Those caught will be "permanently banned" from Blizzard's good graces, meaning no more Battle.net access. The purge begins "in the near future."
"Blizzard Entertainment has always taken cheating in any form in Blizzard games very seriously, and that's no different for StarCraft II," said the studio.
"If a StarCraft II player is found to be cheating or using hacks or modifications in any form, then as outlined in our end user license agreement, that player can be permanently banned from the game. This means that the player will be permanently unable to log in to Battle.net to play StarCraft II with his or her account."
The developer tends to wait a while and gather a huge number of accounts that are 'iffy' and then ban them all at once - the numbers have been as high as 350k accounts all getting perma-banned in one fell swoop. Now that's a banhammering.
"Playing StarCraft II legitimately means playing with an unaltered game client. Doing otherwise violates our policies for Battle.net, and it goes against the spirit of fair play that all of our games are based on."
"We strongly recommend that you avoid using any hacks, cheats, or exploits. Suspensions and bans of players that have used or start using cheats and hacks will begin in the near future. " StarCraft II has sold over 3m copies around the globe.