Botting is a huge issue in Hearthstone. While you might not meet them every day during “rush hours” or even recognize them (they usually play straightforward decks, sometimes not much differently than a player would), they are there. For example, if you try playing Wild during off-hours, you will probably meet a bunch of Even Shaman bots.
Earlier this year, Blizzard declared a war on bots. They were, of course, banning them before, but it seems that ever since the Chinese server’s closing down, the issue has ramped up a lot on other servers. The last time they updated us was in October, but they’ve been working hard ever since, banning an additional ~114k bot accounts. The total number for 2023 is now at over 284k.
As previously promised, they have some plans for a more systemic level change to address the issue next year. Let’s hope that it works. Until then, if you suspect that someone is botting, you can report them in-game (don’t worry about sometimes reporting people who aren’t bots by mistake, they should be quite easy to recognize from Blizzard’s side).
Check out the original post below:
As the year winds down, we wanted to give you another update on our increased actions against unauthorized bots this year.
Since our last update in October, we’ve banned an additional 114,237 accounts for botting. We’ve now banned over 284,000 total accounts for botting throughout the year. As you can see from those numbers, we’ve been ramping up our efforts throughout the year. We’ll be continuing the fight into the new year, and we have some plans for next year that we think will address the problem at a more systemic level. As a reminder, you can continue to help by reporting suspected bots using the in-game reporting tool.
Thanks and happy holidays, we’ll see you in the Tavern and in the new year!
