Popular Hearthstone wild player banned for “abuse of game mechanics”

A popular Hearthstone wild player has been banned for “abuse of game mechanics,” although it’s not clear what mechanics he abused.

Hearthstone Wild allows players to reimagine what’s possible within Blizzard’s fan-favorite card game. Without the restrictions of Standard decks placed upon players, Wild decks are usually filled with utterly broken combinations and pandemonium of the highest degree.

However, as one popular Hearthstone wild player found out, stretching the boundaries too far will find yourself in hot water with Blizzard.

On a Reddit post on September 15, user ‘Eddetector’ announced that his Hearthstone account had been banned after 10,000 games over the last five years. 

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“The whole situation is hard for me,” he said. “I take fair play rules very seriously, and I have never cheated.”

He reached out to Blizzard support, but got nothing more than an automated response.

“Your account has been closed due to a violation of Hearthstone’s policies,” the email said. “After re-reviewing your case, we can confirm that the evidence collected was correct and the penalty imposed is adequate for the offense.”

While Blizzard would not want to give away the exact mechanics that led to the suspension of Eddetector to stop cheaters circumventing the ban system, it has left the passionate player in the dark of what he did wrong.

He’s theorized many interesting card combinations over the past six months after dedicating himself to the chaotic game mode completely, including helping optimize the rise of SN1P-SN4P Warlock. 

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This deck allowed him to play as many as 30 cards in a turn, but according to him, decks like these might have been his downfall.

“I call it the extended time bug, and as far as I know it happens only when a long turn was played before in the match,” he said. “We are talking about an additional 10 seconds here per turn, not something very apparent.”

Other players have managed to script the game to play up to 80 cards in a turn without the timer running out, but it’s humanly impossible to hit the APM required to get to that number of cards. 

After reaching out on Reddit, a Hearthstone Community Manager was notified of the ban and has reopened the investigation. We will update this article if any new details come to light.