Blizzard's Seoul Offices Raided by Korean FTC

[Grooveriding]

http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/...ded-by-korean-ftc-over-diablo-iii-complaints/

Blizzard may have the most successful PC game in history, both in the United States and abroad, but the game's release hasn't been without its share of problems.


Blizzard's offices were raided recently by the Korean Fair Trade Commission (FTC) for its refusal to provide a few unhappy Korean customers with refunds. The refunds were demanded by players unhappy with the "always online" requirement of the game. The FTC is required by law to determine whether Blizzard broke Korean law on electronic commerce.


The FTC raided Blizzard's offices in Seoul to secure related documents and "other evidence" which it will use to determine whether the publisher broke the law. The action was prompted by "hundreds of complaints".


Speaking for the FTC, Kim Hyung-Bae said the company "received many complaints from Diablo 3 users" and confirmed that an investigation was underway with the Korean Times. The agency is looking into whether Blizzard's stipulated conditions for a refund are unfair to its customers.

Update - it's looking like Blizzard is going to have to pay up and issue refunds to the many Korean customers demanding them.

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Di...ally-Anti-Consumer-Says-Korean-FTC-43043.html

Now that South Korea's Fair Trade Commission has raided Blizzard's offices, gathered up the paper work and are looking things over, the general gist is that they feel that the sales contract terms may be unfair, especially to unsuspecting consumers. So why is it unfair? Mainly because it's looking as if Blizzard may have set up terms to be absolved of all issues, problems, glitches, outages and down-times associated with Diablo III that could result in people wanting a refund for the game. In other words, they void themselves of accountability so they don't have to issue a refund.

What makes matters worse is because even people who don't plan to play with others and just want to log-on and loot and wank for a bit will still take up space on the network highway. This means that even people who are playing single-player are still clogging up the infrastructure as if they were playing multiplayer. There really isn't any way around this, so Korean gamers whether they play solo or in a party are experiencing horrible lag, rendering their gaming experience unplayable.

If Blizzard can't find a way to fix the situation fast, investigators are expecting that the FTC will issue a mandate to enforce Blizzard to issue refunds to everyone who requests one...in Korea, of course.

 

[RPD]

I hate their always on DRM and voted with my wallet on this game.

But this action by the FTC is fucking stupid and the customers complaining about wanting money back are also fucking stupid.

 

[Pray To Jesus]

LOL. . . I thought everyone knew it was always on?

 

[Newbian]

All blizzard needs to do is threaten to block them from playing the games and see who backs down first.

 

[Anteaus]

S Koreans take their gaming seriously. They also operate by different rules than we do in the States. It's possible that including always on DRM also means Blizzard is liable for unreasonable service outages that aren't due to scheduled maintenance or rare unforseen system crashes. I'm just speaking in conjecture though. I don't know the actually Korean laws about this. I doubt they made complaints purely from unhappiness. It was more likely that they suffered unreasonable outages like everyone else and decided to take action in the only way they know how.

I wish Americans would actually take these types of service problems more seriously. If your ISP randomly lost connectivity for several hours a day with no explanation or bill adjustment people would go crazy, yet many are willing to forgive and forget Blizzard.

D3 is just a game, but it reflects an unfortunate practice that goes on with many developers. When you purchase a game where mandatory internet connectivity is implied, the developer/producer should be legally obligated to keep up their end of the bargain, at least during the service life of the product. I'm not saying that Blizzard is negligent, however I do believe had they completed a more rigorous beta testing specifically related to server saturation and AH they could have avoided much of this. They could have offered open starter edition to anyone with a Battle.net account for a couple hours one day simply to beat up the servers and expose the problems. They could have offered a wow pet to all that joined in.

 

[RPD]

D3 is just a game, but it reflects an unfortunate practice that goes on with many developers. When you purchase a game where mandatory internet connectivity is implied, the developer/producer should be legally obligated to keep up their end of the bargain, at least during the service life of the product. I'm not saying that Blizzard is negligent, however I do believe had they completed a more rigorous beta testing specifically related to server saturation and AH they could have avoided much of this. They could have offered open starter edition to anyone with a Battle.net account for a couple hours one day simply to beat up the servers and expose the problems. They could have offered a wow pet to all that joined in.

Correct it is a game, you choose to buy it. Also if you read that box the game comes in (digital download I'm guessing you can find it somewhere in the requirements to play the game) tells you what you need to play it. It's not like they tried to hide it. It's a slippery slope because what constitues excessive down time? I can't recall any online/server based game NOT having issues opening day.

 

[Pantlegz]

Correct it is a game, you choose to buy it. Also if you read that box the game comes in (digital download I'm guessing you can find it somewhere in the requirements to play the game) tells you what you need to play it. It's not like they tried to hide it. It's a slippery slope because what constitues excessive down time? I can't recall any online/server based game NOT having issues opening day.

Opening day/week is one thing. But having the game down for almost a full day of maintenance 2 weeks after release is a bit much I think.

 

[Onita]

Correct it is a game, you choose to buy it. Also if you read that box the game comes in (digital download I'm guessing you can find it somewhere in the requirements to play the game) tells you what you need to play it. It's not like they tried to hide it. It's a slippery slope because what constitues excessive down time? I can't recall any online/server based game NOT having issues opening day.

Its not a slippery slope, as this is in Korea. I'm not sure about you, but I'm not too versed in Korean law.

 

[Grooveriding]

Korea is definitely more stringent on this sort of thing. Remember that the RMAH is not available there due to the laws of the land.

Looks like Blizzard may be trying to get a bit bigger than their britches justify.

 

[Zenoth]

I thought it was clear that Diablo III requires a connection to the Internet for the player to be able to play it. To me it looks like uninformed consumers think that they might be right. I'm not sure if it was Blizzard's job to "re-inform" those consumers, because as I said, they DID inform us all prior to release that players would need to be on-line all the time to be able to play the game either alone or with others, so if you buy the game you "agree with that", because Blizzard is assuming (rightly so) that the consumer "already knows about that".

 

[Newbian]

I thought it was clear that Diablo III requires a connection to the Internet for the player to be able to play it. To me it looks like uninformed consumers think that they might be right. I'm not sure if it was Blizzard's job to "re-inform" those consumers, because as I said, they DID inform us all prior to release that players would need to be on-line all the time to be able to play the game either alone or with others, so if you buy the game you "agree with that", because Blizzard is assuming (rightly so) that the consumer "already knows about that".

I wonder if they did the same thing when WoW came out.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

I havent had one moment of outage since launch day :\

 

[RPD]

Opening day/week is one thing. But having the game down for almost a full day of maintenance 2 weeks after release is a bit much I think.

Did you ever play WoW when it first came out or when a new expansion came out? It gets pretty bad fast. I don't know what S. Korea experienced, but one should expect to have issues with this type of game, with how popular it is/was.

 

[borisvodofsky]

The reason they need this sort of DRM at least at initial release is to hook as much player-base into the game as possible.

Because the online portion of this game is dependent on a healthily large community.

It is easy to stop playing a game if you've only just payed $60.


HOWEVER, once you've invested the 10s of hours into building your character etc, etc, the "effort justification" phenomenon forces one to continue, leading to dependence or addiction.


THIS phase of building the player base is especially important to building a good online game, which is why Blizzard went through the trouble to establish radical Drm requirements.


You people are the flock so to speak. They don't just want your money, they actually want your soul.

 

[greenhawk]

In one way I am thinking, what a joke.

on the other hand, I think it is about time something happened to get gaming companies to think twice with their online only DRM setup.

 

[greenhawk]

I havent had one moment of outage since launch day :\

you must only game in US peak time. The period of the day where Blizzard try to avoid down time.

At my end of the world, peak gaming (ie: late afternoon/evening) just happens to coinside with the US early morning, so guess when the servers go down for maintaince.

WoW in korea I suspect did not have this issue as they had their own servers. Guessing Blizzard did not set asside enough (if they did do it locally) Diablo 3 servers in Korea.

 

[Anteaus]

Because the online portion of this game is dependent on a healthily large community in order to keep the real money ah stocked and cash flowing.

Fixed it for you

 

[Stuka87]

I find it ironic that the country with arguably the best internet in the world has people that complain about a game using their internet connection.

 

[Anteaus]

I think it changes the dynamic. Previously, we just purchased a game. Now, part of the price goes toward paying the developer to operate as a service company, providing connectivity to what was previously was completely autonomous.

It's no different than paying your ISP to provide you reliable internet, your telephone company to provide you reliable telephone calls or your power company to provide you with reliable power.

We might not pay a monthly fee, but when you mandate connectivity, it is implied that they must provide reliable connectivity. People tend to just brush it off saying that these are just games, but it is the principal that is at issue, not the practice.

Constant connection DRM is a relatively new technology, and it seems bad precident is already being set. They know they can provide poor service and just shrug their shoulders and say, "hey, it's just a game." My question is, what happens when the cash stops flowing and they simply decide to pull the plug. Theoretically, the EULA gives them the right to do that tomorrow if they want. It's going to be very interesting 5-8 years from now when all the various publishers/developers decide to simply shut the servers down when the cash stops flowing in order to force us to buy their latest greatest.

 

[callaway86]

Koreans are all about MMOs, aren't all MMOs intrinsically using always-on DRM?

 

[titan131]

Koreans are all about MMOs, aren't all MMOs intrinsically using always-on DRM?

Yeah, but unlike MMO's Diablo III has a single player mode, perhaps they did not anticipate having to be online to play it. Maybe they wanted to play it on their laptops on the move or something and felt ripped off when they couldn't.

Edit: Having said that I don't think Blizz has done anything wrong, I'm sure it clearly states on the box that an internet connection is required and if these people had done any research what-so-ever they would have known that. I mean where is it written in Korean law that a single player game must be available offline? The whole thing is a joke.

Edit: To clarify, I don't know anything about Korean Law, however if it was their law that a single player game must be available offline, obviously Blizz would not have released it in its current form in that country, so I think it is pretty safe to assume that that is not the law

 

[Rifter]

I agree the downtime is outrageous, im in north america but game in the middle of the night because i work graves and sleep during the day and am awake all night. The amount of downtime is completely unacceptable, especially in the early morning times. The game when playing alone should not require a internet connection, im getting sick and tired of getting booted for maintenance when playing single player, its bullshit and im really happy at least korea has the balls to do somehting about it.

 

[titan131]

I agree the downtime is outrageous, im in north america but game in the middle of the night because i work graves and sleep during the day and am awake all night. The amount of downtime is completely unacceptable, especially in the early morning times. The game when playing alone should not require a internet connection, im getting sick and tired of getting booted for maintenance when playing single player, its bullshit and im really happy at least korea has the balls to do somehting about it.

Hmm, I thought they were just objecting to the game being always online. Suppose if it's the downtime they are upset about then they may have a point. Though tbh is it really the governments place to interfere? I mean you could just boycott their products in future. If people did that to any serious degree then companies might think twice about providing a crap service or refusing refunds.

 

[Rifter]

Hmm, I thought they were just objecting to the game being always online. Suppose if it's the downtime they are upset about then they may have a point. Though tbh is it really the governments place to interfere? I mean you could just boycott their products in future. If people did that to any serious degree then companies might think twice about providing a crap service or refusing refunds.

I intend to boycott, im not happy with D3 for to many reason to get into here.

Obviously i gave blizzard way way to much credit, i figured if they have years upon years of experiance keeping the WOW servers up and its the biggest MMO ever then D3 should be a cake walk for them on the server side. Lets just say i was wrong on that one, way way wrong

 

[Zeze]

I thought it was clear that Diablo III requires a connection to the Internet for the player to be able to play it. To me it looks like uninformed consumers think that they might be right.

Were they clear about the incoming epic fail of downtime?

It's not so much game required DRM and customers didn't know it. They did, and Blizz failed on keeping their servers up. Was that informed on the box?