Cheating in Diablo® III

Blizzard Entertainment has always taken cheating in any form in Blizzard games very seriously, and that's no different for Diablo® III. If a Diablo III player is found to be cheating or using hacks, bots, or modifications in any form, then as outlined in the Diablo III end user license agreement, that player can be permanently banned from the game. This means that the player will be permanently unable to log in to Battle.net® to play Diablo III with his or her account.

Playing Diablo III legitimately means playing with an unaltered game client. Doing otherwise violates our policies for Battle.net and Diablo III, and it goes against the spirit of fair play that all of our games are based on. We strongly recommend that you avoid using any hacks, cheats, bots, or exploits. Suspensions and bans of players that have used or start using cheats and hacks will begin in the near future.

Blizzard is always cracking down on cheaters and botters as much as they can, and Diablo 3 is no different. Today they announce the start of bans being rolled out across the game(hopefully mostly aimed in certain Asian countries) and we can probably expect to see many more of these announcements in the future about botters, cheaters, and exploiters. Especially with the Real Money Auction House supposedly releasing with the upcoming patch (1.0.2c).

Though the real question is; will these ban waves have any actual effect on the cheating populace of the game, as in their other games,(WoW) cheaters are usually hard to deter and little effect is actual seen in the game as the damage is mostly done. Although maybe the fact that these cheaters are now going to be taking actual money away from Blizzard by inflating the RMAH will be enough incentive for them to take strong action. Only time can tell.

Source: Cheating in Diablo 3