I don’t use it, but I saw GM forum post from 2019 saying they would issue a warning first rather than a suspension. Seems like this same thing happened back then too where a bunch of people caught a 180 day ban and they said it was too harsh back then. I just know of a couple people that caught a 6 month ban, so if 180 days is too much then, why is 6 months okay this time? Just doesn’t add up.
Upon further review, we found that some suspended accounts appeared to be only using the detected exploit to do client-side character model alteration. That is an activity that we would prefer to respond to with a warning, rather than a suspension, this time. As a result, we have reversed all of the suspensions issued in this action.
Third party software that edits the game files has always been against the rules. That said, your friends would not have been given specific info on what led to their account actions. They would have been given some basic info, like cheating etc., and that’s it.
As for whether it’s too long of an account action compared to some previous time when Blizz did a ban-wave, that’s not something CS is going to be able to answer either.
Policies change. Maybe they only wanted to give warnings first back then so that it would be on the record that “this is not ok, knock it off or you will get suspended”. Bans for this are absolutely justified, modifying game files and exploiting the game is one of the worst offenses you can make.
They even said back then that they would prefer to do a warning “this time”. That makes it pretty clear to me that the warning was not something they would continue to do going forward if people continue to exploit.
What happened in 2019 was the warning. Instead of banning at that time, they reduced it to warnings. Now, it’s a ban because the warning has been issued.
Edit to add: Even if you are new to the game and/or the jmorph type software, the onus is on the user to see if it’s allowed. 2019 was the warning for all, not just those using it then.
They did something similar with the recent change to some of the software used to multi-box. Blizzard issued a warning to all that input broadcasting software (and later hardware) would no longer be allowed. That was the warning, continued use now will get you a ban.
They specifically said at the end of the warning that the warning/lenience was “this time” only. They advised anyone using such tools to immediately uninstall them, and specifically stated that they would not be so forgiving next time. So yeah…it’s a 6 month ban now, equivalent to botting.
