Source: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5978861022 <- this one is a forum post by a victim
Source: http://www.screwattack.com/news/linux-users-beware-blizzard-will-ban-your-d3-account

Blizzard is, yet again, being the true heroes cunts that they are.
They have recently banned a few Linux users who were using the program "WINE" - a windows emulating program.

Their reasoning for banning is this (from the EULA):


Now, there are several MAJOR problems with this.
First, WINE is a windows emulator, and supposedly not a program that allows the modification of their games.
Second, their explanation lacks any real evidence of the people they're banning breaching their rules or the program they're using (WINE) modifying their game.
Third, They are REFUSING to even refund the closed accounts. $60 down the drain
Lastly, WINE is an acceptable program for SC2 (atm). What the fuck?

Remember all that fiasco about censoring the word "dyke"? I truly think that Blizzard's PR is a troll and should be fired and then shot on the street.

Yesterday, I watched a Ted Talk video on how employers approach work as a set of rules and incentives, rather than morals. This ordeal so closely parallels this that it is disturbing. http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html

---

I admit that it is probably wrong to assume that Blizzard banned them just because they're a Linux user or because they're using a program that they do not support. I'm actually now quite certain that something besides that must have happened. As Sacrieur said, they wouldn't ban them for doing legitimate things.

However, I stand by my statement that this continues to hurt Blizzard's reputation. The reason is that Blizzard has been doing many things wrong lately, and there has been many problems with their recent games (SC2 and D3). People buy Blizzard games for the product AND the service, and the service has been piss poor.

The reason why people are not happy about this is because this ban gives them a sense of insecurity. As paying customers, D3 acts like an investment. If the company you've invested in have been having troubles since the beginning (D3 errors and gold haul and whatever), the reputation will be lowered. The gold haul should not have been a problem if Blizzard's services were up to par and able to satisfy their customers. Blizzard's reply to this is evidently not good enough as well, and they have failed again and again to reprimand their customers.

Yes, in the end, the banned people may have been cheaters, but it is the way that Blizzard handles these situations that bugs me more and more.
Isn't that the most reassuring thing a company can say?
There is not a whiff of apology. It is more like a threat.
If D3 was a free game, then this is fine. But seriously, D3 is a $60 investment. If you invested in a company, and then you hear that they suddenly revoked the investments from some people without giving out conclusive reasons and evidence, do you really want to continue investing in this company?

Wake up guys. This isn't about the game itself (b/c, as I'm sure, it is amazing), it is about PR.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Jul 5 2012, 2:03 am by UnholyUrine.

It's Blizzard. What do you expect?

That they should be given money for their games.
Or at least, that's what I might have expected before Starcraft II was released.

Correct me if I'm wrong but..... weren't linux users banned in WoW one time and Blizzard unbanned them

Or instead of jumping to rash conclusions (like account hacking, the 'gold dupe' hoax etc) you could actually read Blizzard's statement on the situation:
http://blues.incgamers.com/Posts/10/1/40/819/172288/banning-linux-users-for-using-linuxreally

What, so just because Blizzard says that their ways to find cheaters are fool-proof, we're just supposed to believe them? Just because they couldn't find a "false positive" doesn't mean that people weren't wrongfully banned.

I actually believe Bashok http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/vytrc/hate_to_break_it_to_you/

I'm tempted to lean on the side of blizzard on this one. They seem to be pretty legit about it.

If the case is that the program does allow cheating/modification of the games, then banning makes more sense. As I've said, there's no proof of cheating or no cheating.

Still, either way Blizzard is getting a bad rep due to some poor PR decisions. If it was a truly legitimate ban, then it should have been presented that way so this incredible ragefest does not occur. Either way, it still makes me lose faith and lower their reputation.

I would still argue that permanently banning a person that paid $60 bucks for the game is a bit drastic. Maybe the people that they banned did some really extensive cheating, enough to illicit a 60$ punishment. But, we'll never know -.-

You're judging Blizzard based on what this guy has chosen to reveal about what is going on. He is obviously biased and you have no idea if he's telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth, or if he's left crucial details out like "I was trying to hack the game under linux...".

Blizzard says that they haven't found any false positives and that they don't discuss individual account details with anyone but the account holder. It seems a reasonable position to take. I'm sure if they had made a mistake they would likewise have admitted it.

I mentioned two other cases up above: people claiming to be hacked while having authenticators installed - Blizzard said every single complaint they looked at, they did not have an authenticator attached. There was also a "gold dupe" hoax where a lot of nerdrage about a supposed exploit on the auction house - Blizzard investigated and said that there is no evidence it ever happened, they never 'fixed' the issue because it never existed in the first place and no concrete evidence ever emerged to say otherwise.

So far it's Blizzard 3 - internet bitchers 0.

The guy's evidence is hearsay.

And that other guy's evidence is on OSX.

---

Use some logic skills for crying out loud. Why would Blizzard ban linux WINE users, investigate the claims, and then keep them banned if they weren't legitimately banned? That just alienates customers.

So what happened here was that Blizzard investigated these claims and didn't find anything that triggered a false positive....
In SC1 on patch 1.16, Blizzard said that they weren't experiencing problems on their end about lag issues but a crapload of people were complaining about it so idk about this one

@Lanthanide

I admit that it is probably wrong to assume that Blizzard banned them just because they're a Linux user or because they're using a program that they do not support. I'm actually now quite certain that something besides that must have happened. As Sacrieur said, they wouldn't ban them for doing legitimate things.

However, I stand by my statement that this continues to hurt Blizzard's reputation. The reason is that Blizzard has been doing many things wrong lately, and there has been many problems with their recent games (SC2 and D3). People buy Blizzard games for the product AND the service, and the service has been piss poor.

The reason why people are not happy about this is because this ban gives them a sense of insecurity. As paying customers, D3 acts like an investment. If the company you've invested in have been having troubles since the beginning (D3 errors and gold haul and whatever), the reputation will be lowered. The gold haul should not have been a problem if Blizzard's services were up to par and able to satisfy their customers. Blizzard's reply to this is evidently not good enough as well, and they have failed again and again to reprimand their customers.

Yes, in the end, the banned people may have been cheaters, but it is the way that Blizzard handles these situations that bugs me more and more.
Isn't that the most reassuring thing a company can say?
There is not a whiff of apology. It is more like a threat.
If D3 was a free game, then this is fine. But seriously, D3 is a $60 investment. If you invested in a company, and then you hear that they suddenly revoked the investments from some people without giving out conclusive reasons and evidence, do you really want to continue investing in this company?

Wake up guys. This isn't about the game itself (b/c, as I'm sure, it is amazing), it is about PR.

Why should they apologize for banning cheaters?
Why should they not threaten cheaters with bans?

As someone who has done more than his handful of banning, (though money was not involved here) I can sympathize with Blizzard. I am also curious as to how you would handle the PR aspects of bans, because explaining everything and providing evidence for all bans to the public is far from a practical solution. (Disclaimer: I amnot saying you would advocate such a solution, but that it is impractical.)

This quote is from the response Blizzard gave to all their customers.

They indeed should apologize for their inability Make conclusive explanation and provide evidence because, as you've said, that would be far from a practical solution.
They should also not threaten us, the paying, non cheating customers, as if we are or will ever be cheaters.
They can state that they will ban whoever cheats, but they should not be doing so in such an unprofessional, un-reassuring manner. They should be saying so with humility and grievance that they had to choose this course of action. They should express that they were unable to find a better solution, and should reassure their customers that their accounts are safe as long as they follow a set of directions and then list the set of directions.

Note that this is totally within their power to do so and should be expected from us.

EDIT: It is not so hard to say "We apologize for the misunderstanding and our inability to provide concrete evidence for banning so and so because it is not within our policy to do so. We assure you that your accounts are safe, whether or not you use Linux, Windows, or Mac, as long as you follow these sets of rules

(LIST)

Thank you for your understanding,
~Blizzard"

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jul 5 2012, 3:09 am by UnholyUrine.

Can't say I agree with you at all UU and I don't have any problems at all with the way Blizzard handled this or their responses.

You might want a lovey-dovey response so you don't feel upset, or something, but I'm really quite happy with a no-nonsense response if that means it will scare other people from cheating, or thinking about cheating, or dabbling with cheats etc. Because D3 is online-only, I might as well make use of the auction house, which means that other people cheating in the game will ultimately affect me: so ban the scum. As I don't plan on doing anything that could remotely be regarded as cheating, I don't have anything to fear. In such a circumstance where I was erroneously banned, I believe that Blizzard would perform an investigation and fix their mistake.

I did some digging into the guy's story. So far it's all hearsay. There is no evidence for his claim in the least, allow me also to link to the original source (search for "Banned?" -- it's in the comments).

I should point out that there are NEWER comments that are having problems with D3 and WINE, but are not banned. It invalidates his hasty generalization that Blizzard banned him because he was using WINE. These fellas have been using a cheat or hack and got caught, now they're going public and lying about it. Case is pretty much dismissed here -- because the guy in question doesn't have a case.

I don't think their official statement was harsh in the least. I actually like the succinctness of it.

Think it is pretty clear that Blizzard just rid battlenet of a few less cheaters - no complaints here.

OP seems to have a major hate-on for Blizz??

That's pretty much how I feel about the issue.

Bashiok stated that they had the necessary evidence to ban the accounts. So it seems sure that memory or whatever warden detected, was changed during runtime. That might have been caused by an error in whine, etc.
I'm not sure how much you can tinker with these emulators. Maybe it's a rare bug in wine which caused the player to modify the game memory. However, if everyone complains and opens tickets, it's more likely that Blizzard does some research on this matter.
I assume that the facts on Blizzard's site are correct, but that the cause of the problems weren't the users (which is really hard to find out).
Also, they only had 3 cases in the forum when Bashiok posted that statement.
There might be some people that cheat and just claim to be banned falsely because someone made a topic about that in the forums. It will be hard to find that out. Creating a ticket and hoping that their account will be unbanned for shady reason would be the dream of every caught cheater.

I assume that Blizzard is researching these issues right now and will reactivate the banned accounts, if they will find something that could have caused a false positive in these scenarios.