Microsoft, Blizzard Crack Down On Piracy, Cheating 150
Microsoft has confirmed that they've been wielding the banhammer lately over modifications to the Xbox 360 which allow players to run pirated games. Xbox Live's Major Nelson said the action would also void the warranty on the offending console, and that Microsoft will "continue to employ and bolster anti-piracy security measures to counter piracy in the gaming industry and improve security in the Xbox LIVE community." Meanwhile, Blizzard dealt with 350,000 of their own problem users on Battle.net, saying simply that they wouldn't tolerate cheating. This is likely one of many steps to clean up the system before it gets revamped for use with StarCraft II.
So Microsoft... (Score:2)
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I am a bit naive in this area also. However, I guess that it's similar to Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA). They could do a checksum or generate a hash on the binaries and on the hardware also. Anything that does not "match" could be flagged.
If the mod chip is in the hardware should it not be next to impossible for Microsoft to detect it?
I'm not sure that generating a checksum on hardware is all that different to doing it for software.
I don't have a Wii, but I am guessing (for the purpose of this reasoning) that it connects to the internet and checks 'things'. So, I don't really see it being "impossible"
Re:So Microsoft... (Score:5, Informative)
I would imagine one of the simplest ways to test is load a piece of software encoded for each console region. If they all run, it's modded.
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Re:So Microsoft... (Score:5, Informative)
I've got the HBC on my Wii and it's great. It even looks like an official (to some extent) thing because of it's (visual) quality.
Re:So Microsoft... (Score:5, Funny)
Or am I just that far behind the times...
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ELF = Executabe and Linkable Format (Score:4, Informative)
Turns out it's Executable Loader File.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELF [wikipedia.org] says it's "Executabe and Linkable Format".
It was the first time I had come across .elf files and thought it was a specific extension.
Ever noticed .orc or .hmn? How about .dwf, .hbt or .gnm? .kbld, .trgldt, .bhldr, .drgn or .nvsblstlkr? ;)
And don't you start a flame war between a GNOME pyrotechnician and firebreathing KDE dragon, okay? :P
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".kbld, .trgldt, .bhldr, .drgn or .nvsblstlkr?" Are these actually used for anything... drgn maybe but... .WTF for configuration/settings in game.
On a related note. WoW uses
No, duh... (Score:2)
.nvsblstlkr is of course "Invisible Stalker". All the extensions are disemvoweled names from the monster manual. Yes, I ar teh nerd ;)
Not elf... (Score:2)
Twilight Princess? Elf Loader?
Come on! Everyone knows that there's isn't a single elf in the Zeldaverse.
Call me when they have a Hylian Loader.
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There's an Hudson's Bay Company [hbc.com] installer for the Wii? WTF?
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If you ever want to play earthbound on your wii, I'd highly recommend using it. It's extremely simple. :)
Can't read firmware. (Score:2)
I believe MS cannot read the firmware.
If they could read the firmware it would be trivial to check for modded firmware and ban those boxes from Live. Since many many people connect modded boxes to Live, to play legit copies of games, and don't get banned they're obviously not doing this.
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How's your experience been with that one?
My box is out of warranty now so I've been considering doing a little hacking on it.
Is this really news? (Score:5, Insightful)
I might be in the minority here, but both Microsofts and Blizzards views on piracy and cheating have been very clear to me for quite some time, and haven't drastically change as of late.
Microsofts die-hard attitude towards modded 360s is actually quite understandable. If I'm not mistaken, 360 games aren't areacoded, and there's really no huge homebrew-scene for it, so the only thing modchips are good for are "backups", which - let's face it - are an excuse to run pirated games...
Re:Is this really news? (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, I really appreciate Blizzards hard work to ban all the cheaters, it would suck if they didn't cared. (And the same actually goes for farmers in WoW if they ruin the game experience for everyone else.)
An opposit would be Nintendo there they don't seem to implement some sort of cheating test (for instance control which bricks come in tetris and see if they fit in the location the game claim they fit in tetris, or that you can really walk where the client claim, or that it have the amount of resources, and so on and so on.)
Their lame trust of the client because they know the game can't be modified (unless there was flashcarts ..) has led to videos on youtube there people play for instance Tetris DS vs someone who only get 4x1 bricks .. Talk about a ruined experience. They could just had sent an array of say 20 bricks at a time and see if the current game state allowed position such a brick in the position claimed.
Anyway, hurray for Blizzard trying to make online gaming an enjoyable experience. If only there was some way to vote for ban of a player in random team games in WC3 or such if they team kill / just leave the game / ..
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lol, imagine how fucked up my mind was trying to comprehend what you was saying into my wc3 world before I had read the last line and understood it was about Diablo :D
"Level 99? Bots playing complete games? wtf?!"
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Yeah, don't help much on ladder games, it's not like you can choose not to join a game there :D
(at least not without leaving and losing stats if they lose.)
Also I wouldn't like to use a list made by random people why just didn't liked some other random person.
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I do not understand, why any company has the right to tell you how to play your game.
Well duh, because in most online games you affect others?
For the same reason you're not allowed to do anything you want in the society you're part of IRL either.
If I want to spend all of my day collecting gold
If I want to spend all of my day standing still
If I want to spend all of my day running in circles
In WoW it doesn't matter that much, I'll follow up on that one soon.
But in WC3 if you play a team game and then don't happen to sit at your computer later when the game starts, or leave because you want to eat or whatever, or tower our allies, or just leave to get bad stats faking a bad player so you'll get matched up with less skilled players later
Re:Is this really news? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm pretty sure that PS3 has the region free games and the Xbox still has nasty region coding on its games :(
Re:Is this really news? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes and no. Some 360 games are region-coded, some aren't. Just like with Blu-ray movies, oddly enough.
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PS3 games are always region-free, on the 360 some are, some aren't, and I am not really sure how or who selects which are.
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The 360 has region codes but the compatibility list on Play Asia suggests that many games are coded for more than one region.
Re:Is this really news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I have kids that might trash a game cd, so I can't make a backup from something I've already purchased? That's just wrong. In other words, I should go spend another $50 on the same thing?
Re:Is this really news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I have kids that might trash a game cd, so I can't make a backup from something I've already purchased? That's just wrong. In other words, I should go spend another $50 on the same thing?
Absolutely not. Why should you buy your kids another copy when they couldn't take care of the first one?
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Absolutely not. Why should you buy your kids another copy when they couldn't take care of the first one?
Heh. Do you honestly think kids only trash their OWN stuff? Even not taking into account that the kids might not even be old enough to take proper care of discs, the games might not even belong to them.
Or, if you will, let me tell you about my own experiences. I haven't got kids, I've got a dog - and you'd be *astounded* by the sheer amount of destructive energy that exists in a four-month old husky pup. If you feel like it, google for "husky damage" some time; scratched game discs are really the least of m
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It would be my game CD they broke, and there is little I can do about that. Kids break stuff and it's ok, you have to be very boring parent if you haven't noticed that.
This is highly theoretical since I have no CDs, you should only buy CD unencumbered games, such as:
There should be others, but those run on many platforms..
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For the love of God, man, are you trying to kill this guy's life? Why are you listing all these good games, all at once? Are you insane?
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It's the only way to pull him away from World of Warcraft. So he's actually saving his life.
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Why should we be using media that's so easily damaged? I've scratched DVDs simply by putting them in the tray slightly askew.. imagine all media was this fragile? Content owners are all too happy to sell you their wares on disks that get damaged very easily.. and they want to make sure you can't prevent damage by being able to back up what you purchased.
All these companies like playing both sides, they claim they're selling you a license, which means you should be allowed to backup as many times as you want
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$50 ? More like 70 euros around here. Which is almost 90 bucks and further validates your point.
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Kind of a point blank opinion and I don't disagree with you backing up. I don't actually think it's a valid complaint to argue against copy protection, though. No system is foolproof but I do tend to agree that online play copy protection is extremely effective combating piracy.
I have no solutions for one player games. Only this: if you want a legitim
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Until someone figures out a way to use another server instead of the one the manufacturer wants. It is surprising nobody has done this already (or if they have, I haven't heard of it).
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I think if I licensed the use of the window technology for exactly one instance of a window in perpetuity -- a common software license -- that yes, I should be able to create a second one after the first one is destroyed without paying any additional licensing costs.
I wouldn't expect someone to produce the new physical window at no cost -- just as I don't expect someone to produce a backup disk for me at no cost -- but I also wouldn't expect to have to re-purchase licensing rights if my previously existing
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The same kids might break a window in your house. Do you think you should have a backup window included in the price of your original installation?
I think you will find that consumers who express an interest in being able to backup their data do not, as a rule, expect the software vendor to supply the backup in addition to the original. Rather, these consumers will want to produce the backup themselves.
And if I am to take your broken analogy seriously: if the house owner was capable of easily manufacturing his own new window to replace the broken one, is it your position that he should be prohibited by law from doing so, or that the original window ve
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Disks cost something, just not very much. But the analogy is more fundamentally flaw -- you purchased the *right to use* the software, not the software itself. If you purchased the *right to use* a window -- say a license to patented manufacturing process -- you wouldn't need to re-purchase that license when producing a replacement window.
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It's a sticky situation and there's never a "right" here. As I say, I agree with discrete backing up. I do not agree that backups shoul
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Didn't you know, kids are not suppose to play video games.
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Or, we just make copies and not worry about it.
Same goes with DVD's the kids watch. I'm not going to *not* take steps to protect the originals just because someone might not like it.
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"If I'm not mistaken, 360 games aren't areacoded, and there's really no huge homebrew-scene for it, so the only thing modchips are good for are "backups", which - let's face it - are an excuse to run pirated games..."
Which I consider a fair trade considering the corporate extension of copyright law and the lack of works going into the public domain. Let's not act as if these gamers are the only bad guys, corporations are much more nasty then the average plebe can hope to comprehend.
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But 'going without' seems to not be part of today's vocabulary....
Re:Is this really news? (Score:4, Insightful)
"But 'going without' seems to not be part of today's vocabulary...."
There is a fundamental, philosophical, problem with the traditional means of distribution: the product is abundant.
Cars are not abundant. It takes a significant expenditure of materials and effort to put one together. When I drive off in one, I cannot simply dupe it and give the dupe to my friend. The laws of physics dictate a level of scarcity to this good, and as such it makes perfect sense to expect to receive money from every person who obtains a car.
The world of "data" follows different laws of physics. Once I have the data in my hot little hands, I can dupe it and give it to my friends at zero direct cost to the producer. There is no deprivation of use nor loss of mineral resources nor expenditure of manpower nor anything of the sort on the part of the original developer when I dupe the game. None. And I can keep duplicating this ad infinitum, at the same cost (of zero). Furthermore, my friends can do the same thing with the copy I gave them...there is no quality loss. Once the good exists, it can instantly exist everywhere. It is "abundant."
So, since data follows these laws (rather than the laws of physics as they apply to physical goods) people feel like they are being cheated when they are asked to pretend like data follows the laws of physical matter. They feel like they are buying into a game of control that is unfounded in reality and ultimately to their detriment (since they have to pay money for something that doesn't cost anything to produce *at this point* (excluding initial development costs).
I think that is the crux of the issue. We all know the good is abundant, and we all feel like pretending it is not abundant is just silly, and harmful to us (our money is valuable and if we can get games for free then we have optimized our entertainment budget and have more money left over to spend on things like real cars or educations for our kids or what-have-you).
What about the potential sale that we are "stealing" by copying a game? We tend to respond to such a representation of the situation with great cynicism. We feel like the only reason you feel entitled to every single "potential sale" is because of your insistence in everyone pretending that an abundant good is not abundant. We also feel that the dog-eat-dog world of capitalism doesn't guarantee a ROI on any kind of development project, so when you pound your fist in frustration at your inability to monetize your efforts we just say, "so try something else...thats what every other entrepreneur in the world has had to do...what makes you special? If you can't make money making games, do something else, and stop whining." That is the same answer we get when we complain about being downsized, or having low-paying jobs, or what-have-you...so we are just responding in turn.
Lastly...the age-old mantra that if you can't get money for every copy of a game sold then nobody will produce games. I call BS. Piracy has been alive and well since before the computer games industry even existed...and since long before DRM existed...and the games industry thrived anyway. And it still thrives, despite the continued piracy. Enough people pay for the games (even though they don't have to) that the industry remains profitable. If that model suddenly stops working, alternative models will take its place (subscription-based games and so on). If that doesn't work, and we actually reach a state of utter cultural impoverishment where no games (or music or movies, for that matter) are being produced because nobody can figure out how to make a living doing it (and no hobbiests manage to churn out anything but crap)...which I maintain is an economic impossibility...but if it actually does occur THEN it might make sense to talk about legislation...and there would be a conscious buy-in to the legislation from the masses who are hungry for cultural enrichment. However, this has not happened, and I therefore submit that it makes no sense to try to preemptively pass laws based on the premise that it might happen (given that it is unlikely and that the situation could be remedied after the fact anyway).
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Maybe, but let's be clear what Microsoft are doing. They are NOT bricking your console when they detect a problem. They're refusing to allow you entry to their online service, because you have broken the terms and conditions for it.
It simply doesn't matter whether your mod is legal or not, because they're not taking you to court over it. It only matters whether accessing XBox Live with a modded 360 is disallowed in their terms of service, and it is.
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Maybe, but let's be clear what Microsoft are doing. They are NOT bricking your console when they detect a problem.
Nope. They designed the console to brick itself! [wikipedia.org] :D
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+1 informative
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"I think that is the crux of the issue. We all know the good is abundant, and we all feel like pretending it is not abundant is just silly,"
The good is only abundant after decidedly non-abundant software engineers, artists, musicians, etc. have worked for a few years to produce the "abundant" final product.
"Piracy has been alive and well since before the computer games industry even existed...and since long before DRM existed...and the games industry thrived anyway. And it still thrives, despite the continu
Re:Is this really news? (Score:4, Insightful)
"The good is only abundant after decidedly non-abundant software engineers, artists, musicians, etc. have worked for a few years to produce the "abundant" final product."
Which is entirely irrelevant, according to the laws of supply and demand, their "product" should net zero because supply always exceeds demand. Imagine you had the same situation in the real world, lets say someone invents replicator technology, suddenly entire industries would go belly up. I find it highly annoying that slashdots resident capitalists are so pro protectionist, you want to protect an industry that clearly has "whip and buggy" issues, they want to try to profit off something that is not scarce. If it were food and water and the means to transport them virtually free, these people would be politically ostracized. These people still profit mightily despite piracy and artificially restricting supply. So until these industries go belly up any argument to the contrary is quite hollow. I could talk about the violation of civil and consumer rights that these industries engage in but I won't bother here since most of the responses are too mired in ideology, rather then reason.
There's no right to profit, period, if you don't like the situation don't work in the industry. Maybe you'd have us go back to pre-internet times and have all our hardware locked down with orwellian spyware just to make sure we were paying for our goods. The truth is modern protectionists need their head read, did prohibition work? Trying to go against the flow of human advancement with primitive territoriality and propertarianism is only going to further stifle innovation. We've seen what "protecting IP" has done for the patent trolls.
Strong stuff (Score:2)
"Which is entirely irrelevant, according to the laws of supply and demand, their "product" should net zero because supply always exceeds demand."
Which means we can't have products with large development costs and low replication costs in your suggested setup. But most of us like those products, which is why we have IP protection instead.
Also, rather surprisingly for someone railing against Slashdot "capitalists", you appear to have made supply and demand into some kind of moral imperative.
"These people stil
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There's a limited supply at the one end (engineers and programmers and artists creating content) and a limited supply at the other end (consumers). The unique thing here is an abundant intermediate. In your argument you imply that this intermediate matters more.
Under the standard economics "pure amoral rational actors living in a pure capitalist system" scenario, you actually do not have abundance because nobody produces anything*, because there is.
What we have is an interesting problem of how to incentiv
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As soon as the replicators mean that software devs like me don't need to pay rent or buy food, I'll agree with you. Until then, stop quoting some farcical sci-fi future as justification for stealing the work of developers like me.
You don't work for fuck-all, why expect everyone who makes entertainment to do so?
Re:Is this really news? (Score:4, Insightful)
Copyright is not a natural right. It was created by compromise between the public and the content creators. Until they come back to the negotiation table they are going to have all the problems they are having for the obvious reasons they are having them.
Re:Is this really news? (Score:4, Insightful)
This. It's rather unfortunate for the small guys who get caught in the big web, but the reality is until copyright is fixed and made reasonable again, the content providers do not have a leg to stand on. They can rant and rail about piracy all they want, but when the legit customers always have the short end of the stick and have no means for redress all due to horribly twisted IP protection laws, eventually even the most honest will turn to piracy out of sheer frustration. Rampant piracy is not an indication of dishonest consumers, it's an indication of greedy producers and developers. The degree of piracy relates (pretty directly) to the degree of unfairness in IP protection laws/methods. Fix copyrights and patents and the piracy problem will solve itself.
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You know, all things being equal if it takes you a hundred times as much text to explain your side of the argument, you are on dodgy grounds.
Here's the simpler side:
People work hard to make games. if you want to enjoy the fruits of their hard work, they ask you to pay them for their time. You get pleasure from games, just as you do from food, beer or the theatre. it's the same principle.
Simple really.
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2 things.
I agree copyright infringement is not stealing it's copyright infringement. If it were stealing they wouldn't need a whole new set of laws for it.
Second your abundant explanation contains the common omission. The first copy does not follow the rules you mention. Your post is only correct for the 2nd and further copies.
The first copy of a game is not abundant. It takes a significant expenditure of materials and effort to put one together. The laws of physics dictate a level of scarcity to this g
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As usual, a long, pedantic diatribe ignoring the issue that copying games without paying for them is ethically wrong.
It's all about getting something for nothing.
-Jeff
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As usual, a long, pedantic diatribe ignoring the issue that copying games without paying for them is ethically wrong.
It's all about getting something for nothing.
(Emphasis mine)
Are you trying to imply that I should feel bad for not paying for every breath of air that I take? I'm getting it all the time and I'm not paying anything at all for it in spite of the fact that immense resources have been put into improving air quality over the last several decades.
Of course, I do pay taxes. Perhaps it's only for the poor that breathing should be considered ethically wrong? Please enlighten us.
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Nobody would spend big money developing a big game unless they could rely upon copyright protection under the law. If home-copiers didn't kill their business, then companies formed to copy and market their hard work certainly would. No venture capitalist would fund a project that another venture capitalist could easily hijack.
The parent seems to argue that the fact that wholesale copying is not occurring is proof that copyright laws are not needed. If there currently were no copyright laws, then the pare
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You are wrong. You do have to pay for the game,
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Whoever modded this Flamebait was presumably looking for "-1, The Truth Hurts Me".
If you don't want to pay for the nasty overpriced games that the evil corporations insist on putting out in their endless quest to grind your face underfoot, don't play them.
Why not play some real homebrew instead? By which I don't mean "actually pirated, but we're running it in a homebrew emulator", but actual honest-to-God homebrew games. There aren't many for the Xbox360, which is good, because it means less money for the
More importantly... (Score:3, Insightful)
Something the summary missed somewhat in regard to Microsoft's bans is that they're not just for anti-piracy reasons but like Blizzards are also for anti-cheating reasons.
Apparently a rather major oversight was made in development of the 360 whereby the executables are verified for integrity, so you can't modify the executables to cheat on a console capable of running pirated discs.
What they didn't do is implement a method of ensuring integrity of game resources, presumably they figured developers knowing t
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The problem is that they are only selling in this format because the current way people's PCs and the internet works has left them no choice.
Their is still a lot of will in the industry to do away with it in favour of DRM'd formats where possible and I've no doubt having seen their antics so far they'd jump on the chance to try and ensure it's a format that wouldn't remain usable on trusted hardware.
Yes it's prevalent now, but would it still be if the music industry had a chance to try and do away with it?
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Regarding area coding, some games are so there is that excuse to an extent. The big games that are released in the same place worldwide at the same time such as Gears of War aren't area coded but the small games, like say Beautiful Katamari that was released like 5 months apart in different regions was. Area coding seems entirely dependent on release dates over anything else.
Regarding homebrew, there's no need- XNA does the job just fine so that's why the 360 really has no homebrew scene, as of Wednesday yo
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360 games ARE area coded, one of the reasons that I buy ps3 games when on holiday but not 360 or Wii.
I'd be tempted to hack the 360, especially as I don't play online. I'm not in the business of losing to 14 year-olds with more time on their hands.
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hahaha... you know I don't even mind the losing part, what kills me is that they're sore winners. They can't play the game and just have fun, they're constantly talking trash, cussing, etc. Just overall being irritating little brats. I can't even allow my children to play online. Even in the racing games, there's little kids on the other end spewing obscenities.
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I could probably give up online play, but the idea of potentially losing the XBL Marketplace? Fuhgeddaboutit. Way too much cool stuff to download and play (Pinball FX being my current obsession).
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oh that's true - being kicked off the marketplace would suck.
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You are wrong. X360 games ARE region-encoded. (except when it suits microsoft to not do so for blockbuster titles like Halo 3)
And microsoft would sell more X360 if it was possible to run XBMC on it, but being anal about modchips prevented that.
Banning X360 with modchip activated on live is understandable and commendable, trying so hard to bar modchips from X360 at all resulted in less sales of the console.
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360 games are areacoded. The games are DVDs. They use the DVD file system and region coding. Almost all .isos are modified to be all/no region. There are at least 2 products out there that will allow you to do this yourself with any 360 game.
Simple (Score:1, Insightful)
Xboxs cost more to produce than they sell for so they only make money off games. They have to defend game sales or go out of business. Blizzard has to defend their service because it costs them money every month to maintain and the cheats are freeloading off the paying customers. Neither case is about defending freedoms and both companies are well within their rights.
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I don't see how Blizzard would earn more money going after cheaters? It probably cost them more money to look thru replays and such. Sure if someone is permanently banned they may buy the game again, but except in that scenario? For WoW I can get it since it's a subscription game.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it destroys the value of the online community. What good would being able to play over the Internet be if your opponents could cheat and get away with it? Who'd keep playing that game? Only cheaters. Legitimate players would just play a different game.
It's the same reason Valve bans accounts on Steam.
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Yeah, but in the non-subscription games (unless you hear from someone else) you have already bought the game when you go online and gets bothered with cheaters and the profit for the company has already been made.
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For example; if Team Fortress 2 had been rife with cheating I wouldn't have purchased Left 4 Dead.
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Re:Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see how Blizzard would earn more money going after cheaters? It probably cost them more money to look thru replays and such. Sure if someone is permanently banned they may buy the game again, but except in that scenario? For WoW I can get it since it's a subscription game.
Back in the long ago the online gaming community for Diablo 1 was wrecked literally within weeks after some fucknut released a utility to allow you to hack characters.
As a non cheating player with what I considered to be an awesome character, I was really upset. Certainly I stopped playing within a few days of realizing that the servers were full of tricked out characters that should have taken months to create being played by people who obviously didn't have a clue how the game worked.
I don't doubt Blizzard remember that too, and don't want to see it *ever* coming back. The number of present cheaters is relatively small compared to the deluge that wrecked Diablo 1, but without action it would only get worse.
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With Wow the problem is worse for Blizzard. If you bought Diablo I, you paid and they have your money. With Wow, their interest is in keeping you paying and paying every month. Cheating ruins that.
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One thing to keep in mind is that WoW accounts are likely to be folded into something involving Battle.net within a year/the release of sc2/d3, whichever comes first. When installing the new expansion pack for WoW, players link their WoW accounts to a "new battle.net account", and there's an in-game reward for combining the two accounts (that hasn't been given out to characters on the live/production/normal servers, as far as I've seen).
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Is this just speculation or something you know? I think such bonuses is quite lame since they don't come from skill. Things like the collectors edition pet is better because a pet is useless and don't give any special benefit.
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I must have completely missed that dialog when upgrading...
Unless you were talking about the beta, where you did have to tie into the battle.net system.
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You don't say? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Meanwhile, Blizzard dealt with 350,000 of their own problem users on Battle.net, saying simply that they wouldn't tolerate cheating."
The b.net that I play on sure seems to tolerate cheating. Or at least it has for a LONG time.
Diablo 1 had Auto PK, Auto Revive (and then PK again of course), Town kill, dupes, and I believe there was even a god mode.
Diablo 2 had Way Point PK traps. Now it has Map Hack, dupes, auto aim, far cast, pick-it, chicken (auto exit), dupes, Town-Portal PK triggers, town kill, and more dupes! It's nearly impossible to play in a public environment on their public server. Most solo in passworded games, or perhaps with a friend or two... almost never with strangers.
I was one of a hand full of Diablo 2 players who were NOT included in this recent ban, and I must say that it was great to see it come. It was vindicating to see so many cheaters get what they deserved. It would be wonderful if they continued to enforce it (though they never have in the past after mass bannings, so I see no reason why this time will be different).
But for them to say that "they simply [do not] tolerate cheating." Well that's a bit of a stretch people! In fact, I thought it was convenient how the bannings came so near to the release of WotLK. Suddenly there was 350,000 gamers who needed a new staple to play.
-hps
Re:You don't say? (Score:4, Interesting)
Blizzard, at least in my opinion, was doing almost nothing to stop cheating.
Re: (Score:2)
The only "cheat" I'm aware of for Warcraft 3 is maphack and afaik Blizzard can detect it if you use it in ladder games(they host).
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think Diablo 2 is their priority as far as anti-cheating is concerned. I think they kinda quickly after release noticed they had done some basic mistakes that enabled cheating, like usual they trusted the client with too much.
I suspect that closed battle.net for Diablo 3 will have more information on the server and less cheating.
Re: (Score:2)
If a consumer has a bad experience playing D2 because Blizzard ignores the cheating, what makes that consumer think that the experience will be any better with D3?
I'd guess that Blizzard attitude towards cheating is going to cost them some sales of D3.
Re: (Score:2)
They're not ignoring the cheating in Diablo 2, as others have pointed out they're still banning cheaters from there. However I don't think it's a priority for them since it's already a lost fight. The game itself is flawed because it trusts the client too much which makes all kinds of exploits possible.
I don't see how their current anti-cheating attitude when it comes to Diablo 2 will cost them any significant Diablo 3 sales though, anyone fanatical enough about Diablo 2 to still play it and care about the
"Major Nelson", possibly off-topic (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Hyrb doesn't strike me as particularly younger or more appealing to the youth market than Kojima, Miyamoto, Peter Moore, Kaz Hirai or any of the other 'faces' of these companies I can think of. I don't want some trendy young thing, I want to be given useful information by someone who can get his point across clearly.
But then I'm in my thirties, so that might be something to do with it.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm middle aged and white, and have some grey hair. Am I not allowed to make any more games?
I hate to say it... (Score:5, Insightful)
...but Microsoft and Blizzard are right in their regard against cheating. Most paying customers would prefer a cheat-free, level playing field to enjoy. And just as I feel very strongly about the notion of personal property rights of the end user, those rights end precisely where others begin. (Am I showing my Texas personality?) So while everyone should have the right to modify their consoles and their games, they shouldn't then turn that into an advantage in game play that reduces the quality that Microsoft and Blizzard deliver. (I hated saying that too.) I endorse Microsoft's and Blizzard's position on this as far as it supports the general fairness to all users. (Of course, I stop supporting the position where they identify false positives and unfairly lock out innocent users... does that happen? I can only assume it does since no technology from Microsoft has ever been perfect.)
Does it only affect people that play online? (Score:1)
The summary didn't say anything about... (Score:2)
... Blizzard and piracy.
I was really disappointed that Blizzard might be involved in that, they have been the most progressive company lately, going so far as to offer unprotected freely down loadable versions of their old (previously protected) games on the internet.
They even let you download the Mac version of a game if you already have a PC serial number.
And LAN games don't pay attention to the serial number.
I eagerly await the new Diablo and Starcraft, and fully expect to buy full-price copies of both i
Oh, and ps. (Score:2)
I also fully expected to buy Spore when it came out. As of now I'm completely Sporeless and will remain so until they remove their copy protection.