Apparently, not only are people actually still playing StarCraft and Diablo II, they’re cheating to boot! Well, not anymore.
As part of an ongoing effort to keep online matches of its games held on Battle.net fair, Blizzard purged a massive swath of cheaters from its midst this week. Over 350,000 accounts for StarCraft and Diablo II were shut down, after they were found to be using third-party hacks. That’s a lot of cheaters.
“As a reminder, we reserve the right to close the accounts and ban the CD keys of players who are caught cheating on Battle.net,” Blizzard noted in a ban policy update for the two titles posted on Blizzard.net Tuesday. “Cheating ruins the game experience for legitimate players, and we will not tolerate it.”
The offending users in Diablo II will have the CD keys associated with their accounts restricted from Battle.net for about 30 days. Blizzard plans to shut out repeat offenders permanently.
StarCraft is now a decade old and Diablo II is not far behind. Both titles were mega hits and terrific games in their heyday, and both are now showing their age. Call me naïve, but it’s a bit surprising to hear so many players are still logging on to Battle.net to duke it out at some of the oldies. Perhaps the impending yet distant releases of StarCraft II and Diablo III have reignited old flames. Either that or some PC gamers continue to forsake the advent of burgeoning technology.
Just for chuckles, take a gander at StarCraft‘s system requirements:
Windows 95/98/NT 4.0
Pentium 90 or higher
16MB RAM
SVGA Video Card
Microsoft-compatible Mouse
50 MB free HD pace
DirectX 2.0 or higher
