Blizzard must be pretty used to combating bots and exploits by now, having spent the last ten or so years cleaning up the streets of World of Warcraft.
Now it’s time to tidy up card battler Hearthstone, and the developer has kicked things off by banning “several thousand” accounts suspected of ‘botting’; using third-party programmes to automate gameplay.
“We’ve recently banned several thousand Hearthstone accounts that were associated with the use of third-party programs that automate gameplay,” explains Blizzard in a blog post, “otherwise known as ‘bots’ or ‘botting’. These accounts will be banned until 2015. As we’ve stated, fair play is at the core of the Hearthstone experience, and cheating and botting will not be tolerated.”
Obviously in a competitive card game, balance and fairness is pretty key. Blizzard have their anti-cheating hellhounds out sniffing for hackers and bot accounts, and anyone found out will be “permanently closed without warning.”
If you’ve got some information or suspect another user of cheating, you can contact Blizzard anti-cheat support at this email address.
