To denounce the publisher’s practices, a group of hackers has made several Activision-Blizzard games freely accessible on its Discord server. An act of piracy that could appeal to others.
Another blow for Activision-Blizzard. While the video game specialist’s financial results are down 42% compared to last year, a group of hackers called the Blizzless Project has put several of the publisher’s games in open access – and free – directly on its server. Discord. Top titles like Starcraft: Remastered, Warcraft III: Reforgedand Diablo II: Resurrected, which players can access freely, without the need for the required Battle.net login – at their own risk, of course. A “political” act, insofar as this piracy is accompanied by several claims.
Blizzard: processes that raise discontent
Over time, Blizzard’s processes have aroused the dissatisfaction of its gaming community, whether it’s about the monetization of its games – with sometimes very invasive microtransactions – or mandatory login, including for solo games. . In the end, the concerns of the players are perceived by the community as less important than the profits of the company. While most of them can’t do anything – to boycott is to deprive themselves of games that turn out to be interesting all the same – a small minority can make enough noise to be heard. This is what Blizzless Project, a presumably Russian group, intends to do. “The Blizzless project is a project to remove the restrictions in the classic products of a well-known company, imposed by the network connection to the servers. […] Our team sees the goal in the development of alternative servers to be able to use the purchased products without restrictions, without collecting personal data (telemetry) and after the end of support”reports Torrentfreak.
These are not the only criticisms of the group of hackers, which also points to the fact that the firm can take back games purchased on a whim, as is currently happening for Russian players. “Events around the world have shown that access to products can be easily denied due to your nationality and place of residence”explains Blizzless Project. “Players can buy a game and be banned from playing it based on the whims of publishers.” This is only the beginning of the group’s punch operation, which plans to deliver part of its source code so that the community can also appropriate it and, in turn, make their rights heard.