Blizzard ready to drop the banhammer on Diablo III cheats

Blizzard is watching Diablo III cheats very closely, according to a recent posting on the Diablo III blog. Blizzard claims that “Any Diablo III player that is found to be cheating or using hacks, bots, or modifications in any form…can be permanently banned from the game.

Clarified, a banned player will be “permanently unable to log in to Battle.net to play Diablo III with the culpable account. Blizzard elaborates on what they deem to be cheating in the recent post.

“Playing Diablo III legitimately means playing with an unaltered game client. Doing otherwise violates our policies for Battle.net and Diablo III, 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, bots, or exploits. Suspensions and bans of players that have used or start using cheats and hacks will begin in the near future.”

Yesterday, Blizzard announced that it was making final preparations for the launch of the Diablo III real-money auction house. Those preparations include requiring players to use authenticators with their account to deter account hijinks that the inclusion of real-money could bring into the fold.