This is sure to upset a few players minding their own business playing through the single-player campaign of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. If you don’t play online, but still use some form of cheat for the single-player game, Blizzard can still decide to suspend your account and stop your game from working.
It sounds ridiculous, right? You pay for a game and want to make it a bit easier for your own enjoyment, but Blizzard are watching, taking notes, and deciding they don’t like the game being tampered with. There’s no impact on other gamers because you are playing on your own, but Blizzard take issue because of the achievements and gamer score integration. Here’s the developer’s response to a recent complaint about such a suspension:
While single player games only appear to be you and a computer at first, your achievements and gamer score also carries weight and prestige for your online play.
The first player to fall foul of this goes by the name of gm0ney. His account was suspended for using a trainer to help make the single-player campaign easier. He never touched the mutliplayer component, but still got suspended.
So the rule is: cheat in any way in the game other than what Blizzard has implemented itself as a cheat and you are running the risk of an account suspension.
I think banning someone for cheating in a single-player game that has no impact on other gamers is wrong. Applying cheats to games is as old as videogaming itself and if a player wants to cheat the game somehow they should be able to.
The issue Blizzard has is the achievements and gamer score still being updated. But surely the answer is to identify a cheat is in use and stop updating the achievements and score? Why take away the game completely? This is something the player has paid for after all, and they are not cheating in a multiplayer situation so the same rules don’t apply.
What’s also distressing is Blizzard monitor single player games. Again this seems to be because of the score and achievements. If that’s the case the player should have an opt-out in the game options and the ability to play unmonitored and to their heart’s desire as long as they stay offline.