Cheating in Hearthstone will not be tolerated says Blizzard as it bans thousands of players

Blizzard has a long history of dropping the banhammer on players found cheating in their games. Whether we’re talking about World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2 or Diablo 3 cheaters, the company doesn’t discriminate and bans them all the same. Now Blizzard has started cracking down on Hearthstone players as well and has banned several thousands of them already for “botting”. The players were reportedly using third-party programs that automate gameplay and let bots do their fighting for them. The company didn’t like this one bit and has banned all Hearthstone accounts that were using said programs until 2015.

“We’ve recently banned several thousand Hearthstone accounts that were associated with the use of third-party programs that automate gameplay, otherwise known as ‘bots’ or ‘botting’,” said Blizzard in a recent post on the Hearthstone blog. “These accounts will be banned until 2015. As we’ve stated, fair play is at the core of the Hearthstone experience, and cheating and botting will not be tolerated. We’re committed to creating a fun and rewarding environment for our players, and we will continue to closely monitor activities within Hearthstone and take appropriate action against cheating in any form, as outlined in our Terms of Use. From this point on, accounts found to be cheating will be permanently closed without warning.”

As mentioned in the post, this was merely a warning but Blizzard plans to permanently ban all Hearthstone players found using bots in the future. Needless to say, you should definitely not try using them even if it makes the game easier and leveling up faster. Actually, those could be seen as additional reasons not to use them because they pretty much drain all the fun out of the game. Blizzard encourages everybody that suspects they are playing against bots to report them so that the company can take appropriate action.