Here are the facts:
- Blizzard could remove 90% of the bots with minimal effort.
- Blizzard will not make any sort of effort to remove the bots.
So based on that you can keep playing or not.
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Anyone affirming that Blizzard “is not able to keep up with the botting issue” is delusional at this point.
It’s all by design.
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And the botters would also return with minimal effort. Kind of a catch-22 don’t you agree?
Currently the most common complaint is “I report them, they get removed but they come back != false conclusion, Blizzard did not do anything even if they acted on my report.”
I don’t agree with this opinion as they’ve published numbers in the past and then got berated for “falsifying” it lol, damned if you do damned if you don’t.
Since this subject comes back often I’ve made a sourced template with commonly asked Q&A if you want to read up more about it:
Other games like Valorant/League suffering from cheating and their countermeasures explained in detail
https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/dev-vanguard-x-lol/
An ex-dev that worked at Blizz about the efficiency of banwaves
I see often that people suggest that Blizzard profit off bots (Credit Fraud/Stolen accounts etc)
Do other games like Runescape or CSGO also “benefit” from allowing (aim)bots, using them for inflating sub counts or purchases?
Some accounts also get stolen with phishing methods or used with fraudulent credit cards, that incur chargeback merchant fees for Blizzard. The “paid” amount plus penalty costing Blizzard a lot more not to mention the damage the botters do ingame.
But wait “credit card fraud doesnt exist for games!!” Some people forget, that Visa stopped processing payments for Runescape because the occuring fraud was just that extreme at a certain point in history.
One of their last public numbers revealed close to 271k banned in December 2023 alone. I don’t think it was even the majority of them.
Poster mentioned fast bot instant removal problem and low currency accounts
Another poster mentioned they remove bots every few days after a report. They return ofcourse, proving that instant bot removals isn’t going to work.
Video 2 in this post mentions that the alternative to chargeback or stolen account type frauds is “currency fraud” where they pretend to be in that region and buy very low currency accounts to bot onto.
Better solutions?
There’s no game so far on a similar scale that has a solution. This problem is literally everywhere and anti-cheat development has yet to outpace the illegal bot development.
Kaivax statement on countermeasures against botting
If you have any good ideas don’t forget to submit them through the ingame suggestion box!
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- Blizzard only rarely catch Gold Buyers, and when they do, the punishment is very soft.
If you can’t remove the bots, remove the gold buyers.
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What you write is simple propaganda, the truth is that you earn good money from these bots, that’s why you don’t remove them overnight, you probably don’t understand the concept that we, the players, support you. We literally pay you so that you have something to eat, a place to live, and also for other expenses, read new electric cars and other gadgets. Personally, I’m only here because I forgot to cancel my subscriptions, You can take that 13 euros… I won’t pay someone who doesn’t give a damn about me or my private time! As you’ve already mentioned, there are plenty of games that don’t have the same problems as you, such miracles are mainly yours. Therefore, it is simply company policy, because after all, this is where you make money.
Do you really want to solve the bot problem overnight? Add the option of user verification by adding the option, one account, one ID card.
and don’t lie that these are legal issues, because it’s not true, you are a private company operating on the free market, and you have the right to set your own rules regarding your own product.
especially in a situation where most people pay from their own bank accounts anyway, so you already have our personal data! Plus remove the Pre-Paid Time Card payment option. And that’s it, problem solved!
So you took the last money from me, I will never buy time again, I will never buy a game produced by your company and associated with it.
I don’t greet you and I don’t pay my respects!
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bots pay for MAU’s ( monthly annual subs )
which help investors keep investing into WoW
they dont bann bots straight away to keep MAU ( monthly annual subs )
thats why they ban in “waves”
its always a bann after the quarter of each year as thats when the report for each MAU’s is given to investors
Higher MAUs’ means profit for Blizzard. which means investors stay invested
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knowing this fact, does that make you angry or just disappointed
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why would they ban 25%+ of the population ( the bot population) before the annual report is sent to the investors ?
i challenge you all to disagree with me, logical or critically speaking. put yourself in blizzards shoes, they want to keep this game running on a declining REAL player base so bots make up for the shortfalls in revenue ( subs)
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Step 1: Create a game and sell it.
Step 2: Create a cheating tool for that game and sell it.
Step 3: Create websites which sells your game’s ingame currency.
Step 4: Profit
This is only partly true; some bots are using stolen accounts and others are paying with stolen credit cards. And many of the “legit” bots are using game time cards from poor countries which are much cheaper compared to an EU subscription - so the bot income is not as big as you would imagine.
However, it is still an income and I agree it is in Blizzards interest to keep them “alive”.
it’s all in your head bro, with the gdkp ban nobodys buys gold anymore and all bots are unemployed now.
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The swipers still do GDKP runs, but now via Discord. Gold buying can continue.
For sure nobody buys gold for epic mounts,Lionheart helmet,cloudkeepers,Edgemasters or consumes.
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Serious question from a stone age man:
Would programming of bots be more difficult, if any form of addon support would be disabled?
The fact that they ban players for engaging in RMT when they allow and advocate for the environment for RMT to not only exist but be almost mandatory to participate in to keep up with their ridiculous schedules if you have any sort of job or social life is infuriating.
Blizzards stance on this issue has caused me to /quit from anniversary
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This is a very interesting point.
I don’t, but I would add the following - Is the RMT market also being used to better quarterly results?
I would also like the answer to this question…
Here is a suggestion
MAKE GOLD ACCOUNT BOUND
If they can’t “sell it” or at least have the easy transfer of gold taken away. I’d imagine the work around are harder and easier to spot.
PUNISH THE BUYERS WITH PERMANENT BANS
Yeah, publicly demonstrate the consequences of buying gold. Permanently ban anyone provable of buying gold, which, without gold trading should be easy as it comes down to fake AH transactions or account selling. Both of those should be easy to identify the guilty.
Obviously tackling the bots hasn’t gone well, Blizzard are hitting the bots as a cure but fix the cause (gold buyers) and folks will start thinking twice about it.
NO DEMAND, NO OR LESS SUPPLY.
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Do you think people will return to the game if they receive a permanent ban for gold buying?
The entire classic economy is set up around RMT and Blizz facilitates this by doing nothing about the bots.
I know plenty of people who got temp bans and just never came back, because why would you ? To be punished for swiping when blizzard is making thousands per month from bots is ridiculous
If you by “people” mean the gold buyers? I don’t hope they return to the game, as this are the players with a wrong mindset - the ones we dont want to see in Classic.
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The vast majority of players in classic engage in RMT, because the bots mean the economy is absolutely destroyed.
If you want Blizzard to crackdown on the buyers you will lose many many players, the demand for gold will decrease and so the number of bots will also reduce.
If you successfully ban everyone who has bought gold then you may end up with no bots because there is no demand, but a server with only a few thousand people on it, most of whom will quit because it is “dead” and half their guilds have been banned.
It is much fairer for everyone and healthy for the game for blizzard to target supply side