[Source Kotaku]

Is Blizzard Banning Starcraft II Players For Cheating In Singleplayer?

It's fine to take drastic action against somebody cheating in multiplayer. Those people are scum. But what happens when people begin to be banned for bending the rules of a game's singleplayer component?

Gamer gm0ney is accusing Blizzard of suspending his Starcraft II account for the use of "unauthorized cheat programs". The thing is, gm0ney claims to have never played the game's online multiplayer component, where such a thing would matter, and has only been enjoying its singleplayer game modes.

The "unauthorized cheat program" in question is a trainer developed by CheatHappens.com, which allows users to alter the rules of a game to make things a little easier/more enjoyable. Some of these things include granting the player unlimited minerals, the removal of cooldowns for unit building and an invincibility mode for all units.

These programs have been a part of PC gaming for years now, allowing gamers to take on a challenge at a pace and with the tools they want, not those offered by a developer. I've used a few of them myself from time to time, sometimes to get past tricky stages in a shooter, other times to give a strategy game a more "sandbox" feel.

So why ban somebody for using these tools? Welcome to the 21st century, where digital game purchases challenge traditional notions of game "ownership". Defending the decision, Blizzard reportedly responded to gm0ney with "While single player games only appear to be you and a computer at first, your achievements and gamer score also carries weight and prestige for your online play".

In other words, by making online authentication and account registration such an integral part of their game, Blizzard has blurred the lines between what a user wants to do with "their" game in solo play and what the publisher allows as part of a larger, integrated network.

We contacted Blizzard yesterday for confirmation of this report, and did not hear back from the publisher. Seeing as that leaves us with one side of a story, it's best to take it with a grain of salt.

Blizzard Bans Single Player Cheaters [CheatHappens]

Personally, I think the moron deserved it. 

First off, if you're dumb enough to cheat at the game and not play in offline mode then that should be enough alone to get you banned.  You're just an idiot if you do something that stupid.

Second, if you cheated at Dead Rising, Bioshock, or any other single player 360 game and got 1000/1000 achievements, should you be banned?

Yes.

Same thing here.  The idiot cheated, got achievements through cheating (whether that was his goal or not), and now the guy is paying the price.  Hopefully he learned his lesson and good for Blizzard.

-edit-

And I'm not trying to act all high and mighty like I've never cheated at a single player game or you're some kind of pussy if you do cheat, Hell, I only beat some of the campaigns in Starcraft by cheating, but I did that because it affected nobody else.  If you cheat in Stsarcraft II, you should do it offline.  That way you gain no achievements and affect nothing else, plains and simple.

Edit - deleted

This is just stupid. Anyone who knows anything about blizzard games knows that there are cheats in the game anyways for single player. I don't know them for sc2 specifically, but invincibility, unlimited resources, and instant build times are normal cheats. They disable achievements though. This person didn't use a 3rd party program (which is against the EULA) to make the game "a little easier/more enjoyable", he/she did it to get easier achievements.

I agree that having cheat codes included via developer console can be fun but they didn't include those and that was their decision.  They didn't include them because they didn't want people using them for whatever reason.

Using the trainer that the story talks about alters the game.  Now if you use that and play offline, no harm.  If Blizzard banned them for that and invalidated their Cd key, that would be fishy.  As it stands, the guy went online, uses a 3rd party program to alter the game, unfairly got achievements, and he was banned.

SC2 has cheat codes, he used a 3rd party program to get around the achievement disabling.

Ah, I didn't even realize SC2 included cheat codes.  That's good to know!

Off of gamefaqs:

Edit - deleted

Right, because he and everyone else would totally learn their lesson that way!

If I cheated or saw someone that cheated and all they got was a slap on the wrist I'd probably continue cheating at the game.

Now if I just read that somebody got banned for using that, I would never even go to that places website.