Last week, an internet denizen going by the name “gm0ney” claimed that Blizzard had given him a 14 day suspension for using a third-party trainer in the single player component of the game. He claimed he had never played a StarCraft II multiplayer game.
According to gm0ney, Blizzard sent him this notification explaining why his account was suspended:
“Offense: Terms of Use Violation – Exploitative Activity: Unauthorized cheat programs (‘hacks’).”
Furthermore, he claims that Blizzard stated that “while single-player games only appear to be you and a computer at first, your achievements and gamer score also carries weight and prestige for your online play.” This seems like a fair enough explanation. But, what if you don’t care about “online prestige” or in-game achievements? Shouldn’t you be allowed to play the single player game as you please? Well, you can’t.
Shacknews contacted Blizzard querying the suspension. They received this response:
“Blizzard Entertainment is not banning StarCraft 2 players just for using single-player cheats. There’s been some confusion in the last couple of days about the suspensions and bans meted out to players caught cheating in StarCraft 2. It’s important to point out first, that many of the 3rd-party hacks and cheats developed for StarCraft 2 contain both single- and multiplayer functionality. In order to protect the integrity of multiplayer competition, we are actively detecting cheat programs used in multiplayer modes whether there are human opponents or not.
That said, players who opt to use any type of 3rd party hacks do so at their own risk — there are already built-in cheat codes for StarCraft 2 single-player that can be used safely. Blizzard Entertainment has always taken cheating seriously and will continue to aggressively crackdown on players who cheat in our games.”
So there you have it, having third-party StarCraft II hacks installed on your PC is likely to get you banned or suspended, regardless of your intention.
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