Blizzard bans 320,000 Warcraft and Diablo accounts

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from gamesindustry.biz ........ Blizzard has banned over 320,000 players of Warcraft III and Diablo II that have repeatedly violated its Terms of Use policies.

The company said that many of the bans followed tip offs from users to its hacks team, and it encouraged players to report hacks and the sites distributing them.

"We've recently banned over 320,000 Warcraft III and Diablo II accounts that were found to be violating the Battle.net Terms of Use," said Blizzard in a statement on its official forum .

"If this is a first offence, the CD key associated with the banned account will be suspended for 30 days, while repeat offenders will see their keys banned permanently. All account ban decisions are final.

"We would like all players to remember that abuse of unintended mechanics and/or use of third party programs is a violation of the agreement made when signing on to Battle.net, and can subject your account to disciplinary action up to and including a permanent ban of its access to the service.

"These types of activities can severely impact the stability of our servers, and we'll continue to aggressively monitor Battle.net in order to protect the service and its players from the harmful effects of cheating."

The developer has issued similar bans on violators in the past, striking off 350,000 Battle.net users in 2008 for using hacks in its online titles.