Linux Users Banned by Blizzard for Using WINE to Play Diablo 3

[Shawn Zipay]

The fun just keeps on coming for Blizzard and Diablo III. The latest hot button topic seems to come from a number of Linux users who were caught up in a wave of bans all because they were using WINE to play the game they purchased.

As Kotaku notes, it's a tricky situation. WINE is technically "unapproved third party software" which is against the ToS for Blizzard and Diablo III. On the other hand, it's not a traditional software emulator and is not considered by many to be a conventional emulator that would probably result in a ban.

Users are reporting that they were playing just fine up until a day or two ago. One such user notes that he plays StarCraft II within WINE and has never run into this problem as he has with Diablo III. Support tickets have largely been met with a "too bad" response.

Salutations William!

Thank you for contacting us. An additional review of the action taken against the Diablo III account on not_really_real@emailaddress.com has been completed. We have confirmed our initial findings, and the account action will not be reversed or changed.

Actions are based on the violation's severity and take previous violations into consideration. This action was taken in accordance with the Terms of Use (us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/legal/) and our Diablo III Policies (us.battle.net/support/en/article/diablo-iii-policies), which all players acknowledge and agree to before logging into the game.

We understand that these policies may seem harsh, but they are in place to ensure that every player is able to enjoy their time in Diablo III. Thank you for respecting our position.

Oh well. So much for the years of gameplay with Blizzard and all the $$.

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A third party program is any file or program that is used in addition to the game to gain an unfair advantage. These programs may increase movement speed or teleport heroes from one place to another beyond what is allowed by game design. It also includes any programs that obtain information from the game that is not normally available to the regular player or that transmit or modify any of the game files.

Sorry, but that's more than a bit messed up.

(via (20+ pages topic at Battle.net))

[Linux]

I've lost all faith in Blizzard, I understand WINE is "unsupported and a 3rd party software/technology," but you got to be kidding me that they would ban people over something as stupid as this. I really hope to see Blizzard crash and burn I don't think after all this Diablo 3 failure that I could ever see myself spending money to buy another one of their games. It makes me really disappointed because they have made such great games in the past, but now with all this political bullshit and power/money grab I just can't see the company having much community support.

[Vreki]

Re: Linux Users Banned by Blizzard for Using WINE to Play Diablo 3

Am I the only one who see this as a potential hacker heaven?
Running a game on a completely open source system where you can make whatever changes to the libraries that you desire?
How are blizzard supposed to guard against hackers if they allow that?

But anyway, Blizzards latest statement on this:

We've extensively tested for false positive situations, including replicating system setups for those who have posted claiming they were banned unfairly. We've not found any situations that could produce a false positive, have found that the circumstances for which they were banned were clear and accurate, and we are extremely confident in our findings.

Playing the game on Linux, although not officially supported, will not get you banned – cheating will.

[Shawn Zipay]

Re: Linux Users Banned by Blizzard for Using WINE to Play Diablo 3

It's honestly hard to tell if Blizzard is just covering their tracks on this or if those people really were banned for cheats. I say it's difficult because Warden (Blizz's anti-cheat system) banned a ton of Linux users in the early days of WoW. It wasn't until there was a big public outcry that they finally reversed those bans for false positives. That is to say, Blizzard has a history of banning Linux users with an over zealous Warden anti-cheat.

[Linux]

Warden throughout the years of Blizzard has false banned Linux and done many other stupid things throughout its period of time. I still don't see how having an open source system is going to greatly effect the play of game. Yes you can inject crap into an open source system that would directly allow you to hack but to get past a system that is going to be checking for injections and many other things that is a totally different story. I just think all the bad stuff that keeps coming up in the news with Blizzard is going to hurt them in the end. Furthermore, from what I've read and seen most of the D3 community is dead and blizzard lots millions of players because of their flop of a game and it keeps flopping.

[Shawn Zipay]

Re: Linux Users Banned by Blizzard for Using WINE to Play Diablo 3

It's only a flop if it didn't sell well.

The fact is, it's sold millions. They already got their money, they don't care. The diehards are still in game trying to use the RMAH and Blizzard gets their constant cut from that as well. All it means for Blizzard is that they made they money, they now don't have to spend as much on servers given how much it's died off, and they still come out of this with a huge profit.

[Infernalis]

Re: Linux Users Banned by Blizzard for Using WINE to Play Diablo 3

Not a flop but it's not good for their reputation. I know I won't take Heart of the Swarm and most probably won't buy any addons for Diablo 3 unless it's über awesome.

[Thortok2000]

Re: Linux Users Banned by Blizzard for Using WINE to Play Diablo 3

At least Blizzard communicates. You ask IW about MW3 and they barely say anything at all, especially for the PC market. Blizzard addresses just about every issue that comes across. In fact half the time you even know it's an issue because Blizzard responded to it.

There's a lot of things they didn't get right about Diablo 3, and their effectiveness at game making and good decisions has gone down, and they seem to be listening to the community a lot less than before. But I still think their heart is in the right place and they're trying the best they can. I look at Diablo 3 as a case of good gamemakers failing to be perfect, as opposed to being bad gamemakers.

They are, however, owned by Activision, which is made of greedy bastards. So sometimes that's the root of the problem.