The lights are on
Recently, Diablo III received an update that accidentally allowed players to exploit the auction house in profitable ways. The bug has been identified, and taken care of, and has resulted in money that will be donated to charity.
John Hight, Diablo III's production director, took the game's message boards to let everyone know what happened, how Blizzard fixed it, and how it is dealing with the aftermath. Shortly after the game was updated earlier this week, "Players discovered a bug that allowed gold to be duplicated via the real-money Auction House," says Hight, "This resulted in an overflow on cancelled auctions that yielded a greater amount of gold in return." Apparently 415 players took advantage of this exploit between the time it was discovered and fixed by Blizzard. Those who were caught, had their accounts locked.
Blizzard considered a rollback of the Auction House, which would have cause many players to loose items and progress, but it decided against it of it because it would have punished all Diablo III players for the actions of of a few players.
As far as the extraneous gold that resulted from players exploiting the bug, it will be going to a good cause. Hight says, "We'll be donating all proceeds from auctions conducted by the suspended or banned players—including all of THEIR sale proceeds that we intercepted as well as our transaction fee—to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals."
For a full breakdown of exactly what happened, you can check out Hight's posting on the Diablo III message boards.
We spoke with Diablo III's director Jay Wilson (who has since moved on to a different internal project at Billard), and he said that the the auction house, "really hurt the game." You can check out the full interview here.
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MAN I'AM REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO THE PS3 ONE.
Or Blizz could, I dunno, shut it down completely? You know. Kill the head of the disease that is the continuous reason why D3 is awful. Sure there are small problems that continue to get addressed and patched, but I think the majority would agree that the AH/RMAH kills the entire drive of hunting and farming for gear. You buy it, fully gear out your toon and are immediately bored. Congrats Blizz.
Well didn't know of this and yet at the same time. If I was a gamer playing it and had an account closed. In turn Blizzard saying if I wanted to play again. I'd have to agree that the money I did use (I would never spend real money on D3 items...waste of time) to go to charity and have my account open again. I most likely do it. Though really I stopped playing D3 as.....really...should never bought the game...oh well may pick it up if there was something cool goes on.
I tried playing this again today. It still sucks.
Billard.
I like how Blizzard dealt with this situation. I no longer play D3 very much so I don't have much of a stake in the game, but at I'm glad the people who abused the bug were locked out.
We should have learned our lesson.
When is it coming to Xbox!!!
I picked an odd time to get back into this game apparently.
Glad blizzard fixed this
Money coming out of nowhere?
"Thats a lot of money you're giving away! Where did you get it?"
"Diablo"
damn billard!
Scumbag Billard! Or something!