Blizzard says that modding Diablo IV can result in a permanent account ban

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 322 points – Blizzard says that modding Diablo IV can result in a permanent account ban
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Blizzard says that modding Diablo IV can result in a permanent account ban::undefined

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Any company that treats creativity as cheating does not make games I care to play.

Can they just give us an offline version and let us do whatever we want on it?

No that would involve you owning the product and thats bad.

Also cuts into their live service cash flow.

Ever since that mobile Diablo game came out, I knew to be wary of this one.

I'm not ever participating in those aspects of the game anyway. I'd be far more likely to buy content if they had an offline mode and published new content as DLC.

thats not how digital ownership works. theres plenty of software with offline versions that you dont "own" in the traditional sense

But then who would buy what they're offering in their online store, item crates and other boxes.

The people who care about the seasonal GAAS content and online MP. I'm not touching that shit either way.

Suck dick and die Activision. Fucking EA 2.0

They did the same with diablo 3. Always on drm so that people couldn't use cheats to get better loot IN A SINGLE PLAYER GAME. Why? Because they want you to their market and spend real cash for stuff

This is probably the only reason they care about. It's definitely not for the "integrity of the game" or anything like that

How dare people try to mod a game they bought? What a sad state of affairs, Diablo 2 had such awesome mods.

It's GaaS, you didn't buy Diablo 4, you bought a platform on which they can control the content they want you to play, so they can charge you what they want to charge for it.

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I was considering giving a Diablo game a shot for the first time, not anymore, this is just dumb

There are better games than Diablo nowadays. I've been having a blast on Grim Dawn.

Is it similar? I loved D2 but despised D3

I loved d2, d3 I played for a while but a drop in the bucket compared to the original d2. Grim dawn also didn't grip me and neither did path of exile.

I'm afraid I'm just chasing the nostalgia of one of my favorite childhood games that nothing really has a hope of living up to.

Project Diablo 2 is still going strong and has a lot of nice QoL features and skill improvements over D2 and D2R. You should check it out if you're a D2 fan like me.

I was in the same boat. Last Epoch did it for me - more than 100 hours now, they went by very quickly. 👍

Grim Dawn was my Diablo 2 fix. It runs decently, has a dark atmosphere (though if you want story and lore you'll have to read a lot in-game) and cool items.

Also a massive world, especially with the DLCs. Definitely worth playing in my opinion :)

You get nearly free unlimited respecs, the only thing you can't undo is your 2 classes you choose.

You can still try the earlier Diablo games. Diablo 1 with Belzebub mod is pretty fun (or get DevilutionX if you want a more authentic experience but with some modern QoL stuff), Diablo 2 with Project Diablo 2 mod is even more fun (probably the best Diablo variant IMO), and there's also Blizzard's official Diablo 2 Resurrected, if you can't tolerate old school graphics.

Yeah, if you've never stepped foot in the Diablo world don't bother. I had a good time with the D4 campaign, I actually think that part shines but it's maybe 30 hours of gameplay at best, even if you take a few detours along the way. Pretty steep price to game ratio.

Good Old Games FOR LIFE !

All the cool guys love GOG.

Like a Dragon just dropped ln GOG!! It's been a great fucking week on that storefront.

They're trash at making games so they should let others make the game for them. This is a dumb decision.

They also recently admitted to loading other players entire profile including their stash, and other content that they "have" which you would have zero access to, into memory on your PC, anytime that user loads into your zone.

It's why you can't have more than four stash tabs, because other people's computers would be negatively affected.

My developer friend tersely summarized this as "lazy programming". To put it as briefly as I can, in his view, it's likely that all of your stuff including inventory and stash are all part of your character object/class/whatever, so to load other players, your client has to load that character object, complete with everything they're carrying and everything that they have in their stash.

IMO, this means you can mod the game to dump a list of everything another player is carrying/holding in their stash.

Seems like they have minimal, if any, separation between clients, other clients, and by proxy, their servers. So rules need to be enforced at the client level, so the other users and the servers can stay protected.

Blizzard is another user hostile game company.

I feel like people are acting a little TOO hurt in this thread... debate on games being moddable vs not aside, this was obviously always going to be the case for a live service game like D4. D3 was (but wasn't really) a live service game and also was not moddable at all, even after the auction house got canned. Same for Overwatch 1, I'm quite sure OW2 as well. There should be no surprise here, and cheaters absolutely knew this would come.

For A$120 asking price, and an almost immediate cash grab/season pass, I should be able to mod whatever the fuck I like thank you very much

Hey, I support you voting with your wallet then, and you should hold out for Starfield and GTA VI. Maybe play some Cyberpunk or NMS. Hogwarts Legacy too.

But if moddability is a prerequisite for you on full price games, you're probably due a lot of disappointment going forward as games continue to shift to GAS models (and honestly, if you've been beating this drum you've been real disappointed for the last decade anyways). Mods are a great experience for a single player game, but invite rampant cheating in competitive multiplayer games that need to be fair and balanced for all players. You're just not going to see moddability in multiplayer games. And one certainly doesn't have a right to interrupt or destroy other players' enjoyment of a game because they want to cheat.

To be clear, I am not arguing against modding being allowed in games. I ran a VERY heavily modified UI in World of Warcraft, and have had a blast with tons of mods in games like Skyrim and Minecraft. It's just not a hill I'll die on either. Not every game can or should be modded.

To be fair the way it worked in d2 was great. You had a closed battle.net which worked through official servers and an open battle.net where your local/twinked/hacked/whatever char could run rampant and play online with friends.

The modded versions of diablo 2 by replacing actual gamefiles is also still possible if you play it off line/local lan.

GaaS just sucks in that regard. A lot of great things came about by modding like in warcraft 3. Or even the superhero/Warcraft mods in counter strike 1.6

Or the max Payne Kung Fu and whatnot mods. I had hours of fun on that. It wasn't the way the developers intended it to be played. But who cares.

I mostly just play indie games at this point. Modding isn't a requirement for me, but why would I pay more for a game that doesn't do anything interesting. I've played pretty much every AAA game, because they haven't done anything new for so long. They may be prettier, but indie games are cheaper and normally better, and pretty much always less greedy and controlling.

And I didn't even need any more reasons to not get this game!

Diablo was dead after Diablo 2. Resurrected was pretty good but I really dislike the always online BS. And at the end of the day, it's still the same old game with a facelift. Recently started playing Diablo 3 again and I realize why I never really got into it. It's more like gauntlet than Diablo.

I'm just gonna say it... Diablo 3 was not a great game. I probably played 6k hrs of diablo 2 and maybe 50 of diablo 3 before I realized I hated it and was only playing it because I liked the first two games.

Resurrected was pretty good but I really dislike the always online BS.

It's not always online, the single player can be played offline, just start the binary directly I think.

What it lacks compared to the original is a way for private realms (not that these were ever officially supported in the original game). Still got the game on offer for $20 and think it's been a great remaster, I had a blast. If you still l want to play D2 in 2023 is a different question though. It was great in its day but a lot of the concepts show their age.

Oh I have it on PC and Switch. I know I could easily force offline on the switch but I didn't think I found a way on PC. Good to know.

that's close minded. "you are only allowed to enjoy the game exactly as we intended it to be played"

I can't speak for Acti-Blizz but Ubisoft regarded people finding and using exploits or even power imbalances as cheating and a banhammering offense if they got too much loot for their efforts.

Finding the exploits is part of the whole point.

Imagine banning people for playing the game the way you created it.

Are they trying to nuke their game and community? Cause at this point, you gotta wonder if it's intentional.

permanent account ban

Don't threaten me with a good time Blizz.

biggest misbuy of this year...damn my friends who wanted to play this, because it is boring, soulless and lame as fuck.

my screensaver is more challenging than this ...

Modding (as long as it's not hacker modding in like RDR2) makes the game personalized and so much more fun.

I wanted to play Diablo but Blizzard support hasn't taken off the keyfob authenticator off my account, despite repeated requests. So I guess I don't get to play anyway. Now I really feel like I'm not missing out on anything.

I wish that shitty Diablo patches would result in me getting my money back.