this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023

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Diablo 4 players are getting banned for using that "seasonal exploit bug" | Eurogamer (www.eurogamer.net)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by nanoUFO@sh.itjust.works to c/games@sh.itjust.works

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[–] ElBarto@lzrprt.sbs 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Blizzard was quick to clamp down on the unethical practice

Unethical practice..... it's a video game ffs, you coded a buggy game and are now trying to guilt people for using said bug by claiming their actions are unethical... let's look at how ethical your company is hey blizzard?

Glass houses and whatnot.

I'm glad I've never given blizzard a cent of my money.

[–] meat_popsicle@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

let’s look at how ethical your company is hey blizzard?

“Uhh…we’re Microsoft now, nobody named Blizzard has ever been at this address.”

[–] deft@ttrpg.network 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

STOP

BUYING

BLIZZARD

PRODUCTS

[–] arin@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Blizzard was good until Activision merged and took over the leaders

[–] DeriHunter@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We released a game with a huge bug, but it's your fault that you take advantage of it. Imagine paying $70 at least only to be baned because of this bs

[–] winterayars@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago

This is the absolute worst thing to come out of the "free to play"/"pay to win" genre of games. "Our game is full of bugs? No, it's the children that are wrong."

[–] chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I despise companies that pull bullshit like this. Yes, it is obviously an exploit. Yes, it is breaking the game. However, Blizzard, YOU RELEASED THE BROKEN BULLSHIT. This isn't some freeware title hoping to eek by on a donation. This is a multi billion dollar company that has had years of development to get this shit right. Fuck you, Blizzard. I'm glad I didn't pay for your shit, and I will continue with that trend into the foreseeable future. Dump some of your capital into QA instead of CEO wallets. Companies shouldn't be able to ban someone from playing something that they paid for, unless explicitly stated in the EULA, and a generic clause about "exploits" isn't explicit.

[–] nortorc@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

Well, at least you can still play the game offline.

Oh, wait...

[–] Aurix@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Ridiculous for single player games, this is what I see D4 as primarily. People should be able to do whatever they want and exploit whatever. Mark their save as modded, exclude them from rankings and PvP and call it a day. But companies don't want that, because it would potentially hurt their nasty IAP schemes.

I also don't have much sympathy for the victims, because they bought a product from a well known awful company.

[–] M1st3rM@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The exploit in question: You disconnect and transfer non-seasonal items to a seasonal character.

Sounds like a ban worthy exploit to me

[–] Sludgehammer@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

transfer non-seasonal items to a seasonal character.

I haven't been following Diablo 4, could somebody explain this bit? The article doesn't explain why transferring items is so disruptive, or what seasonal and non-seasonal items are.

[–] Barteringram@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

So, Diablo has two "realms" in which characters can be in, the seasonal realm being one of these. As the name suggests, the seasonal realm is where seasonal characters play through seasons, which are periods of time in which players attempt to complete multiple levels of increasingly difficult challenges. Playing the seasons can earn a player rewards, both free and paid, through the battle pass, which unlocks these rewards based partly on seasonal progress. Seasonal characters are created new at the beginning of the season, and transfer to the other realm, eternal, at season end, where they persist.

Being that there are paid rewards, I can understand and support Blizzard's reaction. Allowing players to exploit a paid service, even in a way that seemingly doesn't effect others, sets a poor precident. Beyond that, I'm not sure if there are ways in which it effects me, but I've not participated in much PVP, which I think would be the most obvious advantage, as otherwise we're not competing.

[–] all-knight-party@kbin.cafe 2 points 1 year ago

I don't have 4, but if it's like 3 then there are regular characters who can die and are persistent, then there are seasonal characters who can die but may only be created at the beginning of, and are deleted at the end of, a given season.

Then there's hardcore, who are persistent forever but can only die one time. All three have their own ecosystems in which characters created in a given mode can share gold, certain upgrades, and items with each other, but not outside of their own mode. You can have multiple hardcore characters share items and gold, but you can't give those to regular or seasonal characters, and so on.

[–] ryannathans@lemmy.fmhy.net 3 points 1 year ago

Why wouldn't you just delete the affected characters

[–] Graphy@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Agreed, D4 was super disappointing and blizzard sucks but that’s a reasonable ban.

[–] arin@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Sounds like the devs don't know how to code

[–] Aphroditusss@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm glad I ditched this dumpster fire early on as soon as I got a satisfying amount of hours played. Definitely the last time blizzard will see my money, at least on the Diablo franchise.

[–] khab@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

Jaysis. Just stop buying these exploitative and morally bankrupt games. No "at least on the X franchise". No "I won't pay any microtransactions". No "I won't preorder".

They will not change, nor get better as long as they're selling.

Just STOP buying this shite, everyone.

[–] Tb0n3@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You didn't learn your lesson from Diablo 3 or Immortals?

[–] Aphroditusss@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Unfortunately I was very young when D3 came out and I never played Immortals. So I had to learn from D4 ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[–] Chozo@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not surprised to see this at all. Blizzard has always been pretty protective of their in-game economies, and this exploit flooded the seasonal realm with a ton of gold that shouldn't have been there. Anybody who tried this should have 100% expected to get banned.

[–] ryannathans@lemmy.fmhy.net 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ban people playing the game they bought over this? How about a simple rollback

[–] Chozo@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Rollbacks with live service games generally don't go over well with the players, especially the ones who did nothing wrong in the first place.

The problem with doing a rollback is that, unless you want to spend a lot of time fixing the things the rollback breaks, you have to roll EVERYTHING on the server back. This means all players will have progress reset and items lost. More players are likely to quit the game than Blizzard will lose by banning a few cheaters.

[–] kick_out_the_jams@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It sounds like you needed to log one character into the wrong server and disconnect/reconnect the internet at the right time, so it seems pretty unlikely anybody banned actually did this unintentionally.
There isn't really much need to rollback every innocent player if the exploited stuff is relatively traceable.

[–] StillNotAHero@artemis.camp 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Could someone explain to a non gamer what this means exactly?

[–] CapraObscura@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago

In games like Diablo and Path of Exile the game is separated into two ways of playing. You can do "seasonal" or "league" play where it starts at one point, ends at another, and anything you collect during that time is either totally wiped at the end of the season/league. The other way you can play is with permanent characters. In PoE it's called "standard" but I don't know what Diablo calls it. Standard is where all of your stuff from every league/season lives. Once the league is done, your stuff goes there to live on forever. Super neat, since it gives you a long time to accumulate crazy gear.

This bug allowed people to take items from that permanent standard league and put them in the inventory of a seasonal character. This could conceivably allow someone that's leveling to have top-tier leveling items, or very high level endgame gear very early on in the season, which is competitive.

It's clear cheating, a broken-ass exploit, players have ALWAYS been banned for exploiting bugs like this (throughout the history of competitive online gaming, not just in ARPGs like D4 and PoE), and absolutely nobody that's anywhere near reasonable has an issue with bans being handed out for cheating and exploiting bugs.

This kind of bug pops up fairly regularly in every game that works like this and those acting super butthurt about it likely got banned for exploiting it and won't admit it publicly.