Do you have any proof at all for these claims or is it just baseless speculation?
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.
Something to understand though, a lot of these accounts are compromised accounts. These actually end up costing Blizz money, not making them money. Their “subscriptions” are often tied to fake or stolen credit cards which then costs Blizz even more to deal with.
our hacks team works to do more than just take out an individual bot, they work to see what kind of trace a bot leaves in our game and they work to either break it, block it or detect it, so that they all can be dealt with and not just the ones that are reported. This often takes time as we don’t want to tip our hand, we don’t want the bot creator to focus in on what may have been detected so that they can improve their program to hide. It is a constant battle and we want to make sure we have the most impact when we take action.
Right, so I’m inclined to belive Blizzard CMs and MVPs, who have extensive knowledge about the subject and about Blizzard’s inner workings, over the run-of-the-mill forum conspiracy.
Like I said, you are welcome to conspire about false narratives all you want, but, as seen above, bots do not bring in money for Blizzard, so the idea that LFD was removed to encourage bots for increased revenue is preposterous.