As soon as the Diablo 2 Resurrected Alpha code became available to testers, it was inevitable that Diablo 2 Resurrected hackers would try and circumvent BattleNet checks.
A few days after the Alpha launched utilities started to appear that allowed non-testers to access the alpha outside of the BattleNet environment. Most people who grabbed the tools will have simply wanted to try it out in single-player as the testing pool was quite small.
The Alpha itself was readily available via Blizzard’s own servers for download if you knew what you were doing. It’s something that has been done by WoW dataminers for a long time to access game updates before a patch went live on the servers.
The upshot of these tools was that they granted access to the additional classes and other mechanics within the game. In other words, stuff that was not intended for testing or public consumption at this stage.
Blizzard decided that it was best to take action now against the creators of these utilities/tools that circumvented BattleNet and the anti-cheat systems prior to any more testing taking place.
Blizzard issued a statement to Kotaku explaining the cease and desist action. Kotaku also chatted to the two individuals involved, Ferib and Shalzuth. Blizzard’s comment reads:
It’s important to note that these actions were not taken against “modders” but against systems that were circumventing any anti-cheat or other security systems designed for BattleNet.
Blizzard has had a long history of issuing cease and desist orders, especially in the World of Warcraft community where botting was a real issue. If anything, this latest action shows that Blizzard will get serious when it comes to Diablo 2 Resurrected hackers and that can only be a good sign ahead of launch later this year.