Are tools that parse info from the in-game screen or apply an overlay within the TOS?

General Discussion
1

I have been thinking about creating a tool that could help players perform tasks outside Diablo 2 more quickly while they are playing. It would work in a similar way as the Awakened POE Trade tool for Path of Exile which has at least 34k people who use it. This tool allows a player to hover over an item in their in game inventory and press some keyboard shortcut, and the tool would parse the item name/info from the item tooltip and display some overlay popup which could contain more detailed info about the item, links to a wiki, potential runewords that can be made in the item, even trading/pricing info from legitimate trading platforms/sites (obviously not condoning RMT).

To be clear, this tool would not try to access or edit any in game memory, it would just capture the screen and parse the relevant item text and provide a shortcut to something outside the game that the player could do manually like look up in a wiki or trading site. It would not give any input into the game itself, so therefore would not provide the player with any unfair advantage other than saving time otherwise spent manually looking up a unique item to see how well their drop rolled or browsing legitimate trading sites to get an idea of what they could trade it for. It may seem like overkill to create a tool to help with these things, but even after playing this game for over a decade I still find myself constantly going to wikis or trade sites, dozens (maybe hundreds?) of times during a play session

Before I started making something like this though, I wanted to get an idea of whether or not this would be allowed in the D2R TOS. In my opinion it should be because:

  1. It doesn’t attempt to access or edit the game memory, it just looks at what is visible on the screen.
  2. It doesn’t edit the game screen, just creates a popup window over top with contextual information.
  3. It doesn’t give they player any in game advantage.
  4. I planned on making it entirely open source, so Blizzard could audit that it is not doing anything else that could break TOS

But ultimately, if Blizzard decides that tools like this shouldn’t be allowed then I wouldn’t want to waste my time creating it.

1 Like
2

Well it’s going to be considered a 3rd party program soooo… yes it would be against the TOS.

3

Ok but having other programs running on your computer isn’t against TOS. Even programs that similarly capture your screen (such as programs that all streamers use to stream on Twitch) are allowed by the TOS. Why should this program that doesn’t actually interact with the game process in any way be any different?

4

It alters game experience. Even if in an indirect way. But I would wait for an MVP to verfy this. Like @MissCheeta.

5

Yeah, that’s the only argument that I can see against such a tool and exactly why I wanted to post this question. But since its not actually interacting with the game and just responding to what’s visible on the screen in my opinion it doesn’t give any unfair advantage.

Would love a response from a Blue poster