Diablo 3 bans: Blizzard makes clear its stance on third-party mods

Diablo 3 was served another round of bans last week, care of developer Blizzard. The developer has now made clear its stance on the use of third-party programs while playing the RPG in a new blog post.

The post can be found here, and begins, "Over the last year, we've issued frequent rounds of account bans for cheating in Diablo III, and we've just issued another.

"While we may not mention each round of account bans when they occur, we have and will continue to monitor Diablo III for exploitative behavior and take action as needed in order to help preserve the integrity of the game.

"As a reminder, we do not permit the use of hacks, bots, or other third-party software in conjunction with Diablo III. While many of the programs intended for use with the game are actually cheat programs and automation programs ("bots") that exploit Diablo III's mechanics and provide players with an unfair advantage,"third-party software" also refers to any file or program that attempts to:

• Obtain information about Diablo III that's not normally available to the player
• Transmit or modify the Diablo III game files
• Provide access to features or abilities beyond what is allowed by the game's design
• Change how Diablo III interacts with Battle.net"

The developer added that in vurbing third-party tinkering, it hopes to stop cheating, client instability and other issues. It's a clear stance, and it comes as Guild Wars 2 developer ArenaNet opened up the MMO's API to the community, letting it run riot in developing its own third-party apps and mods.

So the question is? Which approach is better? Should a game's third-party scene be shut down in case an unlicensed app provokes crashes or a wave of cheaters, or should the community have space to create its own tools?

Let us know what you think below.

Thanks PCGamesN.