Game players say Blizzard invades privacy

[news=http://www.blizzard.com/images/blizz-logo.gif]A number of "World of Warcraft" players are up in arms over software being used by the game's publisher to scan users' computers for hacks prohibited under its terms of service.

Many publishers of MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) contend regularly with players crafting illegal software hacks that provide some form of gameplay advantage, such as increased speed, awareness of monsters or the like.

To that end, some publishers have deployed programs that can peer into players' computers in an attempt to detect the existence of such hacking software. Blizzard Entertainment, publisher of "World of Warcraft," is one of those companies.

:source: Source: http://news.zdnet.com/Game+players+s...&subj=technews[/news]

This, IMO, is no different than programs such as Spybot. While WoW may scan your computer without the end-user explicitly telling it to, I would still prefer my computer being scanned and a report that my account is "clean" sent to Blizzard over letting the hackers' jobs be as easy as for instance EQ.
I bet it says somewhere in their ToS that WoW may periodically scan your computer for such hacks and report any findings back to Blizzard, and as such users have agreed to it when they registered their account.

The innoccent user should not be intruded on for the sake and ease in the attempt to stop players which are using illegal hacks in the game. To do this is flat out wrong.

This method is nothing but shortcuts at the expense of those who do nothing wrong at all and pay good money for the game. I don't want to see this sort of thing prevalent. Not only is this wrong such methods of scaning systems are often used as backdoors for other hackers, yay windows!. MMORPG's are notorious for taking shortcuts, I have played a lot. Make companies do their jobs right and nail the hackers who ruin the games, not the legit paying costumer.

They only scan the memory of WoW just like blizzards other games dont see why theres such a fuss now

The real problem with the issue is in fact, the possibility of what an individual or organization can do with whatever results they find from scanning a computer.

As said in the source it states that they scan your computer. I dont know if its just memory locations they are scanning or not, only know what it states they are scanning, which is the computer.

More and more companies are also acting as whistleblowers on internet piracy, therefore, thats probably the main reason that people are up in arms, at least in my eyes.

The article also states that this is in the EULA and therefore "players dont have a leg to stand on" What I would like to know is why is that enforcable in their EULA, but, when original EQ had in their EULA, no selling of online, in game material, they couldnt do anything about it.

In fact for a new game coming out, Vanguard, it was stated on their message boards by one of the developers that its very hard to enforce EULA terms in court because they dont hold up or something.

Whilst I cant be bothered to look up the specifics and crap, my opinion on the whole matter is that Blizzard should take measures to protect the integrity of their game, on their side. Trying to do so on our side makes them just as guilty as the people cheating if you ask me.

...and who reads those EULA things anyway lol