Responding to corporate failures and fraud that resulted in substantial financial losses to institutional and individual investors, Congress passed the Sarbanes Oxley Act in 2002.
The Act contains provisions affecting corporate governance, risk management, auditing, and financial reporting of public companies, including provisions intended to deter and punish corporate accounting fraud and corruption.
The Battlenet account, characters, items, and everything else belong to Blizzard. They are game data - a game that can be taken down at any time for any reason. Items that we agreed can be removed at any time for any reason. They can remove the bank feature (or any other feature) entirely and we would have no legal compensation requirement. We pay for access to the servers, in whatever state they are in, when up. Much like an amusement park.
It is GAME data, not real life personal data, not financial data, not data about real life items, not even data about something you “own”.
Feel free to reach out to a lawyer and tell them a bug lost some game data and they were not able to recover it. See what they say after they realize you don’t own that data or have any guarantee it will always persist.
Start here with reading the contract we all agreed to (even if we don’t like it). You will need to bring that with you to your lawyer.
Exactly. Real life financial data is protected by law as it should be.
Yep, they’re legally in the clear (at least in the US). Maybe not completely in places like the EU and Australia, but even in that case the limit of their legal liability is the cost of the expansion and maybe some subscription time (since it could be considered a non-working product, I have a friend that’s familiar with Australian law). Even in the places with strong protection laws though, nobody owns their items, and it’s not about the items themselves as the game not working as sold.
It’s a huge reputational blow though, and will cost subscribers for sure.
Can’t wait for subs to start dropping once people realise Blizzard’s attitude to this is “lol whoops too bad we don’t know what’s in this game :// give us more money” and then in six months time they miraculously “find” everyone’s lost items and bribe everyone to come back
And the people saying it’s no big deal will be in here complaining when Blizzard inevitably deletes something else in an update, like their entire guild, their achievements, their characters, their whole account lmao
As for legally, digital items (at least in Aus) are a grey area. If wow shuts down tomorrow, there’s nothing you can really do, but they can’t just take items from you without a reason (ie seasonal removal from game, bans, planned content removal, etc) if those items are still available in game. There’s an expectation that designated storage such as a BANK stores our data until wow shuts down. The various ticket responses with conflicting info definitely doesn’t help things either, and there’s no way to guarantee this bug won’t happen again, with something else.
Honestly…I wasn’t that badly affected. I didn’t lose much (maybe 10 item slots total) and the ones I did lose weren’t really of any value or consequence, since months back I cleaned out my guild banks and sold anything that had any value. Speaking for myself, I don’t really need anything, but I would appreciate the few stacks of Pandaria, Cataclysm, and Dragonflight materials back.
My concern isn’t that, my concern is the people who had 7 tabs of valuable items completely removed, and didn’t get any restoration at all (even a partial one). We’ll see what happens. Nothing is going to happen by posting here, we need to post in the sticky in general. If they miraculously “find” the lost items…well that’s all anyone’s asking for to begin with.
You don’t own any of that data or the items. There is an expectation in AUS that something you purchase works - and you have consumer protections. You can certainly expect to be able to log into the game and play the game. If you can’t then you can seek remedy through the AUS systems. What you can’t expect is that the game will not change (regardless of reason). You did agree that Blizzard can remove items or game features at any time for any reason. MMOs are constantly changing forms of entertainment where content comes and goes. That is the nature of this style game.
Alterations to the Platform and Availability. Blizzard may change, modify, suspend, or discontinue any aspect of the Platform, Games, or Accounts at any time, including removing items, or revising the effectiveness of items in an effort to balance a Game. Blizzard may also impose limits on certain features or restrict your access to parts or all of the Platform, Games, or Accounts without notice or liability. Except as otherwise set forth herein, Blizzard does not guarantee that any particular Platform, Game, or Account, or any particular features or components thereof, will be available at all times, at any given time, or in all countries and/or geographic locations, or that Blizzard will continue to offer the Platform, Game, or Account, or all features or components thereof, for any particular length of time. Availability is subject to change at any time, although we will endeavor to use reasonable commercial efforts to provide you prior notice, unless the discontinuance arises from a matter that is beyond Blizzard’s control or causes the provision of such advance notice not to be possible or feasible.
No, Blizzard does not WANT to have people lose bank items. No, they don’t think it is funny, and they are not blowing it off. They can only restore what the logs show was removed by a bug - if that data is in the logs. HOW it got removed matters here.
There is the expectation that the game works, which it clearly doesn’t if designated storage just gets randomly deleted with no backup or compensation or even any suggestion it won’t happen again. The game can change, and they can remove items when content comes and goes, literally read my comment again where I said exactly that. But all that means is they can take it off you for things like bans, seasonal content, all the things I already said.
Blizzard isn’t blowing it off? Lol. That’s why they took a month to give anything close to an actual update, and all the other updates were on the EU forum, and now there’s conflicting ticket responses saying totally different things. No attempt to actually appease players, and most people here would probably be satisfied with even a shred of an attempt beyond “here’s a handful of garbage, nothing of any value”. My guild bank logs show items deposited that were never withdrawn, but those items are missing, and they can’t see it? Why can I see things in the game that they can’t??? If the rest of my items are missing fine, they can at least restore the items shown in the log.
Then we have the hilarious part where tickets tell us to post in the forums, but anyone who cancelled their sub can’t participate in the discussion post, and they keep locking every bug report even though this whole thing is reporting the effects of a bug. And their response? Tell you to pay them again, on the off chance there might be more mail coming, maybe in the next few weeks. Unless you got that other ticket response that said the restoration is finished, in which case they’re lying about the restoration taking a few weeks. Either way, not good.
Blizzard promised to listen to players more and make them feel heard, and if this is their best effort? Yikes. Players deserved an official statement about this a month ago when it first happened, given that this is a paid game with a paid subscription and a paid store.
For the record, I 100% agree with you, but nothing will happen by posting here. Feedback is NOT taken from the CS forum. This needs to be posted in the sticky in General. The last few times there was a huge issue and a lot of noise about it, changes were made. The Real ID fiasco. The WOD no-flying fiasco. But we need to post about it in the right place, posting about it in CS is effectively just shooting the messenger.
I would expect silence until the people in charge make decisions. Until then, the blues (both CS and CM’s) will not have anything new to post.
To be frank: Lose the chip off your shoulder and try to step back. You’re pretty much acting like Blizzard broke into your home and robbed you. Blizzard doesn’t have logs of every last thing in everything in the game from the moment you made your account. Their data storage is limited and doesn’t host everything everyone done from the start of the game to now.
I understand being upset, but acting like this won’t have any effect, nor would posting in the CS forum will make the data appears. The devs mainly goes by what they can see what they can prove as everyone would say they had the best of the best, the rare stuff and the like.
You don’t get to project what you think something should mean. When the contract says “removing items”, you don’t just get to add “…that are seasonal” to the end of it. What it states is what it is.
They didn’t. You just ignore them or didn’t see them.
GM’s answering tickets are not a part of the department fixing bugs. Opening a ticket for this is not the correct path, so that would on you for not utilizing their Support options correctly.
By fixing the bug and restoring everything they could, they were not attempting to appease players. Wow, this is turning delusional rather fast…
That’s correct. If you’re no longer a customer, then you no longer have a say in what’s currently happening in the game. I don’t understand why a non-customer thinks they have any right to tell a company how to operate.
You don’t want to be heard. You want to rant and complain, and probably get something for free. If you cancelled your subscription, move on with your life. Why does it matter to you if they restore items that you can no longer access?
Or are you trying to use your money as a bribe to get something? That doesn’t work here.
And they got one. The fact that you didn’t like it, or didn’t see it is irrelevant.
I know but as I’ve stated multiple times already, you can’t post there without active game time, and my sub already ended, and I’m sure as hell not giving them another cent until something happens. I shouldn’t have to pay to tell them that I’m annoyed that their game broke. There was a giant thread in bug reports until they locked it and moved it to discussions, effectively ensuring anyone who cancels their sub can’t complain here.
I know what the blues do, I know they have limited power, but I can’t post on the discussion thread.
You can log onto a <=20 level character and submit feedback using the in-game interface, that’s the only other option. The CS forum has never taken feedback, nor will they have any information that we don’t. They’re bound by the policies.
They managed to accidentally revert characters back to how they were years ago in a previous bug. They managed to make wow classic despite “not having the code”. They clearly do have some backups. And again, why can I see the guild logs of missing items but they can’t???
Yes, but we have to post in the right place to have a chance of getting changes made. Support is /dev/null as far as feedback goes. It’s simply not taken here. Never has been going back to 2004.
The blues here have nothing to do with the teams making the decisions or sending 5 items to someone that lost 7 tabs worth.