Blizzard temporarily bans players for playing games via cloud services
Blizzard has amended its US end-user agreement to prohibit players from playing its games through services that stream the game from a server. World of Warcraft has already been banned.
Blizzard blocked the first players of World of Warcraft for 30 days for this reason, according to a message from a user on Reddit and the website MMO-Champion. The bans were issued because the players used a cloud service to play the game, while Blizzard has banned this since early June through a implemented update to the US end-user agreement for all its games and services. This does not apply to the European variant, where this change has not been implemented.
The updated US End-User Agreement specifically lists cloud computing as a prohibited action. This includes using a game with an unauthorized third-party cloud computing service, cloud gaming service, or software that streams Blizzard games from third-party servers to a device. This concerns, for example, services such as Geforce Now, Vortex Gaming, Shadow, LiquidSky and Parsec Gaming. Blizzard may temporarily or permanently terminate the license to play the game in the event of a violation.
According to the gamer who faced the 30-day ban, this policy change from Blizzard is related to the fact that the use of cloud services for the games is seen as account sharing, something that has always been prohibited without Blizzard’s consent. According to Parsec, a service that can be used for cloud gaming, among other things, Blizzard does this to protect its own intellectual property and ensure that the overall gameplay experience remains optimal. Blizzard is said to have previously said that Overwatch players did not want to use cloud services, because that would damage the quality of the experience too much.
Whether Blizzard will stick to this and strictly monitor and enforce compliance with the policy change is not yet clear. Blizzard may eventually authorize more cloud services. Earlier, a Blizzard support representative said that using a cloud service to play World of Warcraft was not a problem. A gamer asked this question because he was afraid of a ban given the new policy; the Paperspace service allowed him to play World of Warcraft fluently and with good graphics on a small laptop.