A giant number of Battle.net accounts woke up last week to discover themselves on the wrong side of a 30-day ban. The move came because Activision Blizzard had become bothered by the amount of game exploits running rampant in their now almost 10-year-old game series between Diablo II and Warcraft III.

Account abuses generally take the form of game mechanic exploits or users running third-party programs designed to advance one’s own statistics or steal information from other users.

"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," said Blizzard on its official forum.

Chances are good that Blizzard is not banning players for exploiting already present features of the games themselves; in fact, from their own statement they’re going after individuals who seem to be running 3rd party trainers and other game-breaking tools to overcome the game mechanics themselves. Diablo II has long been a hotbed of item duping and dirty tricks to gain advantages over other players in game.

No news is forthcoming for appealing these decisions, however the usual channels are still probably open.

Link, via Gamasutra.