Well, one of the reasons Blizzard has used as an excuse before, is that “when a new type of bot is being used, we let it run free on purpose so we can collect more data on how it works.”
Basically they’re saying they let them run free so they find out how to add that bot into the “naughty list” in Warden (their anti-cheat software).
As for why they let them run around for so long, has more to do with incompetence than anything else. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean incompetence by the programmers. I mean they’ve got a systemic problem of incompetence in positions to make decisions.
Steve Jobs put it best:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlBjNmXvqIM
Basically the people in charge don’t have any concept of what good quality is for a player, and what bad quality is. So they make decisions not based on consumer retention or satisfaction, but rather on cost efficiency and market projections.
Blizzard doesn’t have monopoly the same way Xerox did though, but if you replace ‘monopoly’ with ‘very large market share’, then the entire video describes Activision-Blizzard perfectly.
Blizzard did have GMs manually banning bots in the past. It’s not like they’re hard to spot either, you know? It’s so easy, people are even making youtube videos of how easy it is. Pservers also relied on their own “GMs” to manually ban bots.
Manual policing to enforce the rules is still better than automation. Counter-strike’s public servers are a good example of this, with how Valve let people host their own servers. This way, people could enforce their own rules as they wanted, and good servers with good reputations naturally rose to the top because they did a good job of keeping the cheaters out. This is an effect of how enforcing the rules fosters trust in the consumer base.
Valve still had their VAC bans, but it was about as efficient at spotting cheaters as the Warden is in WoW.
What Blizzard is doing now is the direct opposite of fostering trust. They’re eroding trust, because they rely too much on automation. Costs much less to manage than actually dealing with the problems though, so as a corporate group, it’s not hard to see why that is.
Blizzard is a studio where the “product people” as Steve Jobs put it in the youtube vid, are running around jumping through hoops just to do their jobs despite all the demands by the decision-makers.
Also, if you look at the amount of people they banned, what was it… 74k this time? Let’s assume they don’t use a credit card to set up a subscription for a lower monthly cost, and instead either buy tokens in retail’s AH or find some other way to pay for the accounts on a monthly basis for €12.99/month. (Cheaper in the Russian client)
So adding up 74k accounts, that’s €961260. Per MONTH.
As a corporate suit, making decisions based on profit figures while not caring about the consumer satisfaction and blames consumer retention problems on other things, what decision would you make?
As I described it in that thread, the result of banwaves with large gaps inbetween still gives off the impression to the masses that “something is being done”. But the problem remains the same.
So you can imagine the thought process there by the corporate suit being something like “Well, we can’t let people think we condone cheating, but they do provide a decent chunk of money every month, so let’s just do enough to make it seem like something is being done about it while not actually preventing them. That way we can still keep the profits from the regular players while also getting a little extra on the side.”.
While completely losing sight of the impact on consumer trust and subsequently the impact on consumer retention, because to them the retention problem lies elsewhere.
Because the people in charge are incapable of understanding a player’s mindset. We’re just money that moves and talks. Just watch the youtube link of Steve Jobs on why Xerox went down. It describes everything perfectly, which you can see signs of everywhere in what Activision-Blizzard is doing.
People should stop thinking of ActiBlizz as a corporate group with passion and ethics. Those days disappeared a very long time ago.