Diablo III may have Blizzard facing lawsuits

Due to the poor service and plethora of problems Diablo III, the now infamous video game created by Blizzard, is facing, Blizzard may have to answer lawsuits all over the world. Some countries like Korea are pressing class action lawsuits, while others are asking Blizzard to put a refund policy into place to answer consumer dissatisfaction. This situation impacts much more than Blizzard… Such a move may establish a precedent for all new video games.

Diablo III has been plagued by problems since its failed release, including almost a month of delays in its real money auction house. Poor connection reliability means that players who cannot play offline will always suffer from an almost unplayable game. Constant errors are hounding players from all countries, and downtime with the servers have been causing consumers to not be able to play the game they put big money towards.

Blizzard stands to lose a lot of money from this situation, but the precedence that this problem is setting is by far the more important. If these class action lawsuits go through, it will mean that anyone can get money back on these online video games, which until recently has been unheard of. Because of the widespread issues of piracy, PC games are no longer returnable. This lawsuit may cause digital rights management to become even more restrictive, and thus harm the players when all is said and done.

Blizzard’s new video game may greatly impact our economic culture

The gaming company  Blizzard Entertainment is implementing a new feature in one of their video games that may have a wide impact on much more than the game. Many games have implemented what is commonly termed an “Auction House”, where players can spend in game currency to purchase items for their characters from other people playing the game.

In a landmark decision, Diablo III’s auction house will allow players to spend actual money in addition to the in game gold coins. This means that players will be able to not only purchase items in the game, but also sell items, earning a profit by playing Diablo III. While it’s possible that this system will offer no change to our current economic culture, it has the potential to create an entirely new product market and line of work for a section of the American population who may be employed in a line of work that doesn’t satisfy them.

Originally created as a way to protect their player base, who was already buying and selling items on a much more limited scale on sites such as eBay, this feature may have inadvertently laid the groundwork for a whole new method of conducting business online, and a whole new market for a group of people who already have the skillset for it. It will be exciting to see if this system changes the way a group of Americans does business, or if it’s ultimately doomed to failure.

Blizzard’s new video game may greatly impact our economic culture