While bots were always a mild problem in Hearthstone, ever since the Chinese server got closed down, they’ve been plaguing the other three servers. The issue is by far most present on Asia-Pacific, but sadly NA also is getting affected and even EU has some bots (basically, the number of bots is roughly correlated to how many Chinese players has moved to each server after the close down of their server… curious, right?)
Blizzard is trying to fight the bot problem, but sadly it’s been a losing battle. Even though they ban hundreds of thousands of accounts (284k last year and over 200k this year not counting this wave), new bots just keep showing up all the time.
They just announced another big ban wave – this time it’s almost 85k bot accounts. The promise is that they will keep improving their bot detection and automatic ban systems, but as I said in the past, they need to do it FAST. Bots are ruining the ladder experience of many players. People play this game because they want to face other humans, not to roll over some bots (and roll over bots they do – the bots have completely destabilized the ladder in Asia-Pacific and they’re already slowly doing the same on NA).
Anyway, here’s the latest update:
Hello all,
We have another quick update on our continued fight against botting in Hearthstone. Since last month’s bans, we’ve continued to refine our bot-detection systems. This week, we actioned nearly 85,000 accounts for botting. We’re continuing our efforts against these cheaters, and you can continue helping by using the in-game reporting function to report suspected bots.
