Diablo 3's Nail In The Coffin For Linux Users: No Refunds, No Discussions, Blizzard Doesn't Care
You can try and try hard but you won't be getting your money back if you get perma-banned from Diablo III playing on Linux. The system has spoken and it says that it doesn't care about you, it doesn't care that you're not getting what you paid for and it doesn't care that you protest it because there will be others to fill in the gap.
Way back in July when the Linux debacle for Diablo III went public, there were a lot of people saying that it wasn't that big of a deal, it only affected a small group of players. It's not really possible to know how many people were specifically affected but we do know that those who were affected were not only shortchanged on a gameplay experience but also cutoff from any sort of customer resolution, as outlined in the original articles.
Blizzard avoided personally dealing with the Linux users, and instead sent out automated responses. Just part of the epic fail that is always-on DRM: If you get banned and you want to appeal it (even to play the game in single-player mode) you can't, and you can't even get a refund. How consumer friendly.
Lenon K., has actually attempted to change around the image associated with Blizzard's customer support. He's gone out of his way to give them the benefit of the doubt multiple times, in hopes that maybe their handling of previous Linux cases might actually be met with a more civil and humane approach after the initial fallout. Here's what he received in his ticket response from Blizzard, after contacting them multiple times regarding his penalty being lifted...
That's it. Even if you can prove you're not cheating, Blizzard doesn't care. They don't want to care and they never will. They're a corporation, they operate on profit margins. If they can squeeze fun into a game while meeting those margins, cool beans. If they can't? No big loss. If customers are dissatisfied with the product? No problem just ignore it and keep going. If the forum protests get out of hand? Silence them.
One of our readers made a very accurate account of how bad this situation has become, where a Devon Mullane states...
That's the sad reality of it all folks, Blizzard won't flinch and they don't have a reason to.
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There are probably dozens, maybe even hundreds of customer support complaints about the issues surrounding Diablo III that no one will ever hear about because most people will eventually give up after the umpteenth automated response. What's the point in complaining if your voice won't be heard? Well, hopefully the echo of said complaints will reverberate far enough into the gaming community for people to recognize that there are certain boundaries we shouldn't let the corporations breach, lest we become slaves to their profit margin vices and always-on dictatorships.
Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.
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