Legal Opinion: Is Removal of Language Support Illegal?

[News Portal]

Blizzard's recent removal of English language support for Russian CD keys of [app=4089]Diablo III[/app] left hundreds of affected forced to play the game in Russian, even if they don't speak the language. Our resident gaming lawyer Patrick Vuleta looks at the legal implications of this move.

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[Cyrinno]

You can say that Blizzard has done the bad but when it comes to computer software it's all about switches. Whats stopping me from enjoying the absolutely gruesomeness of Left 4 Dead 2, just some damn command in the software thats switched off all the gore. It's still there and I can tell you it'd be inthe game files I just can't access it. Same has happend with the international language versions of the game of Diablo 3 or any special digital edition of games where someone has something you don't.

In the end it might hurt genuine customers but I don't think a company the size of Blizzard will notice.

[DjVu]

So this does have some clout if we’re talking about gamers who bought Russian keys just to save money. They didn’t do their research, took a risk, and got burned. This happens every day, and doesn’t justify a lawsuit in itself.

They didn't buy Russian keys. They bought global edition keys (Available Languages: All) from Russian sites.

[Marius]

They didn't buy global edition keys... if they had done so they wouldn't have been locked out. There's a difference between actually buying the global key and being told you're buying it. You're trusting that what someone says on the internet is correct, which is always a risk. As I wrote, I think it was too big a risk to take here.

[Cyrinno]

Russian keys are the most risky.

[Vengeance47]

I agree that there isn't a case here for consumers to take Blizzard to court.

However if some of the rumours regarding the wholesalers; in this case the Russian CD key sites, proves to be true, then I would say that they have a legitimate reason to go to court.

I can't remember where I read it (perhaps here on GoN?) but some wholesalers have gone as far as replacing the Russian keys with EU keys at their own expense. In which case, assuming Blizzard did mislead them, the wholesalers would have every right to take Blizzard to court and ask for damages. Would I be correct in assuming this?

That is based on the assumption that the keys were in fact sold to the wholesalers as "global" keys.

The other issue here though it that Blizzard openly said that the game isn't region locked. Which then implies that no matter which version you purchase (UK/EU/US/AU/RU etc.) that the game will work on any server and support ALL of the officially supported languages. Especially when said RU key was working for the best part of 3 weeks with the option to play in whichever language you liked (from the officially supported languages).

There is also another problem with this as it stands anyway. If everything was perfect, and only people living in Russia bought RU versions, that still doesn't mean the game should only have Russian language as an option. There are plenty of immigrants and foreigners living there who would prefer to play in English, German, French, Spanish etc. So even if you argued that Russian keys should only be bought by people within Russia, that doesn't mean that its still not going to impact the RU user-base as it stands.

I have several mates in Sweden and even when Swedish is officially supported language they still choose to play in English. One of my mates actually said to me when we were talking about this that he finds it incredibly strange to play in Swedish even though its his mother tongue.

So even if Blizzard aren't legally screwing consumers......they still are screwing them over

[Marius]

I can't remember where I read it (perhaps here on GoN?) but some wholesalers have gone as far as replacing the Russian keys with EU keys at their own expense. In which case, assuming Blizzard did mislead them, the wholesalers would have every right to take Blizzard to court and ask for damages. Would I be correct in assuming this?

Generally, yes. I do agree with everything you say there Vengeance.

My main contention to the issue is that we simply don't know what was said. I'm reluctant to see Blizzard crucified based on only one side of the story.

But as you say, language locking is still a bad practice, no matter how you slice it. Maybe it was made to impact serial key sellers, but it's impacted a lot of legitimate customers as well. Even those who bought the keys from the stores.

Honestly, Activision-Blizzard lately seems hell bent on pissing off customers just to gain profits.

[Collect0r]

Honestly, Activision-Blizzard lately seems hell bent on pissing off customers just to gain profits.

Funny that, since activision took them over it's been a slippery slope for blizzard. I wonder what the cause could have been

[DeathMist]

Honestly, Activision-Blizzard lately seems hell bent on pissing off customers just to gain profits.

Funny that, since activision took them over it's been a slippery slope for blizzard. I wonder what the cause could have been

[PalZer0]

This is a classic case of a publisher only liking the free market when it suits them (ie. when they can gouge certain regions and leave them no alternatives). When a consumer tries to use the free market to their advantage by sourcing a cheaper price than what's available in their region (either through importing boxed copies or buying keys) the publisher gets all up in arms about it and enforces regional locks.

[Ralph Wiggum]

IMO if a game developer releases a game in a country with a language specific to that country, then so be it. But if they want to alter a game after releaseto the point where it dramatically alters the game experience, making it unplayable, then it's a big no-no.

[Marius]

Yeah, I could have touched more on the region locking issue. It really is the main motivation here it seems, and also demonstrates that region locks always have negative impacts in a global world. Hopefully the negative publicity received over this will discourage this kind of thing from happening too often.

Good comment.

And yeah Ralph, that's what caused this whole issue. If Blizzard had released the game properly, then buyers without the right version could have just painlessly got a refund and bought a new copy with the right language. Blizzard really stuffed this launch in many ways.

[RSOblivion]

And yeah Ralph, that's what caused this whole issue. If Blizzard had released the game properly, then buyers without the right version could have just painlessly got a refund and bought a new copy with the right language. Blizzard really stuffed this launch in many ways.

Sorry but I don't buy that BS. Blizzard did this intentionally to try to damage the Russian CD-Key market. It's backfired and now they have two options. Highlight their corporate power and not do anything to support those customers (whom Blizzard technically have had FULL payment from anyway), or refund/replace the copies for full/standard versions of the game.

Gonna be betting on 1 here...

[Marius]

Hmmm, it's possible, but we don't have any knowledge of Blizzard's motivations here.

I do think they put the region locking in place to try and segregate the market, but am not sure they deliberately defrauded the cd key sites.

[rapid101]

It's a shame the road Blizzard has begun to take. I know all companies are about profits first (Valve shoving steam down everyones throats, HL2 being a big 15 hour 'you are so special player!' fest advertisement for it, Ubisoft trying to fight pirates) but Blizzard at least tried to do it by making safe (pretty standard for the genre games, except for D2 and WoW), bug-free games, except now they're trying to use their reputation to squeeze that extra 10% out (IIRC their net profits after tax for a year are over 1bn) through forced-accounts-no-used-sales, online-only games to reduce piracy, SC2 tournament (which we thankfully do not pay for) royalties, and now RMAH (something usually reserved for f2p games), even if it will cost them more in the long run by severely damaging their reputation (Valve makes most of their money from Steam which makes its money from valve's reputation; if they sued a charity or the likes then steam would take a massive hit as it is not the cheapest option for pricing, it's just people feel good about Valve).

Now it seems like they're trying to stop people from bypassing regional pricing (again, to squeeze the extra dollar locally); if Blizzard come out on top then this is a massive blow for consumers everywhere and a big win for the suits, so in all earnest I hope they lose so they realise that their customers make their company, it is a privelage that we are their customers.

Long Sentence is long; TL;DR: Blizzard are squeezing the extra dollar.