Blizzard Confiscates Gold From Exploiters, Donates it to Charity

[Steven Bogos]

Blizzard Confiscates Gold From Exploiters, Donates it to Charity

The gold dupe bug [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/123838-Gold-Dupe-Bug-Forces-Diablo-3-Auction-House-Offline] discovered in Patch 1.0.8 has been fixed, and Blizzard is dealing with those who exploited it.

Earlier this month, Blizzard rolled out Patch 1.0.8 for Diablo III. The patch aimed to increase incentives for players playing the game co-operately in groups, but unfortunately introduced an exploit that reportedly allowed players to dupe blue post [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/123838-Gold-Dupe-Bug-Forces-Diablo-3-Auction-House-Offline] on the Battle.net forums, Blizzard stated that the exploit has been fixed, all region's Auction Houses have been brought back online, and players who chose to use the exploit for personal gain are having their accounts banned and gold confiscated.

As well as this, all proceeds from Real Money Auction House transactions conducted by the suspended or banned players, including all of their sale proceeds that were intercepted as well as Blizzard's transaction fee, will be donated to Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. Its a nice gesture from Blizzard, which could have easily pocketed all of the proceeds from these invalid transactions.

If you bought items that were re-sold with duped gold, or simply had nothing to do with the exploit and are concerned about a possible roll-back, don't worry. "A rollback would mean bringing the servers down for a lengthy period and a loss of all progression since 1.0.8 was released," said Blizzard. "Many players made significant accomplishments in the game that required time and dedication, and we felt it was worth the work involved to try to preserve these efforts and go after the exploiters instead."

"With this in mind, we elected not to roll back the servers in The Americas and are instead working to remove duplicated gold from the economy through targeted audits and account actions"

Of the small percentage of players that actually had the billions of gold required to perform the exploit, only 450 of them actively abused it. As for how it actually worked: "The bug was the result of a coding error that was exposed when we increased the gold stack size from 1 million to 10 million. This resulted in an overflow on cancelled auctions that yielded a greater amount of gold in return."

Blizzard took the Auction Houses offline to perform a full audit of all transactions that took place after the patch went live. It was able to isolate accounts that appeared to be exploiting the bug as well as collaborators that held gold or items for the exploiters. Once confirmed that an account was involved in the exploit, Blizzard either banned or rolled back the account depending on their activity.

The bug itself was a pretty large oversight, but the fact that Blizzard are going to great lengths to correct it, instead of simply taking the easy way out and rolling back all servers, and donating the proceeds to charity, is an admirable move.

Source: Battle.net Forums [http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/8796520380]

Permalink

 

[piinyouri]

That's hilarious.
"We're not rolling back", I wonder how many thought that meant they'd get to keep their ill gotten gains.
Nope, it means Blizzard will just come and steal it right back.

Pretty cool of them to give it to charity too, I agree.

 

[nodlimax]

And this is one of the reasons why a RMAH is generally a bad idea...

 

[Steven Bogos]

And this is one of the reasons why a RMAH is generally a bad idea...

What? Why? It's a bad idea because it means Blizzard donates money to charities? Man, fuck charities am I right?

 

[BakedZnake]

I want a refund for buying D3, and I would have rather spent that money on a charity than on Blizzard if I had known how bad D3 turned out to be. Really disappointed in D3

 

[NightHawk21]

And this is one of the reasons why a RMAH is generally a bad idea...

What? Why? It's a bad idea because it means Blizzard donates money to charities? Man, fuck charities am I right?

No its a bad idea, because it means any oversight on Blizzards end leads to people losing/making actual money. As soon as you put real money into the equation you open a whole other kettle of fish.

 

[Steven Bogos]

And this is one of the reasons why a RMAH is generally a bad idea...

What? Why? It's a bad idea because it means Blizzard donates money to charities? Man, fuck charities am I right?

No its a bad idea, because it means any oversight on Blizzards end leads to people losing/making actual money. As soon as you put real money into the equation you open a whole other kettle of fish.

The only people losing/making money are the ones that exploited the bug to dupe gold. Which is clearly against the TOS. They knew what they were getting in to. Blizzard stated they won't be confiscating any items/gold that was bought from exploiters unknowingly by legitimate players. People who bought items with real money still get their items. The money that would have gone to the players who exploited is instead going to charity. Everyone is happy (except the guys who exploited). What's the problem man?

 

[General Twinkletoes]

And this is one of the reasons why a RMAH is generally a bad idea...

What? Why? It's a bad idea because it means Blizzard donates money to charities? Man, fuck charities am I right?

You're missing the point. That's due to an oversight on Blizzard's end. This charity thing just shows that it's easy for RMAH's to fuck up, and doesn't mean they're good.

 

[shrekfan246]

What's the problem man?

The problem is that people are still butt-hurt over Diablo III. ¬_¬

You don't even have to use real money for the AH, which is something people seem to either not know or conveniently ignore, and people bought gear for Diablo II off of seedy sources all the damn time; What's the issue with having an official, Blizzard-sanctioned way to get gear instead?

Anyway, no sympathy for people who try to exploit glitches to dupe out an Auction House. Where's the satisfaction behind it, anyway? You neither got the gold for yourself or found the gear yourself, you just basically cheated. So long as no legitimate players get burned over this and end up banned, good on Blizzard for striking back and being charitable at the same time.

 

[tautologico]

The problem is that people are still butt-hurt over Diablo III. ¬_¬

You don't even have to use real money for the AH, which is something people seem to either not know or conveniently ignore, and people bought gear for Diablo II off of seedy sources all the damn time; What's the issue with having an official, Blizzard-sanctioned way to get gear instead?

Not to mention there is still a big market for gold sellers in WoW. Some of this gold comes from people employed by the sellers grinding for stuff "legally", but a lot of the gold sold now comes from hacked accounts. So people buy money from shady sellers who create viruses and trojan horses to hack accounts and get people's valuable stuff.

I think it was a good idea having an official way to trade for real money, a way to overstep the shady dealers, even if the execution was not that good. But gamers will be negative about stuff that is popular, it's inevitable. Path of Exile is always-online just as D3 and people can only praise it, while bashing D3 all the way through.

 

[shrekfan246]

The problem is that people are still butt-hurt over Diablo III. ¬_¬

You don't even have to use real money for the AH, which is something people seem to either not know or conveniently ignore, and people bought gear for Diablo II off of seedy sources all the damn time; What's the issue with having an official, Blizzard-sanctioned way to get gear instead?

Not to mention there is still a big market for gold sellers in WoW. Some of this gold comes from people employed by the sellers grinding for stuff "legally", but a lot of the gold sold now comes from hacked accounts. So people buy money from shady sellers who create viruses and trojan horses to hack accounts and get people's valuable stuff.

Yeah, I actually know a few people who buy gold. I'll admit I'm pretty terrible at making gold in WoW, but it still comes back to that feeling of satisfaction -- Spending money and just magically having it isn't nearly as 'fulfilling' as making it myself.

But seriously, all of the complaints about the Auction House smack me as being rather silly when, pre-Inferno difficulty at the very least, you never even have to take a glance inside of the Auction House and you can just use in-game gold anyway.

I think it was a good idea having an official way to trade for real money, a way to overstep the shady dealers, even if the execution was not that good. But gamers will be negative about stuff that is popular, it's inevitable. Path of Exile is always-online just as D3 and people can only praise it, while bashing D3 all the way through.

Agreed. Oh, but the difference with PoE is that it's billed as a Free-to-Play MMO and not part of a franchise that was previously known for offline single-player, so it's okay. ¬_¬

 

[Samurai Silhouette]

And this is one of the reasons why a RMAH is generally a bad idea...

What? Why? It's a bad idea because it means Blizzard donates money to charities? Man, fuck charities am I right?

Yeah, because they had charities in mind when they made the RMAH.

 

[Little Gray]

I think it was a good idea having an official way to trade for real money, a way to overstep the shady dealers, even if the execution was not that good. But gamers will be negative about stuff that is popular, it's inevitable. Path of Exile is always-online just as D3 and people can only praise it, while bashing D3 all the way through.

Agreed. Oh, but the difference with PoE is that it's billed as a Free-to-Play MMO and not part of a franchise that was previously known for offline single-player, so it's okay. ¬_¬

The problem with that is it was not the offline single-player that made Diablo popular. It was the online multiplayer part that causes it to be so popular. Blizzard was not continuing to patch and make new content for the game years and years after release because of the offline players.

 

[Cartographer]

I think the more pertinent point is, Blizz probably had to donate the money to charity, lit. write it off. Else there would probably have been some significant tax ramifications.

 

[Carnagath]

Of the small percentage of players that actually had the billions of gold required to perform the exploit, only 450 of them actively abused it.

D3 has players? 450 of them? Damn, color me impressed. I thought the only thing that was left were bots in an endless circlejerk.

 

[shrekfan246]

I think it was a good idea having an official way to trade for real money, a way to overstep the shady dealers, even if the execution was not that good. But gamers will be negative about stuff that is popular, it's inevitable. Path of Exile is always-online just as D3 and people can only praise it, while bashing D3 all the way through.

Agreed. Oh, but the difference with PoE is that it's billed as a Free-to-Play MMO and not part of a franchise that was previously known for offline single-player, so it's okay. ¬_¬

The problem with that is it was not the offline single-player that made Diablo popular. It was the online multiplayer part that causes it to be so popular. Blizzard was not continuing to patch and make new content for the game years and years after release because of the offline players.

...

And?

Most of the people angry at the game are angry because of either the 'Real Money' Auction House, the always-online requirement, or both.

The people who are angry about the always-online requirement shouldn't be praising Path of Exile, because it does the same thing. But it's billed as a free-to-play MMO, so they rationalize it as somehow being different from Diablo III (which was stated to have the always-online long before it actually launched).

It can be argued that the people who get furious about it are a vocal minority, as things tend to go on the internet, but it still happens and it's still hypocrisy either way.

I'll admit I mostly play Diablo III solo, and wouldn't mind having an offline mode. But I acknowledge that the game is primarily multi-play focused, and really, Blizzard's servers are a lot more reliable than my own internet at this point, which is the entire reason I'd want an offline mode (because my bandwidth gets eaten up by something as simple as somebody streaming Netflix). If they put out some massive offline patch whenever they release the PS3 version of the game, I'll be happy, but considering I've put in over 140 hours into the game and I'm still not bored with it, I'm not going to scream for them to do it. That's more time than even most story-driven RPGs get out of me.

 

[LordMonty]

To be honest its a good thing to make up for there mistake and a good way to fix the problem without hurting the normal players. People need to get past hating the RMAH its there can't change that now Blizzard are aware its not working very well. Blizzard are a good compony in general and yea hate on Activision but no COD to date has had online passes(just over priced map packs ) yup corperate greed is an issue but Blizzard always say sorry and try and make things better don't hate for hate's sake and please always voice your issues but... just not months down the line it gets a bit dull.

P.S D3 is ok and dare i say a pretty good game that I enjoy playing still, its just not 'As good' as D1&2 not quite as addictive.

 

[Tanakh]

It can be argued that the people who get furious about it are a vocal minority, as things tend to go on the internet, but it still happens and it's still hypocrisy either way.

Rather, it can't be argued that the people who got furious are anything but a vocal minority. Still quite popular here, but irrelevant to Blizzard's targeted market.

I would like an offline mode too, as only play HC characters and DCs are the bane of them, but so far so good, maybe I have been just lucky. If anything is criticizable is that the first 4 or so hours after release the game was almost impossible to access, and the first 1-2 weeks it had a hiccup here and there.