Blizzard's Seoul Offices Raided by Korean FTC

[Mem]

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.

Problem I've is server is busy try later,I just want to play the damn game when I want,maintenance is one thing but server busy is annoying,its not always but enough times that I end up playing other games.

I paid for D3 but feel like I have been robbed lol.

I've ended up playing a lot of ME3 MP with about 2 million credits because of this ...I will say if EA/Bioware can let me play ME3 MP when I want why can't Blizzard with D3.

 

[thejunglegod]

Problem I've is server is busy try later,I just want to play the damn game when I want,maintenance is one thing but server busy is annoying,its not always but enough times that I end up playing other games.

I agree. I initially supported Blizzard's always online DRM, knowing well for a fact that this was the only way to curb piracy. Because, lets face it, piracy IS depriving hard-working people at game companies of their rewards. Well, not entirely, but a little fraction, which also amounts to a lot. I don't know of a single game that cannot be pirated except for WOW & now, D3. Know that WOW is also cracked and played on private servers and the gameplay is well and truly similar with downtimes matching those of Blizzard's. I will not name names but i do know that Blizzard knows of these private servers cos they are pretty mainstream. All they need to do is to file a lawsuit and they can bring the private server down. But they do not do that. What they do instead, is implement a technology that is a pain in the buttocks for paying customers whichever way you look at it.

All you people calling D3 an MMO can go to hell (no pun intended). It should've been just the way D2 was. A single player component, and the choice to go multiplayer. When you want to go through a game alone, there should be no interruptions internet connectivity wise. I don't want to have to look at a latency bar in red/yellow and go "Oh shit". I don't want to see my char go back in time a fraction of a second thanks to a lag spike. I CAN FORGIVE/UNDERSTAND ALL THESE FUCKUPS IF I WAS PLAYING CO-OP WITH SOME FRIENDS, but definitely not when i'm playing alone. That is unforgivable Blizz. What was wrong with SC2? Why couldn't you implement the same system here?

I get the feeling that the same crappy online DRM is going to be used for Heart of the Swarm and boy, is the future of gaming going to be a major PITA.

 

[gladiatorua]

I initially supported Blizzard's always online DRM, knowing well for a fact that this was the only way to curb piracy.

No it's not. Just implement multiplayer in a way that pirates can't use it and this way the legit copy is vastly superior.
As I said earlier, one of the main reason was item creation by hax. Combating this problem is easy. Just make a single-player mode, that can't interact with online aspect of the game. Those that want to hack the game and get best items can do so freely without bothering online community.

Know that WOW is also cracked and played on private servers and the gameplay is well and truly similar with downtimes matching those of Blizzard's.

WoW wasn't just cracked. Emulation servers were created. That's a lot of man-hours invested. And no, the were nowhere near official servers. That's why Blizzard didn't bother hunt them down. The content was lagging behind, and the quality of implementation was typically very bad.

What was wrong with SC2?

Battlenet2. No lan. This means high latencies and different sorts of problem for competitive scene. The pillar that supports SC franchise.

 

[darkewaffle]

No it's not. Just implement multiplayer in a way that pirates can't use it and this way the legit copy is vastly superior.
As I said earlier, one of the main reason was item creation by hax. Combating this problem is easy. Just make a single-player mode, that can't interact with online aspect of the game. Those that want to hack the game and get best items can do so freely without bothering online community.

You'd be a fool to think having a full clientside game implementation wouldn't make compromising the online game vastly easier, faster, and more possible.

 

[ibex333]

fuck yes.. I want my money back too. I want my money back not only because for the online only thing, but because this game blows, when they promised it was going to be good.

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

sucks to be you man.

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

fucking stupid...

 

[Anubis]

No it's not. Just implement multiplayer in a way that pirates can't use it and this way the legit copy is vastly superior.
As I said earlier, one of the main reason was item creation by hax. Combating this problem is easy. Just make a single-player mode, that can't interact with online aspect of the game. Those that want to hack the game and get best items can do so freely without bothering online community.

D2 had offline and online modes and this is EXACTLY HOW PEOPLE DUPED items

 

[thespyder]

When I went to WonderCon a few months ago, Chris Metzen was there signing autographs for a new Transformers comic that he apparently did some artistic work for. I ask him point blank what the deal was with the Always Online DRM and why Blizzard chose to go that rout. His 1 and only answer? Piracy and that's it.

I'm not saying that's a 100% fool proof argument, but I see his point.

I do however, get upset at the fact that when I play Diablo 3 by myself, that I can lag as if I am playing on a 64 man BF3 server. Effing stupid IMO.

The problem was with your question and the forum, not with Chris' answer. If you ask him "Why DRM?" he is invariably going to answer "Piracy". That is the ONLY reason for DRM. And the only defensible argument. But if you had instead asked him why Diablo 3 is always online for all modes, he might have had a different answer (Auction house). And if you asked him in a private forum, he might have given you something other than the party line (Micro-transactions).

Faulty logic.
In like 99% cases pirate's experience of the game is better because if you pirate you don't need to deal with DRM. At all.
The only people who are punished are legit consumers.

Faulty Logic. DRM is not supposed to make the gaming experience for Pirates buggy and laggy. it is to prevent unauthorized access to the game.

While DRM doesn't "STOP" piracy, it does reduce it (too what degree becomes the question. 1%? 10%? More? less?). However, the fact that legitimate consumers are impacted at all, is a valid point. And the real question is, does it cause more lost legitimate sales than it prevent in theft? Probably.

But the thing is, investors like the 'Idea' and it gives them confidence when they are making an investment in a game/company to know that 'Something is being done to stop piracy', even if it doesn't actually do what it is being sold as doing. It's like buying a deadbolt for your back door. Will it REALLY stop someone from breaking in? Probably not, but it gives you piece of mind on the subject.

D2 had offline and online modes and this is EXACTLY HOW PEOPLE DUPED items

The problem was never with items being Duped. It is with Blizzard trying to make a profit off of the sale of these items. With no Real Money Auction house, who cares if someone can make 10 copies of a rare Uber item.

 

[darkewaffle]

The problem was never with items being Duped. It is with Blizzard trying to make a profit off of the sale of these items. With no Real Money Auction house, who cares if someone can make 10 copies of a rare Uber item.

The RMAH isn't the only reason, as someone who plays online a lot, it's a big part of my experience as a player. If I could have ditched offline play for Diablo 2 to help ensure that the online experience wouldn't have been compromised, I would do it in an instant. I want to be able to play with friends and strangers alike, I want to trust that everyone's on an even playing field, I want to have an active and stable economy where the items I make or find are worth something because there's not an infinite supply of them readily created out of midair. To me, online only play is a boon because it helps keep the online experience legit.

 

[thespyder]

The RMAH isn't the only reason, as someone who plays online a lot, it's a big part of my experience as a player. If I could have ditched offline play for Diablo 2 to help ensure that the online experience wouldn't have been compromised, I would do it in an instant. I want to be able to play with friends and strangers alike, I want to trust that everyone's on an even playing field, I want to have an active and stable economy where the items I make or find are worth something because there's not an infinite supply of them readily created out of midair. To me, online only play is a boon because it helps keep the online experience legit.

While I am sure that the 'Stable economy' factor was discussed and considered, and while it is what the consumers feel adds value, the driving economic reason as far as Blizzard/Activision is concerned is the RMAH. If the economy was all of the sudden flooded with an unlimited supply of rare items, the value of them drops. This decreases the asking price, which cuts deeply into the commissions that Blizzard gets. They want a stable economy as well, but the auction house is the driving factor, not customer satisfaction.

 

[RPD]

fuck yes.. I want my money back too. I want my money back not only because for the online only thing, but because this game blows, when they promised it was going to be good.



sucks to be you man.



fucking stupid...

It sucks to be me because I choose to not support stupid ass video game models? Umm... OK?

 

[Udgnim]

The RMAH isn't the only reason, as someone who plays online a lot, it's a big part of my experience as a player. If I could have ditched offline play for Diablo 2 to help ensure that the online experience wouldn't have been compromised, I would do it in an instant. I want to be able to play with friends and strangers alike, I want to trust that everyone's on an even playing field, I want to have an active and stable economy where the items I make or find are worth something because there's not an infinite supply of them readily created out of midair. To me, online only play is a boon because it helps keep the online experience legit.

I am willing to accept online only D3 in order to prevent duping. duping definitely hurt non-duping players. any decent items found were considered trash when compared to some awesome statted duped item. the other problem from D2 (botting) definitely exists in D3 though and it looks like Blizzard did not do a good enough job to design D3 to make botting less effective.

There are gold farming bots out there and I'm sure there are bots doing stuff like aspect farming or easy to do runs like A1 Goblin and from what I'm seeing in terms of gold to real money ratio, the botters are going to recoup the cost of a D3 purchase before Blizzard shuts down their account.

leveling in D3 can also be botted easily by repeating easy quests for quest XP

I thought botting would become more difficult with Inferno elites being so difficult, but easy to farm locations are becoming more well known and I'm not sure how much Blizzard wants to nerf them in order to deal with bots versus annoying the non-botting user population that make use of those spots

the gold find bots also farm in areas with minimal risk and there isn't much punishment for dieing in softcore. Blizzard really needs to change softcore deaths to actually means something, but they probably won't because then it definitely becomes a pay 2 win game and play best PvE characters in order to do Inferno.

edit: I also figured that with the addition of RMAH that Blizzard would be more gung ho about banning bot accounts, but we'll see how things transpire when RMAH eventually gets released.

 

[thespyder]

I guess what I don't get is, if people are putting so much effort into making Bots and hacking other people's accounts, wouldn't it make more sense to create some kind of item/gold generator? These are after all line items in the code. If you find some way to call X item number into your inventory, you wouldn't need to mess around with any of the rest of it. Even if the attributes are random, generate enough of the same item and statistically, you get a percent that are usable/sellable. And if you can magically generate ten billion gold, selling that at a million for $30 US, that seems like a winning proposition, if you are that type of person.

 

[DrunkenSano]

It's much harder to create that sort of generator because D3 is entirely online now. Back in D2, it was probably easier since there was off-line singleplayer, so item data and whatnot had to be installed client-side. Much easier to compromise people's account through scams, banner ad viruses, etc.

 

[Modelworks]

The Korean government had the courage to do what law makers in the USA repeatedly fail to do, enforce the law. Many people do not realize that those contracts you click 'I agree' to when you install something are NOT the law. A lot of those terms are not valid and if they were challenged would be tossed out of court. Companies repeatedly include terms that are not binding , just because you click I agree does not mean you give up all your rights, fortunately you cannot sign away, click away, or say no, to any rights you have under law.

The courts have already tossed out the 'software license' type of thing they include with products where the companies tried to say they owned the software and users had to follow their rules, it just hasn't made it to gaming software. The courts ruled either a company is selling the software or they are renting it, they can't do both. Under that ruling if Blizzard were to go under they would have to supply copies of D3 to all purchasers that could be played at home without their service. They sold copies of D3 to users, once they take away that content they have taken away what they sold, they didn't rent D3 and a sale is a sale in the eyes of the court. That is what the korean authorities are looking at. You cannot force people to be online and also tell them you are selling them a product. Blizzard could have avoided this if they had sold D3 as a service you pay a one time fee to access, putting it on the shelf in a box gives the purchasers rights that they can't take away.

 

[Glitchny]

nvm..

 

[thespyder]

The Korean government had the courage to do what law makers in the USA repeatedly fail to do, enforce the law. Many people do not realize that those contracts you click 'I agree' to when you install something are NOT the law. A lot of those terms are not valid and if they were challenged would be tossed out of court. Companies repeatedly include terms that are not binding , just because you click I agree does not mean you give up all your rights, fortunately you cannot sign away, click away, or say no, to any rights you have under law.

The courts have already tossed out the 'software license' type of thing they include with products where the companies tried to say they owned the software and users had to follow their rules, it just hasn't made it to gaming software. The courts ruled either a company is selling the software or they are renting it, they can't do both. Under that ruling if Blizzard were to go under they would have to supply copies of D3 to all purchasers that could be played at home without their service. They sold copies of D3 to users, once they take away that content they have taken away what they sold, they didn't rent D3 and a sale is a sale in the eyes of the court. That is what the korean authorities are looking at. You cannot force people to be online and also tell them you are selling them a product. Blizzard could have avoided this if they had sold D3 as a service you pay a one time fee to access, putting it on the shelf in a box gives the purchasers rights that they can't take away.

While I am a big hater of the 'Always online', your suppositions have several key flaws. the first of which is that the reasons courts don't generally go after law breakers in this arena is because of how messy the whole thing is and for such a small gain. Particularly if you are talking about regions outside of the country the court is based in. Makes it very difficult to track/enforce. with it being world wide distribution, that makes have to be a pretty significant amount of infraction or it ends up in small claims court and not generally covered.

Second is, you state that "putting on the shelf in a box gives the purchasers rights" presumingly meaning that they "own" what they purchased. Only you can buy a box on a shelf for WoW or any other MMO. do you own the software? No. Are you required to play on their server? Yes. so any lawyer worth his salt (and companies like EA and Activition will have a lot of them) will use case law and examples like MMOs to support their claim. It is a difficult argument to fight, particularly if the Judge doesn't happen to be a gaming enthusiast and is unfamiliar with the nuances.

but absolutely, I think that a ruling needs to come down putting the gaming companies on notice that they can't simply make up the rules as they go. And this rule in particular needs to be rectified pretty quickly. However, if Blizzard needs to re-architect the game to remove the Always online, or if they need to refund, it will probably break the company.

 

[diesbudt]

The Korean government had the courage to do what law makers in the USA repeatedly fail to do, enforce the law. Many people do not realize that those contracts you click 'I agree' to when you install something are NOT the law. A lot of those terms are not valid and if they were challenged would be tossed out of court. Companies repeatedly include terms that are not binding , just because you click I agree does not mean you give up all your rights, fortunately you cannot sign away, click away, or say no, to any rights you have under law.

One thing you are forgetting here, is the clicking "I accept".

Whether you realize it or not, the account you have attached (and name/address/account/whatever) just electronically accepted a contract. A contract that gives any game that does this the right within said contract. (Ever wonder why it is so long).

I have read the entire thing on WoW and D3 during down times, and none of it conflicts or breaks U.S. commercial laws (korean laws idk). Therefore, if you sign it with an I accept, you are agreeing to their terms, no matter how ridiculous they are. As long as it doesn't break U.S. (for us) law, it is allowed and a court will 99/100 say your being dumb for not reading said contract.

It also states everything you want to know about the game. (Always online, will have downtime to repair/fix/update servers, cannot promise 100% connection time, you do not own anything in or about the game/world the game is located in Blizzard does you just are buying a license to play their property, etc.) And located in said "contract" is a clause that if you deem this contract not to your standards you can disagree, which will allow you 30days to petition for your money back from the company. [You must click accept to play for the first time]

Hence why a lot of people make fun of it. (South park's episode centipad? illistrated it well.)

 

[RPD]

One thing you are forgetting here, is the clicking "I accept".

Whether you realize it or not, the account you have attached (and name/address/account/whatever) just electronically accepted a contract. A contract that gives any game that does this the right within said contract. (Ever wonder why it is so long).

I have read the entire thing on WoW and D3 during down times, and none of it conflicts or breaks U.S. commercial laws (korean laws idk). Therefore, if you sign it with an I accept, you are agreeing to their terms, no matter how ridiculous they are. As long as it doesn't break U.S. (for us) law, it is allowed and a court will 99/100 say your being dumb for not reading said contract.

It also states everything you want to know about the game. (Always online, will have downtime to repair/fix/update servers, cannot promise 100% connection time, you do not own anything in or about the game/world the game is located in Blizzard does you just are buying a license to play their property, etc.) And located in said "contract" is a clause that if you deem this contract not to your standards you can disagree, which will allow you 30days to petition for your money back from the company. [You must click accept to play for the first time]

Hence why a lot of people make fun of it. (South park's episode centipad? illistrated it well.)

If you think those 5 page ToS/ToC or whatever are 100% legally binding, I have some beach front property for you in AZ.

 

[thespyder]

If you think those 5 page ToS/ToC or whatever are 100% legally binding, I have some beach front property for you in AZ.

The way it actually works (here in the US) is "In so far as it doesn't contravene US statutes and laws, it is a binding contract." This, of course is subject to changes and case law as applies. If all of the sudden a court case were to rule that always online was unconstitutional, or that down times are unreasonable, a court might throw out the contract. But short of that, most courts in the land will uphold a manufacturers contract as a legal and binding agreement.

 

[RPD]

The way it actually works (here in the US) is "In so far as it doesn't contravene US statutes and laws, it is a binding contract." This, of course is subject to changes and case law as applies. If all of the sudden a court case were to rule that always online was unconstitutional, or that down times are unreasonable, a court might throw out the contract. But short of that, most courts in the land will uphold a manufacturers contract as a legal and binding agreement.

My post wasn't specifically about always online. Courts have already thrown out those 5,6 10 page whatever long terms of service or conditions in software as not legally binding.

 

[railven]

Is the RMAH even up yet? If it isn't, how do we know that is the cause or is that just speculation?

I was under the impression that the Gold Auction House would still run. I figured only Legendaries would sell on the RMAH portion.

Eitherway, what if no one wants to use the RMAH portion and just sticks to the Gold Auction House? I believe Blizzard gets a cut from that too