Blizzard is Banning Players for Using the Diablo 4 "Seasonal Exploit Bug"

Blizzard relatively recently kicked off the Season of the Malignant in Diablo 4, giving players their first taste of what the game's seasonal structure will look like. To play through this seasonal content, Diablo 4 players need to first make a brand-new character. You're not starting over from scratch because things like Renown do come across, but you can't use the gear you've earned on other characters to give yourself a leg up. However, some players were using a "seasonal exploit bug" to essentially do just that, giving themselves access to items they shouldn't. Now, Blizzard has started to ban those players, effectively providing a warning to anyone else thinking of using the bug.

The news was first spotted by Eurogamer who noted a recent Reddit thread where one player said a friend had been hit with a ban over the practice. Many others in the comments corroborate that ban, claiming they've either been banned themselves or knew other players who had been hit. Either way, the thread is littered with players saying the bans are happening, so it's far from just a one-off and is definitely something you should take seriously if you've previously considered using the "exploit."

PSA – Blizzard IS INDEED banning people for the seasonal expoit bug
by u/SaintCharlie in diablo4

It's safe to say that Blizzard is well within its right to hand out these bans. Even though seasonal content doesn't yet have leaderboards, Blizzard will want to protect the integrity of seasons to make sure everyone is on equal footing. It is, after all, kind of the point of having the game broken up like this. Some fans might be a bit annoyed that Blizzard is doing this so quickly while other aspects of the season are taking longer to fix, but this seems like a relatively easy thing for the team to do. It's not surprising to see them make this move.

Regardless, this ban wave was always likely to happen at some point, many players even said in the comments that it felt like it was just a matter of time. Diablo 4 is currently available on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC platforms. Blizzard's next major patch will go live on August 8 and will include major changes to classes.