| Three problems There are three problems with this situation.
#1 is that Blizzard effectively exists in a state of war with its customers. There is a department within the company that is basically charged with strip searching the playerbase 24x7. Everyone is a suspect. They probably think that this attitude doesn't seep into the overall game community... but they're wrong.
#2 is that although Warden is currently programmed so as not to pass confidential user data (financial, personal etc) back to Blizzard - something we know only because the smart programmers Blizzard is at war with told us - it's NOT because the EULA doesn't allow it, it's just because they're still in a relatively nice mood. Warden could change tomorrow and start shoveling everything back for "server-side analysis" and it would be equally jake with the EULA.
#3 is that the ever evolving arms race between increasingly clever independent hackers and an increasingly wrathful Blizzard counter-hacker office will sooner or later push this guerrilla war into public view where bystanders will get hurt. The thug app will start churning up false positives, or interfering with legitimate customer software and hardware.
I don't cheat and I don't hack my games, but that doesn't mean I like a PC police state just because "if you're not a criminal there's nothing to worry about." I could install something tomorrow for the weather or private banking or home control etc, and BING! the thug alarm rings, and all I can do about it is descend into the Kafkaesque "appeal process."
Even though I'm an honest player (I agree, cheating spoils the fun), if someone gave me a way to disable Warden tomorrow I might use it. I hate spyware no matter whose name is on the box. |
