That tends to be one of the more ridiculous claims that I’ve come cross throughout the years, but unfortunately, there are those that believe that. Yes, technically, we may be receiving subscription funds from accounts that may be violating our policies. That doesn’t necessarily equate to making money.
First, if they really are exploitative accounts, there is a high likelihood that the funds used to pay for game time aren’t legitimate. Either the methods of payment are stolen or the game accounts themselves are, or both. Even when they aren’t, the negative impact those kinds of activities have on the game is not small.
Games that allow rampant cheating, exploitation and illicit services, lose players. So even if that one exploitative account was paying legitimately, the fact that it exists can cause other legitimate players to stop playing. There isn’t any profit in that, beyond the fact that is goes against everything we stand for as a company and as gamers.
So no, reporting your suspicions is not a waste of time nor is the statement “Blizzard won’t do anything” remotely factual. There are thousands of threads over the years from accounts that were caught, which directly contradict that phrase.
It needs to be stated though, that cheating, botting, exploitation, is not a simple subject. It is massively complex and messy. Investigations often take much longer than we’d like because we do what we can do also not negatively impact legitimate players. It is a constant struggle with folks trying to create programs that try to remain invisible within our systems and it takes a while to figure out what kind of footprint they are leaving so that we can break, block or simply auto-detect it and deal with all of a particular bot/exploit, not just the ones that are reported.
Please continue to report any activity that you believe may be suspect, Nykolaz. It is very much appreciated and helps us a great deal.