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Blizzard Responds To Single-Player StarCraft II Ban Allegations

by Phil Kollar on Oct 14, 2010 at 11:00 AM

Earlier this week, I reported on allegations from a cheat-focused website that Blizzard was banning players who used hacks for StarCraft II in single-player modes. Blizzard has issued an official response to this story. The full statement follows below:

"Blizzard Entertainment is not banning StarCraft II 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 II. It's important to point out first, that many of the 3rd-party hacks and cheats developed for StarCraft II 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 II single-player that can be used safely. Blizzard Entertainment has always taken cheating seriously and will continue to aggressively crack down on players who cheat in our games."

So there's the official word: If you use third-party hacks, particularly in AI skirmishes, there's a good chance you're going to be suspended or banned. I'd think this is obvious for anyone who notes that you're logging into Blizzard's Battle.net service even to play single-player modes, but I also don't entirely understand what people are using hacks to accomplish outside of the cheats already built into the game.