If you pay attention to the Diablo III forums (please don’t), you may have noticed this post outlining the “unfair” banning of several user accounts. According to the post, legitimate, non-cheating players were being banned simply for playing Diablo III from a Linux system, or, as the complaints read, for “no reason.”

The affected players seem to think the bans have something to do with the WINE software, which allows Linux users to access titles that don’t have native ports (Diablo III is only available for Windows and OS X). And, naturally, the internet quickly came rushing to the scene to throw hissy fits at Blizzard—something the internet loves to do.

It wasn’t long before these players were struck down by Blizzard support, which issued the following response in the forum thread:

“We’ve extensively tested for false positive situations, including replicating system setups for those who have posted claiming they were banned unfairly. We’ve not found any situations that could produce a false positive, have found that the circumstances for which they were banned were clear and accurate, and we are extremely confident in our findings. 

Playing the game on Linux, although not officially supported, will not get you banned – cheating will.”

Basically, it looks like these players may have been cheating, and then tried to blame the whole thing on Linux emulation software. Then again, it wouldn’t be the first time Blizzard has banned a bunch of Linux users accidentally; the same thing happened in 2006 with World of Warcraft and ended with the company giving hundreds of affected players free game time.

We’ll keep you posted as the story develops, but since very few Linux users are reporting in, chances are good these guys were just cheats.

Do you use a Linux system? Why or why not?

[PikiGeek]

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