Video game cheats and pirates got a surprise this week, as Microsoft and Blizzard banned and suspended hundreds of thousands of gamers for infractions.Microsoft got things started by banning from Xbox Live an unspecified number of gamers who had modified their consoles to play pirated – backup – copies of their games.
There were no official numbers, but the forums where such gamers cruise were full of bizarre outrage. "How dare they ban me for playing pirated games!" some said.
Blizzard, maker of World of Warcraft, was more forthright, stating that it had banned 350,000 online players from its older StarCraft and Diablo II titles for using software cheats and hacks during online games against other players.
What's annoying is that these video game companies are having to divert what seems a growing pool of resources to chasing and defeating these players.
That's time and money and manpower that doesn't go into making new games or improving existing titles.
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