Currently, accounts are being actioned for “exploitation of game mechanics”. This is related to the Hellfire Amulet exploit which allowed players who utilized zero durability ones to equip all of the passive effects for their character class. It is not related to botting (which is over the top prevalent in this game) or TurboHUD.
The account actions seem to be mostly temporary 14-day suspensions. Some players are claiming they are receiving permanent bans though. It’s hard to tell what is truth and what isn’t as some players are claiming they only played around with it but didn’t actively use it in a Greater Rift (and received a permaban), and they never had any other issues before.
What I do know is that account actions can stack (so folks with prior offenses where their account was not in “good standing” could end up seeing more severe consequences).
Update: contrary to what I posted above, it seems the majority of players who even tried the exploit are receiving permabans (a Code 52 error is pretty much an account closure, a Code 53 is an account suspension). There are some players who received a permaban claiming they did nothing wrong prior.
Then there are player reports where they state their e-mail says it’s an account suspension of 14 days. Basically, there’s some discrepancies that don’t add up.
When Blizzard issues permabans, they don’t do it lightly as not just one person makes that final decision. The evidence is usually overwhelming to the point where multiple people can review the exact same info, and conclude that a permanent account closure is in order (prior violations where an account has been previously flagged is also factored in).
If there is actually indeed several differing punishment severities being imposed, it could be related to the actual actions that were logged server side. Basically, some folks actions may have had a long transaction trail (basically perfoming more than enough actions that go beyond what a normal test would involve) while others a shorter one.
If someone tried the exploit as a means to test it, and THEN reported it to Blizzard via the hacks@blizzard.com address, that report would be taken into consideration to where no action would be taken (as they are testing, verifying, and then reporting the steps).
On the flipside, there are times when accounts have been banned where it should have only been a temporary suspension. Most all of their e-mails provide instructions on filing a ticket to challenge the ban. But that is why they usually have enough evidence to begin with before issuing permanent ones. Those that were accidental normally can be overturned if that evidence (upon revisiting it on a challenge) isn’t there.
Not sure if there are some account actions taking place for the recently hotfixed bounty cache in a Greater Rift (where the gold awarded scaled based on the Greater Rift tier). The issue with this might be an interaction with Custerian Wristguard – but no one seems to know what kind of XP issues are involved since it was not an issue on many folks radar.
It’s something I plan to test on the PS4 to see if it results in actual sizable Paragon XP gains that weren’t intended since the mechanic itself can be replicated so long as one is still on the base 2.3 patch and hasn’t gone online since the hotfix went live. I haven’t played the UEE; only patched it to 1.09 (which is equivalent to the initial 2.3 patch). Disconnecting the console from the network is what I’ll need to do before launching the game and while playing it (to prevent the console hotfix from being applied).
Update #2: Blizzard details
With the account actions being performed on a case-by-case basis, it seems that compared to before, they are doing more transaction logging now on the backend (this is aside from chat which has probably always been logged for a period of time). Makes sense since with the advent of the cube powers and snapshotting a heroes loadout (for the leaderboard but is hidden for everyone else).
The note about the earlier September 11th hotfix where errors were generated were a temporary player side notice in the interim until a client side patch could be deployed. That error was not something they used as an “entrapment” to catch more players. Again, Blizzard errs on the side of caution and prefers having actual evidence of accounts actually performing the necessary actions (even though the end result would seem to be proof enough).
This is why in what looks like obvious cases of botting (like total hours played in a season), they still prefer having evidence and signatures that a bot is being used. The problem as I wrote before is that something like RoS Bot was written with the game in mind, and therefore has an uncanny ability to mimic the playstyle of an actual human player. Software that has this sort of characteristic is extremely difficult to detect outside of noting its binary fingerprint and process name (both which can be obfuscated).
Digressing, this exploit still required very specific steps though where you had to have the amulet with the specific passive equipped when its durability hit zero. At that point, the passive became persistent and remained equipped until cancelled. Then repeat and rinse with another amulet with a different passive. That is where part of the excessive use comes from (beyond those who abused the mechanic by playing the game with many additional passives active since it was persistent across logins).
In QA, the repeatability test is usually 2-3 times (no hard rules but there is a point where it is clear when the steps are repeatable or not). When it comes to a game mechanic like this, it becomes obvious when someone who is consistently repeating the above procedure, is no longer just doing it by accident, doing it to test (which again, they would end up reporting where that report would act as a counter against any action), or doing it out of curiosity.
