As we mentioned, we internally monitored and confirmed a recent incident in which a World of Warcraft group gained an unfair advantage by abuse of access to development-only spells on a live realm. Our tools confirmed what was also surfaced in community discussions, and we have investigated the incident carefully. We can confirm that this was the action of a single Blizzard employee, in violation of our Code of Conduct. This employee is no longer with the company effective immediately. We are also taking action against the player accounts that were complicit in this violation.
It has always been the case that a small number of Blizzard employees can use developer tools and spells on live servers: this lets us test and make urgent fixes to the live game when they’re needed. Every use of these internal spells and commands on live realms is logged and shared with our Platform Security team to help ensure that the occasional use of this access is warranted. The use of development tools for anything other than development work is against company policy. It’s because of the process we have in place around use of these tools that we’re confident this incident was isolated to one individual.
We want to thank those of you in the WoW community who reached out with information and real concern for the integrity of the game, as well as the community sites that are also working to remove the results of this violation from their records. When your findings line up with ours, it helps confirm that our own tools are catching what they should, and we’re grateful for the way we work alongside you all to protect the game and each other.
I will say why I have lingering concerns - not about this specific incident as such because I’m prepared to accept the logs have been audited and GM powers on live realms generate alerts to follow up, but the wider issue of conduct.
This is the second notable instance I can remember of streamers having what I will call “pet GMs” on standby. It’s not a single one off event now where streamers were able to get something, whether that’s a player banned or other favours.
Blizzard staff are obviously human, and also every company can get a bad apple. However this to me raises the question: these are two very prominent examples of abuse, streamer entitlement, corruption, whatever you want to call it. So what else is going on that didn’t get picked up?
The streamer entitlement didn’t come out of nowhere.
Nor did this culture of certain Blizzard staff getting way too cozy with streamers and influencers.
To add some further thoughts to my previous comment:
In both this case and the 2020 Classic WoW incident, the casualness of the requests is both revealing and concerning.
These two incidents have some striking similarities:
They involved a corrupt Blizzard employee.
They involved a streamer engaging with the Blizzard employee in real-time to make privileged requests. (Getting a player banned on the spot, or interfering with gameplay to time a key)
In both cases the violations were treated completely casually, as if they were inconsequential requests, instead of the gamer risking their account, and the employee risking their job.
If they were random incidents, there would be expected to be far more differences, but this seems to point to a cultural issue within Blizzard which is still ongoing.
Streamers do not get into a position to offhandedly make serious rule-violating requests casually on multiple occasions without some sort of wider cultural and behavioural standard at Blizzard.
Yes, these were 2 incidents years apart, but it’s the large amount of parallels in both cases that has me concerned most as a player.
Edit: There’s also the question on what might well go on that doesn’t get flagged up? Hypothetical cases where the requester doesn’t do it on a stream / with evidence, and the employee doesn’t take such egregious violating action that it flags up internally.
Account bans being overturned or mitigated? Other stuff that would on paper look far more legitimate?
I have no idea. But I can’t help but suspect there’s more and far less obvious rule violations going on, just not done in plain sight or where logging tools will immediately catch it. The sheer casualness of the requests on both occasions to me indicates a subculture within Blizzard who is comfortable giving massive special favours on demand.
If employees will casually commit obvious gross misconduct… what else will they do that isn’t so obvious?
Does it happen? No idea. But the questions raised by both these incidents certainly suggests it’s very well possible…
This has happened before, this is just first time community figured out, real question is why do GM’s have access to such powerful abilities especially in competitive scene like m+ and my guess also in mythic raiding.
Feels like this could’ve been prevented easily.
Also feels like wow is at a turning point, balance has been a joke and devs keep balancing giving classes turns, while anything else remains off meta, even tho they can easily do better, with a GM interfering in what is supose to be competitive really shows things are in a terrible state.
Exploits also being ignored that lets you ignore boss mechanics for example at one of the bosses in current season m+ dungeons.
Early season even had tank that could pull mobs thru places that wheren’t supose to be pulled, giving this class huge advantage early into season, only for it to be ignored until times have already been set, and a meta was formed around it early season.
To much ignorance right now unless entire community speaks out, and i am glad it did.
But it really feels like feedback is landing on deaf ears these days.
Normally it takes 6 months before actions towards illigal play is carried out, can we expect a change towards your “hunt” for bots will change now?
Couple of things: 1. players from the group are still running m+ so there was no punishment as of last 12 hours. 2. as someone that worked in gm capacities on other games, “fired” usually meant pr stunt and dude was moved to another desk/area and had to change the handle.
I am sorry, but this is not a usual “report” case. This is a one-of-a-kind thing, so they need to come clean with the actions being taken. (Not including GM, as they were pretty clear on it)
Personally, I do not accept this:
Totally unacceptable to me. What are those actions? Those “actions” will be the baseline, the precedent, if it ever happens again. And they can not tell that “it won’t happen again”.
My personal expectations are all of them getting permabanned for such a thing, as the conclusion is Tank was the only person who didn’t know what was going on and was simply just a pug. But the other 4 knew a GM was hanging out with them in the dungeon and took action when needed. (Still can’t get over how doofus he was)
That’s just vague info, saying “we are taking action”
It falls in line with back in the day when progression guilds would use exploits. The people ended up getting 4-6 weeks bans and the person who actively exploited/abused items would however get a permaban. In this case the GM got “removed” from his function/team as the post is vague about their fate.
