Having your Diablo III account hacked and stripped of items is horrible when you've put so many hours into getting them, but if you'd paid genuine cash money for that snazzy sword you'd be more than a mite annoyed at being plundered. As rapscallions continue to plunder accounts the length and breadth of Sanctuary, Blizzard has announced that players will be required to use a security-boosting Battle.net Authenticator to wheel and deal in the real-money auction house.

Technically, players will be required to have an Authenticator to add to their Battle.net Balance. So if you want to add money to spend on items or send the proceeds from sales back to your Balance, you'll need an authenticator, which come in both physical and mobile app form.

"While we understand that this creates an extra step for players during the login process, we believe this added layer of account protection will help foster a safer auction house environment for all of our players," Blizzard community manager 'Kaivax' posted.

And, of course, having real money at stake would mean players might respond in stronger, more litigious forms than angry forum posts if they were hacked.

Hacking has been a real problem for Diablo III since it launched last month. Though Blizzard can roll an account back to recover stolen items, it's a right royal pain in the rump. Early reports claimed that some had been hacked even with authenticators, but it seems just good old-fashioned stolen passwords are to blame.

While Diablo III has sold enormously well, hacking and the overwhelmed servers have made it far from the smoothest launch. In South Korea, Blizzard's offices were raided by the country's Fair Trade Commission following complaints from disgruntled players who were denied refunds.