Korean Officials Raid Blizzard

[Mrsoupcup]

Hah! Blizzard, your puny DRM wont protect you from the Korean government!

South Korea best Korea.

 

[Sight Unseen]

this is just as bad as the bullshit about the me3 ending when will it end.

Except this actually protects consumer rights as opposed to trying to make a game ending not suck.

the right to be assholes are the only rights i see being protected these days

That is a right just like any other but if you buy something than you fucken expect it to work so they have every right to complain about this and if you don't agree then you shouldn't complain about their complaining.

so if i don't agree with bullshit i should just stick my head in the ground?

You should file an FTC complaint.

OT: Good on the SK FTC for protecting the rights of their consumers.

 

[GeneralFungi]

Oh god. You know what this means don't you? The first step towards the government listening to enraged gamers and the end of gaming. I sure as hell hope this doesn't happen very often or its going to end badly for everyone. If you think the idea of designed by committee is bad imagine gamers being able to threaten companies into doing what they want, every idiot in the world potentially ruining a company's project with their stupid, insane, and impossible ideas.

And I suppose those who have bought a defective car and demanded a refund are just trying to manipulate the automobile industry as well. The government isn't listening to them because they are enraged gamers, they are listening because they are customers who were treated unfairly.

Its more like this: You bought a car from a dealer that said "all sales final". You found a defective. You demanded a refund. The dealer didn't give you one citing its policy claim that you might or might not have read. You go to the government and claim there business dealing were underhanded. The government raids the place and you get a refund. Car dealerships now begin to fear government raids if they have a an 'all sales final' policy and have to rethink their business model. One random guy has now affected the entire auto industry because some guy didn't like a policy and the government supported him. (Yes I know this is a slow process that has quiet a few more steps then that and digital goods are different from physical goods but the general argument is the same, this could be the first step towards a dark future because of how the Koren government acted)

What I've gotten from that is that companies should have the right to sell you defective goods as long as they have some form of policy that protect them from legal backlash. I understand your stance about the government tampering with the way that companies work, but a future where people can sell you mislabeled or defective products then hide behind their policies to shield them from the legal backlash does not seem like a particularly bright future either.

If the car dealership stated that there was a possibility of defects, such as the cars being second hand, that would be understandable. But in this case, we were promised a whole product from Blizzard. It's true that we knew about the servers and that there might be issues, but Blizzard did not have a clear warning sign that players might not be able to access their games, with or without an internet connection at any given moment. It did not make it clear that Blizzard's servers may deny us access to the product at certain times. The game is defective for a sizable portion of the people who bought Diablo 3, even though we were promised a full product. I am not of the opinion that your policies should shield you when you do not follow up on the promises given when you sell a product, whether it be car dealership or game design.

 

[Mister K]

To think that to avoid it they only had to make an offline singleplayer mode.

 

[Wintermoot]

this is just as bad as the bullshit about the me3 ending when will it end.

ME3 could at least be played Diablo 3 couldn't also Blizzard should have seen it coming that Diablo 3 was going to be played by millions of people.

 

[RA92]

Tony2077 is currently posting a video in YouTube titles LEAVE BLIZZARD ALONE!

 

[mysecondlife]

Did they get good loot, I wonder?

[small]I couldn't help it...[/small]

The Sword of One Thousand Truth!!

[small]I couldn't help it...[/small]

 

[NiPah]

I'm not trying to make excuses for them there just so much you can do since you can't see the future. so the laws state then if the problem get fixed you can still ask for a refund does that mean you still get access to it as well

It's against the law in Korea to sell a faulty product then refuse refunds. If Blizzard knew the high traffic of the launch would be too much for their servers and would in turn break the game but still refused to provide refunds to those who purchased the game they willingly broke the law (and thus why South Korean forces raided the facility to find evidence of this).

Did Blizzard sell a faulty product? yes, inability to play the game is a fault, if enough people had the issue and it wasn't just an unforeseeable fluke then it's faulty, in which case under Korean law the buyer is allowed a refund for the faulty product.

 

[Naeras]

i'm talking about the players who the game works for but then they still want a refund if this goes through that is

I'm not following your here. Why the hell would anyone want a refund if the game worked for them when they bought it?

Your logic seems to be "yeah but they eventually kind of fixed the problems almost so people shouldn't get a refund". If you bought a car that broke down the instant you sat in it, would you seriously not ask for a refund even if the car salesman fixed it for you?

 

[getoffmycloud]

this is just as bad as the bullshit about the me3 ending when will it end.

Except this actually protects consumer rights as opposed to trying to make a game ending not suck.

the right to be assholes are the only rights i see being protected these days

That is a right just like any other but if you buy something than you fucken expect it to work so they have every right to complain about this and if you don't agree then you shouldn't complain about their complaining.

so if i don't agree with bullshit i should just stick my head in the ground?

How is wanting a game to work bullshit?

the thing is the game does work just because you live where there is a lousy connection doesn't change that basic

Actually, I live in Oxford, an area which has almost perfect connection (thank you to the universities). I've never had a problem with my internet connection in all the time I've been living here, and there have been numerous occasions in the last couple of weeks where I've been kicked out of a Diablo 3 game in which I was the only player. I try logging back in only to be told the servers are busy.

Entitled? Yeah, sure, but I kind of have a right to be. I'm basically being denied the right to play this game I've spent over £60 on (yeah, I got the collector's edition), if that isn't cause to be entitled, then nothing is. That's what differentiates this from the Mass Effect 3 fiasco (which really was fanboy bitching taken to the nth degree); the Mass Effect 3 ending was just a matter of taste, some liked the ending, others didn't. The ending didn't actually break the game on a technical level and make it impossible to play.

If Blizzard must insist on making an internet connection mandatory, regardless of whether you're playing in a multiplayer game or not, the very least they can do is guarantee crap like this doesn't happen.

As much as I agree that the game should work at launch and this is a massive fuck up on Blizzards part it is still a fuck up they said would happen and people still paid for it. If Blizzard hadn't announced the servers would fail then I would be more sympathetic but in this case I just can't

 

[Tony2077]

i'm talking about the players who the game works for but then they still want a refund if this goes through that is

I'm not following your here. Why the hell would anyone want a refund if the game worked for them when they bought it?

Your logic seems to be "yeah but they eventually kind of fixed the problems almost so people shouldn't get a refund". If you bought a car that broke down the instant you sat in it, would you seriously not ask for a refund even if the car salesman fixed it for you?

this whole problem starts since they think that even if the problem they had was fixed they should still get a refund which doesn't make sense any way people try to spin it

 

[n19h7m4r3]

i'm talking about the players who the game works for but then they still want a refund if this goes through that is

I'm not following your here. Why the hell would anyone want a refund if the game worked for them when they bought it?

Your logic seems to be "yeah but they eventually kind of fixed the problems almost so people shouldn't get a refund". If you bought a car that broke down the instant you sat in it, would you seriously not ask for a refund even if the car salesman fixed it for you?

this whole problem starts since they think that even if the problem they had was fixed they should still get a refund which doesn't make sense any way people try to spin it

The thing is in Europe the D3 servers are still down during most prime time hours everyday so far.

Our auction house's commodities section has been down days, and every day we still get Error 37 and Error 1.

This has been going on for well over a week now, the forums have threads that expand by 10 pages in mearly 2 minutes in evenings because people can't get on.
It's not the Customers internet at fault, it's Blizzard's server. They're far over capacity and even started turning of features like the commodities sections to try and get enough servers for people and Still don't have a enough.


Surely you can see why people would want refunds or get angry? It's not the the day 1 launch problems anymore, for many it's still an on going problem and its been two weeks Since launch now.

 

[Naeras]

this whole problem starts since they think that even if the problem they had was fixed they should still get a refund which doesn't make sense any way people try to spin it

You didn't answer my question. If the hypothetical car in broke down, would you want your money back? Yes, you would, because even if he fixed the car(after a couple of days), you wouldn't want that money to go to the car salesman in question, because he's clearly not making sure that his products are in the standard he claims they should be.
This is the same thing, and it's the sort of basic consumer rights stuff we learned in middle school. Why is video games any different than the car?

And, by the way, apparently they haven't even fixed all the problems. According to another thread I read here, there's still like 50% unscheduled downtime on the EU servers. If it's anything like that in Korea, people would STILL be entitled to refunds.

 

[Signa]

I'm starting to wonder if Tony thinks that people are going to ask for refunds because they beat the game and want to cheat the system by asking for their money back after consuming the content. I doubt that will be the case because anyone who has beat the game probably enjoyed it enough that they are continuing to play it. Besides, Blizz can just not give refunds to the people with characters that have completed Normal mode. I'm sure most of the people that want refunds don't even have a character outside of the demo mode.

 

[n19h7m4r3]

I'm starting to wonder if Tony thinks that people are going to ask for refunds because they beat the game and want to cheat the system by asking for their money back after consuming the content. I doubt that will be the case because anyone who has beat the game probably enjoyed it enough that they are continuing to play it. Besides, Blizz can just not give refunds to the people with characters that have completed Normal mode. I'm sure most of the people that want refunds don't even have a character outside of the demo mode.

Quite right, I do not want a refund.

I want the servers online and working, so I can play with my friends.

It's gotten to the point where only one of us can get online and the others are still stuck staring at Error 37 or Error 1 now.

It's not pleasant at all, we even avoided the game the first few days just not to get stuck not being able to play in the initial rush. We got it the weekend, then all of Sunday the servers were offline in Europe, and it's been constantly on and off daily since then.

 

[Flames66]

I think there needs to be a facility for people to get refunds for digital purchases. This is part of the reason I have not bought a new game for some time, if the game is a waste of money I have no way to recoup that loss. I will be looking in to ways to use UK law to get refunds for crap digital purchases.

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

The matter relates to Blizzard's refusal to issue refunds to disgruntled Korean gamers, hundreds of whom have filed official complaints with the FTC about overloaded and inaccessible Diablo 3 servers. Many of them have demanded their money back but Blizzard,citing EULA terms, has refused to do so; instead, it doubled its server capacity in the region and said it would continue to take steps to improve the service and avoid service problems in the future. But for a lot of players, that's not good enough.

See that bolded and italicized text? This is the only thing I'm concerned about in this matter.

If and when this goes to court, I'd love to see how Blizzard's EULAs hold up; because if they get shot down in court (which seems to be a probable scenario), you will see all sorts of shit hitting the proverbial fan so hard it'll send it into orbit.

 

[Zipa]

Pretty sure those extra Korean servers got taken out from somewhere else, say Europe, where """"service"""" has sucked immensely as of late.

Tell me about it, the last couple of days the servers have been down every time I wanted to play.

But the always online feature is working to stop those dastardly pirates!

Obviously it is working perfectly!

I mean, if people were actually able to play offline, then Blizzard would be losing roughly $40 million USD per second.

[sub]also, hows it feel to spend about $60 to look at a login screen?[/sub]

OT: I wonder......


I just wonder......


If someone yelled out "ZERG RUSH!" right before the authorities entered the building.

Having not paid in dollars I wouldn't know. Besides its not like I stare at the login screen anyway, I do have other games to play.