Hacker News Reader

Comment by btipling | Hacker News Reader

Don't rush to judgement. I doubt this is about DRM, this is probably more about protecting players from hackers. Clients have to be analyzed for modification, it's the same as what any Punkbuster game goes through. Banning wine may just be a consequence of Blizzard keeping the game safe, which is a worthwhile effort.

Diablo games are notorious for being hacked, and I assure you that if you happen to lose valuable items or characters due to a hack, you will not be happy.

If wine users are unfortunately axed because of this they could be angry at Blizzard not having a Linux client (which they shouldn't because I doubt it would be worth their while to support) but they should not be angry about not being able to use Wine.

View on HN

Not sure I buy this argument. "Clients have to be analyzed for modification" - why? PB works mainly on FPS-style games where you don't want people to run around with auto-aim bots. Does it still matter in Diablo?... maybe to a small extent, but I wouldn't care that much.

"Diablo games are notorious for being hacked" - do you mean server security? This has nothing to do with the client.

"I assure you that if you happen to lose valuable items or characters due to a hack, you will not be happy." - yes, I would not be happy, I would be furious if they allowed it, since it's the server that should control and verify those kinds of issues, not my client. If I don't explicitly allow a transfer, server should deny it. If someone tries to kill me in a way that game-physics disallow, server should deny it.

It's not like you need the official client anyway - the way to interface with the server is already known. There's an unofficial game server available and being developed since late 2011 (http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?813096-SPO...).

In short - I don't believe disabling the client on one specific platform will help anyone in any way. People can and will write bots that work around such protection. This is more like DRM.

The basic problem is autopilot bots. If you don't have rigorous protection all the way down to the operating system, it's not particularly difficult to make a bot that will run Diablo 3 bosses for you. If Diablo 3 were merely a single-player game this wouldn't matter, but they have made the auction house and the game economy an integral part of progression in the later stages of the game.

Bots may not be as directly harmful to other players' experiences as instagibbing anyone that pops up on the hacker's screen, but anyone who can successfully run an autopilot bot is devaluing the game for everyone. There's a real and measurable difference in the accomplishments of farming and selling a rare item for $50 on the auction house and selling the same item with the same time investment for $5. Because Blizzard wants the time people spend playing Diablo 3 to have more worth, they must aggressively police any automated bot activity, which might mean hitting some false positives here and there.

I see your point but don't agree with the method. The protocol is known and can be decoded. If they protect the client, it will just result in better standalone bots. Actually it will make them available quicker and in better quality if the client hacking is possible.

Humans play something like 1 million hours a week at lvl 60 and people running bot's want them to also have good items to farm faster so it's not clear that bot's harm the economy as they would buy and sell just like a person who plays a lot. Assuming bots gather both cash and items the only possible issue is they are a larger drain on blizzards servers, but I have a hard time believing it's that significant as the player base has already been cut in half.

  > the player base has already been cut in half.

By? Am I missing something?

The end game is not all that fun so it's been losing 10% of it's population a week. Granted, there is no subscription costs so you can come back at any time.

https://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5968886836

if they stated as offical policy, you cannot use wine, or you will be banned, that would be fine. However, they are banning people for using wine with absolutely zero warning, and zero recourse, refund, or appeal. That's absolutely terrible customer service.

Apparently they have a note regarding Linux/AmigaDOS as not being supported in their legal section in their website. They warn that such usages are prohibited. This could have been updated recently, however.

It was rather surprising to see AmigaDOS even mentioned.

A relic from Diablo 2 perhaps? My Amiga was still kicking around at that time, though my x86 compatibility option was putting a Windows PC in the same tower as the Amiga!

I, too, assume that this is related to preventing in-game cheaters and not DRM or security.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com