Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to restrict people who buy the digital version of Diablo III from unlocking full game content for up to seventy two hours. Let’s just look at this again, someone buys the game and then can’t play the game properly. This is a shocking and appalling way of going about business.
Players are unable to get past Act 1 or level 13 until the account restrictions are lifted, these are unintended consequences of the account restrictions according to Rock, Paper, Shotgun. The intended consequences are:
- No public game access for unverified digital purchasers.
- No auction house access (real-money or gold) for unverified digital purchasers.
- Unverified digital purchasers cannot trade items or drop items for other players to receive.
- Unverified digital purchasers are not able to chat in any public or game channels.
- Unverified digital purchasers cannot attach a custom message to friend requests, but they can send/accept friend requests, and play with their friends.
- Global Play is not available for unverified digital purchasers.
Again let’s consider that this is for people who have purchased the game via digital download, not for people playing a demo of the game.
Why have Blizzard done this? Well they state:
“For security reasons and to help ensure the integrity of the game and auction house service, players who purchase the digital version of Diablo III may have to wait until payment verification is complete before they can access certain game features. (See below for a full list of restrictions associated with digital purchases.) While most payments are approved and restrictions are lifted within a day, in some cases it can take up to 72 hours to complete this process.
Similar to World of Warcraft, these restrictions were put in place to deter credit card fraud, which in turn helps reduce gold spam and other harmful activities that can have a negative impact on the game experience for everyone.”
Now it is easy to play the account security card, it’s also easy to be dismissive of the account security card, but account security is important. However I don’t really buy this in this case as when I downloaded Diablo III I had to engage in some account security to play the game, and yet I’m still playing a restricted content game I’ve paid for.
However, there is something about Diablo III that might very well give Blizzard the heebie jeebies, it’s the real money auction house. This adds a new dimension to Diablo III that Blizzard won’t be familiar with. This I can understand is something Blizzard need to be wary of.
Which begs the question as to why Blizzard don’t just restrict people from using the auction house or real money auction house for seventy two hours? Restricting game content is an extremely foolhardy and boneheaded move because people have paid for game content. Restricting the auction houses for a few days? Well not ideal but not exactly making your customers feel like they’ve been asked to pay full price for a demo is it?
Companies do odd things from time to time, big companies, as exemplified here. Blizzard need to apologise loudly for this and sort themselves out, if this real money auction house works, it’s feasible it could be extended to other titles or new titles, other games may follow this practice and new markets for digital goods may emerge, but hopefully the practice of restricting game content for those who have purchased a game, won’t be a practice the game industry follows.