opinion that if you bought the game, you should be able to do what you want with it, so long as it doesn’t hurt others. But I will have to acknowledge that if the player abused the system that awards achievements and bonus gear, then they can have that privilege revoked. But it sounded like suddenly their license was suspended, which – with Blizzard’s dial-home every-time-you-play DRM, would mean you COULD NOT PLAY THE GAME AT ALL as a result. I’m very much against that.