Most of the feedback I gave over an year ago while the desktop app was still in beta are still valid for the current version. I’ll copy here the most relevant part for this topic:
I would really like to have the option to completely disable anything unrelated to installing, updating, repairing. uninstalling or launching a game. I’d like to disable the following features:
- News - For any game there is their main website (why not just leave another link near the forum ?)
- Promotions - Blizzard store already have a nice interface for that and if I want I can subscribe to receive newsletter by email
- E-sports related content - Personal preference. I don’t care for watching a bunch of other people playing, I prefer to play the game myself
I still find it very annoying and even an intrusion of my privacy and personal preferences being forced to have all of those features.
As a software developer I believe it would be really easy to implement a simple switch to disable such features, this leads me to believe there is no intention on Blizzard side to give us that option. That said…
My device, my rules
I decided not to wait for a Blizzard to give us that option, instead I tested a simple but effective solution.
If you want to block all of those features, simply add a new rule on your firewall and deny ports 80 and 443 (HTTP and HTTPS) only for Battle.net.exe.
So far I had no problems updating, launching or installing any game but the whole middle section of the launcher is gone, only showing a message that the content is unavailable. The only unwanted side effect I could see is avatars not showing up for the friend list.
Reverting this is as simple as removing the firewall rule.
Warning
Since this solution does not modify the desktop app and only make changes on the user’s device I’m pretty sure it does not violate any agreement, at least I couldn’t find anything in the ToS, in any case use at your own risk.
25 Likes
I get you are trying to help – but you might get a lot of peoples parents calling their ISP asking why their “internet is broken.”
A more practical solution would be just to give us the option to revert back
Please, read the whole topic more carefully, specially those lines:
(HTTP and HTTPS) only for Battle.net.exe.
and
Reverting this is as simple as removing the firewall rule.
3 Likes
I am aware of what you wrote – I am just saying the more ignorant may not.
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Indeed this is more of a last resource than the ideal option. I hope they add a proper option (I would even prefer to install/update and run the game manually), if they do we wouldn’t even need to do those things.
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I am launching by icon currently, if my game is requiring to be patched through the launcher I am just going to walk away after my sub ends.
Can’t say I am happy with where my money is going, and I can only hope they give us something that is not this… or let us go back.
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Sadly I’m on the same boat. I miss old Blizzard.
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I could go on and on for days… but I wont continue to hijack this lol
How would you go about doing this? In windows 10 I see an option to ban the whole app from accessing the internet, or ban all apps from accessing a specific port. How could I ban a specific app from accessing two specified ports?
Create a new outbound rule and select the type custom, on the apps tab select the battle.net exe, on the Ports and Protocols tab select the protocol type TCP and for remote ports add 80,443.
5 Likes
I didn’t even know such thing can be done. No more unwanted, irrelevant, distracting stuff, no more bandwidth hijacking. Bless you man, thank you!
Thanks for this, I was ready to quit Diablo 3 because of this.
Still working for the popups and ads. But, they seem to pull news via the website now. Any workaround for that?
Network conditions stopped us from loading your personalized content; here’s a look at what’s happening across Battle.net.
Yes. The blizzard launcher is awful. Every time I start my PC up I get bombarded with crap I care nothing for. I only want to play SC2 arcade games. Everything else blizzard does nowadays is garbage and I care nothing for it. I miss old Blizzard. This new company can burn to the ground for all I care.
Please!!! How do I stop those freaking Battle.net Ads???
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Picture guide for anyone who needs it:
imgur . com/gallery/eYXsp86
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Does this prevent or mess-up the patches and updates for d2r ?
thats kind of a douchey thing to say
The launcher does just seem to keep getting more and more obnoxious. We can unsubscribe from Blizz promotional emails, why, for the love of Thrall, can we not unsubscribe to having adverts instead of news, and popups trying to hawk the same tripe that most of us aren’t interested in?
We want to use the launcher to launch or update our games, not face a barrage of advertising. For a large portion of us, it merely serves to reduce our opinion of your company every time we launch one of your games. Are the long-term effects really worth that extra sale or two of a pet bundle?