You see old blizzard would have hired GMs who they gave to pay to monitor bots.
New blizzard makes the paying customers handle the reports, then they take 6+ months to ban them so not only did blizzard not pay an employee instead they are making money off both the police (the players) and the criminals (the bots). Even more now with boosts needed.
It’s genius really then every 6 months you post a “we banned 100,000 bots so the community actually thinks you are trying to solve the problem. When I’m reality they are just raking in the cash.
And if anyone actually believes they don’t make money off the bots like they claimed where it’s all stolen credit cards and what not you are delusional. Even if 90% of the charges were refunded blizzard still is making an absolute killing on the 10% that aren’t refunded.
The players always were reporting, the only difference between then and now is that there’s no longer GM moderation only player moderation. I’m sure there were many cases where the GM ended up banning bots because of the reports from players, I wish they’d hire GM’s it was so dumb to get rid of them in classic.
I see no reason as to why Blizzard would lie to us about banning bots, seems rather pointless to lie.
I have been in a couple matches where we watch the bots fight eachother in the starting points and take bets. Its pretty fun while you wait for the match to wrap up.
Oh, I thought that there was some bot moderation done by Game Masters. It does make sense though, I’ve always known that they ban in waves as that’s how they’ve banned bots in every game they’ve run (every being limited to D3 and WoW afaik).
Thanks, I guess GM’s really were more for player issues and not botting issues.
Still want them back though, I feel like that one GM priest incident ruined GM’s for classic.
The real reason they do bans in giant waves, is because it ensures that the botting itself remains profitable. The ban waves are merely a business expense for the bot companies. Think of it more like driving on a toll road. Pay the toll (new game license and boost) and bot with impunity for the ~6-9months it will take between ban waves.
That’s why you’re seeing so many bots right now, the absolute best time to bot in this game is immediately following one of blizzard’s massive ban waves. The bot makers know they’re free and clear to bot with impunity for the next few months.
I looked up their quarterly reports and they seem to bring in, on average, around $400-$500M each quarter (last quarter was an outlier likely due to DF). What I don’t know is what % of that is WoW specifically, but in the grand scheme it’s irrelevant(ish) in the sense that whatever Blizzard is reponsible goes there.
So with 120k bots that’s 1.8M a month or 10.8M for 6 months, and then if they get 10% that is is basically a million for 6 months, which is 180 grand a month which makes it 540 grand per quarter. The delta being the range of 540 grand to 5.4M if they actually do get all that revenue, and then you have an extra 21.6M of added revenue per year for Blizzard.
All that math is based on the 120k figure they recently banned so I guess we have to start asking how many bot accounts are running around. If they really could bring in an extra 20M over the course of a year via bots that’s roughly ~1% increased revenue via bots. At the end of the day the dollars are the dollars and it’s money, and while I don’t think Blizzard does anywhere near enough of a job policing them I kind of doubt they are really feeling a noticeable impact of the revenue they get.
The other thing is they have to spend some manpower on dealing with reported cards and such, which costs them money that eats into the profit they get out of bots. I would question if they simply choose to do it this way because it’s better than policing the bots upfront and saves them money in the long run.
If bots where actually costing blizzard money, they’d be financially incentivized to pay an actual human (or team of them) to remove them, and/or do simple things like forced region locking players (which at least nukes any bots not behind a VPN).
Please don’t take PR statements from people who wasted their major on communications, who work for corporations with every financial incentive to spin the narrative and outright lie so seriously. Basic critical thinking and following the money is all that’s required.
Current and former Blizzard employees have accused the company and their superiors within of some truly heinous things in the last two years. Of all the things that have come out, why has there never been a single employee who has claimed that Blizzard actually makes a tremendous income off bots and forces their employees to lie about it?
Maybe you should take your advice and do a little critical thinking here. They handle bots the exact same way they always have. Are you suggesting they’ve always made money off of bots? 18 years and no insider information leaked about this conspiracy theory you’ve conjured up in that “critical thinking” mind of yours?
Here’s a position open on their hacks team that deals with bots:
You mean to tell me low level employees aren’t given access to high end internal financial data, and don’t want to ruin their careers by talking about internal business related information? (which is way different than social issues and illegal acts) This sir, is shocking I say. Shocking.
As for your job listing. All that means is the cost of subscriber loss is possibly finally outweighing the gains from bot money. Or it could also just be corporate virtue signaling and PR pretending like they’re addressing the issue without any real intention of actually doing something. It did after all get you to eat that up with a spoon and shill away.
The fact is Blizzard as a corporation has zero credibility anymore. Literally nothing short of them releasing detailed accounting data showing exactly how much in dollars bots impact their bottom line would make me believe that they take the issue remotely seriously or in anything less than most cynical terms. And even if they where to do that, you’d then be forced to confront and even worse thought, that they are genuinely trying to stop the bots but are literally too stupid or bad at their jobs to do so. They are literally being paid by players to handle the problem and failing spectacularly to the point where it looks deliberate. Quit shilling for the people literally stealing from you.
