I’m sorry, but the suggestion that bots help Blizzard make money or can be viewed by the company as even remotely positive is laughably ridiculous. Such an idea illustrates a fundamental lack of understanding of who these people are.
First and foremost, the majority of botting/farming accounts are exploitative. They are usually compromised accounts (meaning they’ve been stolen from normal players, often who are currently inactive so aren’t aware of the theft), or they are created with stolen credit cards.
In both cases, dealing with fraudulent charges costs the company money. That isn’t counting the negative impact is has on normal players, who may get frustrated and quit playing because they don’t want to deal with bots, gold sale advertisers, etc.
No, we certainly don’t make money from them and the amount of resources dedicated towards efforts to deal with them is substantial.
Given the entirely unnecessary resurrection from 4 months ago, I think this one should be closed. Thanks all.