World of Warcraft “Multi-Boxing” Soon to Be a Bannable Offense

World of Warcraft players who’ve been known to use software used for multi-boxing will have to change their ways soon or else they’ll risk their accounts being banned. Blizzard Entertainment gave players a notice of its updated policies this week and said that multi-boxing – or the act of using third-party software to input commands to multiple accounts at the same time – will soon be a bannable offense. Players will first be warned of their actions to let them know multi-boxing is a bad thing now, but if they proceed with the trick, Blizzard said actions will be taken.

Multi-boxing has been a thing in World of Warcraft for a while now, though the term itself might not be one that people are familiar with. It essentially involves using some third-party software to send commands to multiple accounts which would allow players to complete tasks on different accounts at one time, thus simplifying or expediting some objectives.

Blizzard said its new stance on multi-boxing is an evolution of its policies and that it believes the new outlook on the trick is “in the best interests of the game and the community.”

“As World of Warcraft has evolved, our policies have also evolved to support the health of the game and the needs of the players,” Blizzard said. “We’ve examined the use of third-party input broadcasting software, which allows a single keystroke or action to be automatically mirrored to multiple game clients, and we’ve seen an increasingly negative impact to the game as this software is used to support botting and automated gameplay. The use of input broadcasting software that mirrors keystrokes to multiple WoW game clients will soon be considered an actionable offense. We believe this policy is in the best interests of the game and the community.”

If you’re a multi-boxer yourself, you’ve got just a while longer before you can actually be punished for those sorts of actions. Blizzard said in the beginning, it’ll issue warnings to players who’ve been detected using these sorts of third-party software for such measures. After that, those warnings can escalate to suspensions or even permanent bans if you keep it up.

The new policy didn’t have a date attached to it for when these warnings would be sent out, so it’s best for players toconsider the new policy to be in effect now.