Blizzard has been in a war with Hearthstone botters for some time now and just hours ago they dished another punch - all accounts caught in automated gameplay via bots will have their hero portraits taken away.
If you're an active Hearthstone ladder player, chances are you've played against a bot program at some point. The first wave of botters appeared somewhere in spring and by the time fall came, the cheating for golden portraits or gold farming had become an epidemic.
Bombarded with complaints from regular players about the appalling state of the ladder - and knowing to have stern policy against cheaters for a long time in other games as well - Blizzard knew it was time to act. In late September, the first hit fell as more than 680 botting accounts on the Asian servers were banned. A month later, a blogpost on Battle.net revealed that ban campaign had grown, with several thousand accounts banned worldwide.
It was also stated that the bans wouldn't be permanent, however, and with the coming of 2015 all accounts accused of botting would be unlocked and usable again. This raised another issue with the reputable part of the community, who pointed out that all the spoils of botting - particularly the valued golden portraits - will still be there after the account is unbanned. This is what Blizzard's latest community post addresses:
We’ve discussed the situation amongst the team, and we agree that those found to be botting should not get to keep their golden hero portraits. We’ve decided that the number of wins associated with each class on the offending accounts will be reset to 0, which will also remove any golden hero portraits that were obtained on those accounts. We know this issue is important to you, and your feedback is extremely important to us as we explore issues like this for the first time in Hearthstone.
As we demonstrated again recently, rest assured that we will remain vigilant and Hearthstone accounts found to be cheating will continue to face permanent closure.”
