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Blizzard Sued Over Battle.net Authentication

Posted by Soulskill on from the did-you-try-googling-your-problem-first dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A man has initiated a class-action suit against Blizzard over a product used to shore up Battle.net security. Benjamin Bell alleges that Blizzard's sale of Authenticators — devices that enable basic two-tier authentication — represents deceptive and unfair additional costs to their basic games. (Blizzard sells the key fob versions for $6.50, and provides a free mobile app as an alternative. Neither are mandatory.) The complaint accuses Blizzard of making $26 million in Authenticator sales. In response, Blizzard made a statement refuting some of the complaint's claims and voicing their intention to 'vigorously defend' themselves."

25 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. This is ridiculous by synthparadox · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not only does the $6.50 help cover postage and pay for the dongle, its completely optional and Blizzard makes the app available to as many platforms as they can. You can even install the authenticator on a Android simulator on a computer.

    I'm in shock as to how entitled this person is. I honestly just can't fathom how he can claim that Blizzard "makes money" off these authenticators.

    1. Re:This is ridiculous by synthparadox · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Right, because the keyfobs and shipping are free to Blizzard.
      How does this guy know that Blizz made $26 mil from them? Does he have access to the sales reports? Remember, "the complaint accuses Blizzard of making $26 million in Authenticator sales." Accusing someone of making money and them -actually- making that much money is two completely different things.

    2. Re:This is ridiculous by LordLimecat · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Theyre optional, and completely unnecessary if you use a good password. That they offer an ADDITIONAL paid service that competitors do not does not in any way obligate gamers to use the authenticators.

      If they want to sell guides for creating strong passwords at $10 a pop, and they end up making $500 mil on it, who cares? Its a service that apparently people want. The man doesnt even seem to allege that the device was ineffective-- simply that it was unnecessary and he for some inexplicable reason bought it anyways.

    3. Re:This is ridiculous by jklovanc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Income is not the same as profit. They sold for $6.50 but it cost Blizzard much more to purchase and ship them. From a financial statement point of view making no profit from a sale is bad for the company yet Blizzard is still doing it to support their customers.

    4. Re:This is ridiculous by meerling · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Blizzard already claims to do this at cost. That would mean no profit. Wonder where he's getting his $26 million profit statement from. It might be a cost instead of profit, but either way, his lawsuit is b.s. as the security fob is an optional and non required item, and the software version is free, that guy is an idiot trying to get a payday from Blizzard settling rather than paying to take it to court. I hope Blizzard takes the high road and fights him all the way.

    5. Re:This is ridiculous by synthparadox · · Score: 5, Informative

      If you really want to be correct, income can be either net or gross. Gross income is revenue. Net income is profit. Because he didn't state what kind of income, he's technically still correct. </pedantic>

    6. Re:This is ridiculous by arbiter1 · · Score: 4, Informative

      there is a 4th way, its Called WinAuth. A problem you can run on your computer to generate the code. Its FREE as well. http://code.google.com/p/winauth/

    7. Re:This is ridiculous by kurzweilfreak · · Score: 3, Funny

      Zomg, a company makes money off of sales of something that you don't need to play the game? Travesty! That has to be illegal!

      --

      kurzweil_freak

      5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student

      Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.

    8. Re:This is ridiculous by mat.power · · Score: 5, Funny

      He's technically correct, the best kind of correct!

    9. Re:This is ridiculous by yndrd1984 · · Score: 5, Funny

      It's the principle of making the customer pay for this after the fact. If the game requires authenticators to use its features, it should come in the box.

      I'm billing Ford for my gas, oil changes, and regular maintainance. I'm also suing because the advertisements showed an attractive woman in the car, and mine didn't come with one - I had to buy one separately from some "RussianBride" company. What a rip-off!

    10. Re:This is ridiculous by mlts · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A good chunk that (if not almost all) goes for shipping, as well as to Vasco DigiPass GO6 which then is rebranded (adding extra cost).

      If Blizzard wanted to make money from these, they could do very easily [1]. However, they don't.

      I'm normally a critic of Blizzard, but IMHO, this is one area where they are doing something right, because two-factor authentication is a significant improvement in security.

      As far as I know, this lawsuit is pointless. If one doesn't want to give Blizzard cash for an authenticator, the app that does the exact same thing is free on iOS and Android.

      [1]: Phase out the apps, then require the physical authentication token to be attached to the account in order for the user to use the AH or trade with other players.

    11. Re:This is ridiculous by Anubis+IV · · Score: 4, Insightful

      His number is extremely bogus.

      Even if we ignore manufacturing costs, maintenance costs, shipping costs...hell, ALL of the costs...it still means that they would have sold 4M of these dongles at $6.50 each in order to make $26M. Mind you, Blizzard offers free Android and iOS apps that do the exact same thing, and Blizzard caters to the crowd that tends to get these devices, so that would eat into sales of the dongles. Not to mention that 4M sales would represent 1/3 of the WoW players at its peak, which seems like an unreasonably high number. And the numbers only get more ridiculous from there, since even if we were to grant that Blizzard had a hefty 50% profit margin on each dongle, you'd still need to have found 8M people to have bought them.

      Class actions can be useful at times. This is not one of those times. This is lunacy.

  2. Going nowhere... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Question #1 will be : "Did blizzard make you buy one in order to play the game, and are there any consequences to not doing so?"... "No, and No"...."Case dismissed"

    1. Re:Going nowhere... by hawguy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      not necessarily, he can always say that it wasn't well indicated on the box or website when he bought the game. So this can be applied under "false advertisement" since it doesn't tell him that he must pay additional money.

      But he doesn't have to buy it -- he can pick a secure password and protect it (and protect his computer against keyloggers and other malware). When I buy a car the dealer doesn't tell me that I have to buy a car alarm with it at extra cost. Because I don't. It might be prudent, depending on where I park the car, but it's not necessary.

    2. Re:Going nowhere... by LordLimecat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You have to sign into battle.net to order one, which indicates right away that you do not need one to sign into battle.net. That someone could be confused by this is absurd.

  3. Re:Free mobile version is free by synthparadox · · Score: 4, Informative

    They introduced a "restore" feature a while back that allows you to migrate devices without removing two-factor authentication. Basically, you enter the restoration code into the new phone/device and both devices will continue to generate the same seeded code. This can also be used to extend the authenticator to multiple devices like having a smartphone and a tablet both generate the same code. This is just an ease-of-use feature, especially when sometimes you can't find one of the devices you installed your authenticator on.

  4. Authenticator is not a Blizzard product... by Kenja · · Score: 5, Informative

    It is made by Vasco and is sold in large quantity orders for around 6.50$, which is the same as what Blizzard charges for it. The idiot in question is basicly claiming Blizzard sold 400,000 Authenticators at a 100% profit margin.

    --

    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    1. Re:Authenticator is not a Blizzard product... by LordLimecat · · Score: 3, Informative

      at $26 million, that would be 4,000,000 at 100% margin, which stretches the bounds of credulity.

  5. Sometimes free by jklovanc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A friend of mine got hacked three times. Blizzard sent him an authenticator for free. It costs them less to send the free authenticator that keep fixing his account.

    This is just someone trying to make money on a frivolous law suit.

  6. Re:Surprised? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    https://encrypted.google.com/search?complete=0&hl=en&source=hp&q=battle.net%20password%20case%20sensitive&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

    It's pretty well-documented, including blue posts from Blizz staff.

  7. Re:Surprised? by Dyinobal · · Score: 5, Informative

    No they aren't I just checked my copy of Diablo 3 (which was a total waste of money) and my password worked regardless of what I capitalized.

  8. Re:Surprised? by TuringCheck · · Score: 4, Informative

    You know, there are plenty of WoW server emulators that had to reverse engineer the client authentication.
    Both the username and the password are converted to uppercase before being SHA-160 hashed and fed into the SRP6 authentication algorithm.

  9. Re:Surprised? by X0563511 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually no, i'm wrong. What the hell?

    --
    For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  10. Re:Surprised? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    The stupid, it burns

  11. Re:Surprised? by TranquilVoid · · Score: 3, Funny

    Well I just found out now, very surprising. And I thought I was uncrackable with PaSsWoRd too :(