Blizzard starts permanently banning Hearthstone win traders

Blizzard recently started dropping the banhammer on Hearthstone players found using bots to hep them gain gold and levels faster. The bans were initially only meant to last for two months, but they will be permanent from now on according to the company. This was just the beginning however because Blizzard has now started banning win traders as well. The company has no tolerance whatsoever for win trading it seems as the accounts found participating is this activity are going to be banned permanently without any exceptions. A number of Hearthstone accounts have already fallen to Blizzard’s banhammer because of win trading including those belonging to high ranking players like Specialist and Gabe Walls.

Blizzard explains that fair play is very important for them and they will not tolerate cheating of any kind even if the cheaters happen to be top Hearthstone players. “We’ve recently banned Hearthstone accounts that were found to be participating in win trading,” said Community Manager “Whirthun” on the Hearthstone forums. “Win trading at any rank is something that we do not take lightly, and is in violation of our Terms of Use. As we mentioned in our previous statement regarding fair play in Hearthstone, instances of cheating will not be tolerated. Accounts that were discovered participating in win trading have received permanent account closure and disqualification from events where ranking is used as a method of qualification.”

I think most of the Hearthstone players will agree with Blizzard’s decision, except for the ones who were cheating of course. Still, it’s interesting to see that the company only began taking action now when there’s not really much at stake anymore. Something like this would have been much more useful earlier this year during the BlizzCon Qualifiers. Is it possible that someone cheated their way into the Hearthstone World Championship? I suppose we’ll never know, but at least we can be certain that few will be inclined to cheat from this point forward whether through botting, win trading, or anything else.