Diablo 3 auction house back; Blizzard reclaiming duped gold

Blizzard shut down the Diablo III auction house after a gold-duping bug was discovered, but not before unscrupulous sorts generated obscene amounts of funny money. When auctions re-opened over the weekend, Blizzard was already auditing accounts to track down duped gold and punish exploiters.

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Blizzard shut down the Diablo 3 auction house after a gold-duping bug was discovered, but not before unscrupulous sorts generated obscene amounts of funny money. When auctions re-opened over the weekend, Blizzard was already auditing accounts to track down duped gold and punish exploiters.

Some players called for a full rollback on the servers to stop duping gold from wrecking the game's economy, but Blizzard was confident it could catch cheats.

"The vast majority of players did not participate in the exploit and we didn't like the idea of punishing them for the bad behavior of a few people," production director John Hight explained in a forum post on Friday night after the auction house returned. "Many players made significant accomplishments in the game that required time and dedication, and we felt it was worth the work involved to try to preserve these efforts and go after the exploiters instead."

In short, an overflow bug in the real-money auction house meant that people selling large amounts of gold for cash could cancel the auction to receive back more gold than they had put in. Rinse and repeat until you're sitting atop a shifting mound of dodgy gold. We know what happens when people can pull tricks to make magic money, right banks, yeah, right? Political humor, innit.

"Only a relatively small number of players had the billions of gold necessary to exploit the bug, and only 415 of those players chose to use this exploit for personal gain." Hight said that as of that post, Blizzard had already "recaptured more than 85% of the excess gold from the accounts involved."

Blizzard plans to donate proceeds from the cheats' auctions, as well as its own transaction fee, to the charity Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. It's also punished people who aided cheats by holding onto items or gold.

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  • reply
    May 13, 2013 11:30 AM

    Alice O'Connor posted a new article, Diablo 3 auction house back; Blizzard reclaiming duped gold.

    Blizzard shut down the Diablo III auction house after a gold-duping bug was discovered, but not before unscrupulous sorts generated obscene amounts of funny money. When auctions re-opened over the weekend, Blizzard was already auditing accounts to track down duped gold and punish exploiters.

    • reply
      May 13, 2013 12:10 PM

      Punishing players for Blizzard's mistake. *Sound of one person slowly clapping*

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        May 13, 2013 2:14 PM

        Its on thing to punish for accidentally benefiting from the bug and another to exploit for personal gain. There was a case similar to this where a person found a bug in a casino game machine that doubled or tripled the payout. It wouldn't have caused a fuss if the person stopped after the first bogus transaction but they kept doing it.

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      May 13, 2013 2:33 PM

      if your account was not involved in the exploit, you will get to keep your items and gold, as well as any money you received from sales

      So people who were simply flipping gems or unloading top end items for max buyout get to keep all the duped gold?

      They try to minimize the perceived effect this had by saying it was only isolated to 415 people but for hours unlimited amounts of duped gold was pouring into the market and transferring to legitimate players hands. I guess people who were gaming the AH those few hours won the lottery and everyone else can just grind harder.

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        May 13, 2013 3:38 PM

        Well, that's what happens in an unstable virtual/real economy that can be exploited with loopholes. After the disaster, the rest is damage control.

      • reply
        May 13, 2013 10:02 PM

        Blizzard could have made it right but this is exactly what I expected the to do...

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