Diablo 3 - Possible Lawsuit Against Blizzard

Diablo 3 after it's latest patch caused literal hell as several individuals found an exploit that enables them to dupe gold. Well some gamers are toying with the possibility to file a lawsuit over this.

Lawsuit Threat From Players

One player from this thread, which is now one of the hottest post from Diablo 3 forum, explained how the community can file a lawsuit charge against Blizzard. Just to give you a gist about the complaint, the player believes gamers will have a strong-case against Blizzard if they’ll file a lawsuit because D3 is concentrated with items, and these items have their own gold value which corresponds to real money. Since there was a dupe exploit, it also mean the company can be charged for negligence of not coding the game properly, letting its system hacked so other people can steal money’ out from gamers’ pockets.

For those unaware, this is not the first time Blizzard was threatened by a lawsuit charge. A few weeks when Diablo 3 debuted last May, players from South Korea and other countries from Europe have voiced out their concern and filed a formal lawsuit complaint of not being able to play the game because of Blizzard’s laggy servers. This forced the company to fix the situation or suffer the consequence of paying each players that will return the game due to this issue.

Gravity of the Problem

As for the problem itself, another player has voiced out his concern that by not rolling back the server (which was the original solution anticipated by the community), Blizzard is creating a huge mistake as there are a lot of hackers who managed to transfer these dupe golds into dummy accounts, some have even bought several hundreds of gems from the AH, then resell them again to make the gold appear ‘clean’ making it very difficult for Blizzard admins to spot the culprit.

More information.

Actually some players abused that bug and got permabanned.
I really don't care for D3 and Blizzard, stealing from them through a bug is not an acceptable behavior. Instead of whatever lawsuits, the better solution would be moving away from them. To the world of SP RPGs for example.

Originally Posted by joxer
Actually some players abused that bug and got permabanned.
I really don't care for D3 and Blizzard, stealing from them through a bug is not an acceptable behavior. Instead of whatever lawsuits, the better solution would be moving away from them. To the world of SP RPGs for example.

Now that is a good idea but it's not going to happen. I just posted this article for laughs. To many gamers sue over trivial things lately.

Yeah, its laughable. Litigation over a game bug is really pathetic. These people have too much time and/or money in their hands.

I never bought D3 because of the forced online (for a historically single player game with optional multiplayer) and due to the RMAH being facilitated cheating with bliz taking a cut. IMO people should actually play games and earn their crap, not buy it for cash like scrubs.

So, IMO, I'd like to see Bliz get pummeled over D3 whenever possible, because they largely got to skate thru a crappy launch and forced online. When EA did it with SimCity they got universally and justifiably hammered for it. Bliz should've got the same treatment over D3 but didn't.

The RMAH is even worse than forced online. Letting players buy their way thru the game for cash is just a dev provided wrapper for cheating. It's disgusting.

Originally Posted by Voqar
The RMAH is even worse than forced online. Letting players buy their way thru the game for cash is just a dev provided wrapper for cheating. It's disgusting.

You don't have to buy anything to play the game, why it bothers you that other players can buy items, if they find their time worth more than their money?

Well, they entered dangerous waters when they chose to implement RMAH. Personally, I don't believe it had anything to do with greed (they already have a very efficient money factory) - just a somewhat naive position, but they meant well. They tried to combat gold selling and illegitimate selling of items outside of the game.

But this kind of lawsuit is inevitable in a culture oriented around the material - when your game involves the exchange of "real" value.

As for gold selling - I tend to think of it as a good thing overall. It's likely to provide people with a means to make a living that's more comfortable than the alternatives. At least, that's the case for some. If my price is some annoying spam messages and people who think buying their way to in-game power is worth the money - then that's a tiny price to pay. I'd gladly pay that price and more if it helps people in need.

Blizzard, that is the company that set an affirmative action program in the WCS to ensure that European and American professional scenes can settle by securing positions for American and European players?

They wont get law suits on that.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
As for gold selling - I tend to think of it as a good thing overall. It's likely to provide people with a means to make a living that's more comfortable than the alternatives. At least, that's the case for some. If my price is some annoying spam messages and people who think buying their way to in-game power is worth the money - then that's a tiny price to pay. I'd gladly pay that price and more if it helps people in need.

It's rather naive to imagine that gold selling is a solution to third world poverty. And like most such shady activities the money is most unlikely to end up in the pockets of those who need it. If the capitalist economy creates a divide between rich and poor, it's certainly not as bad as the situation that crime and corruption create in places such as Russia. Behaving dishonorably is always going to be a part of the problem, not a part of the solution.

Originally Posted by Roq
It's rather naive to imagine that gold selling is a solution to third world poverty. And like most such shady activities the money is most unlikely to end up in the pockets of those who need it. If the capitalist economy creates a divide between rich and poor, it's certainly not as bad as the situation that crime and corruption create in places such as Russia. Behaving dishonorably is always going to be a part of the problem, not a part of the solution.

I don't think anyone mentioned it was a solution.

In reality - people are being exploited as a cheap labor force. As long as gold selling can bring a profit, there will be people exploited as gold farmers. That's a better alternative than most ways to be exploited in certain parts of the world.

That's reality.

It has nothing to do with honor and this isn't Hollywood where concepts like honor can be boiled down for children - so they can go preach to others.

Hurrah for frivolous lawsuits-- just what the US justice system needs more of.

I cannot imagine being so angry at something so trivial like a computer game and its company as to threaten legal action. I'm sure this player has sunk tons of time into the game and has a lot emotionally invested. But to sue? Give me a break. I have devoted many hours to WoW, and were something to go horribly wrong with an exploit or a bug, I would simply cancel the subscription. Now, if the player's actual bank account were somehow hacked as a result of the exploit, this might be more understandable.

My guess is the player is making a lot of noise for a pathetic 15 minutes of fame and/or the hope Blizzard will make some kind of settlement.

Nerds raging at each other in court…..I'll save my pity for the poor judge that has to deal with these peoples.



-Carn

Heh. Chances are that most of us here put more time and energy into gaming than is sensible. But - we're doing it for the fun, right?

Who is going to invest this much in a game for the sake of resentment? It's just weird to me.

Originally Posted by RedSocialKnight
Heh. Chances are that most of us here put more time and energy into gaming than is sensible. But - we're doing it for the fun, right?

Who is going to invest this much in a game for the sake of resentment? It's just weird to me.

Well a few games have almost made me resent them, but I never felt the need to sue. It's far easier to just move on and play something better.