Blizzard facing class action suit over authenticators

When your games are purchased by millions of people, you are bound to have some dissatisfied customers, some willing to take you to court. Blizzard is staring down a class action suit by two gamers who have accused the company of herding players to buy Battle.net authenticators instead of doing a better job of securing player information.

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When your games are purchased by millions of people, you are bound to have some dissatisfied customers, some even willing to take you to court. Blizzard is staring down a class action suit that accuses the company of herding players to buy Battle.net authenticators instead of doing a better job of securing player information. The authenticators have brought in $26 million, according to the complaint.

Blizzard has shot back in a rather lengthy statement, saying the case is frivolous and without merit. In part:

"We want to reiterate that we take the security of our players' data very seriously, and we're fully committed to defending our network infrastructure. We also recognize that the cyber-threat landscape is always evolving, and we're constantly working to track the latest developments and make improvements to our defenses."

As to the claim about the forcing players to buy authenticators, Blizzard said:

"Considering that players are ultimately responsible for securing their own computers, and that the extra step required by the Authenticator is an added inconvenience during the log in process, we ultimately leave it up to the players to decide whether they want to add an Authenticator to their account. However, we always strongly encourage it, and we try to make it as easy as possible to do."

The suit mentions breaches to Blizzard's servers in May and August, and requests money damages and an order from the court to prevent Blizzard from requiring Battle.net accounts for non-MMO games.

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  • reply
    November 13, 2012 5:00 PM

    John Keefer posted a new article, Blizzard facing class action suit over authenticators.

    When your games are purchased by millions of people, you are bound to have some dissatisfied customers, some willing to take you to court. Blizzard is staring down a class action suit by two gamers who have accused the company of herding players to buy Battle.net authenticators instead of doing a better job of securing player information.

    • reply
      November 13, 2012 5:10 PM

      26 million from the sale of authenticators. Didnt each authenticator come out to a net profit of $0 for Blizzard?

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        November 13, 2012 5:25 PM

        They do. Which is part of the reason I think this so called lawsuit is just going to be dismissed.

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        November 14, 2012 1:25 AM

        That's what has me confused. Blizzard always claimed the purchase-cost of the authenticators were the same as the manufacturing cost. I'm no fan of the authenticators or Blizzard itself, but that must be a very good counter to the so called class action suit.

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        November 14, 2012 1:27 AM

        Another statement they made was that the authenticators on mobile devices were free for exactly the same reason; they wanted more security, not money. (for this particular feature)

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      November 13, 2012 5:11 PM

      I'm sure this will totally go in the player's favor.

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      November 13, 2012 5:12 PM

      Stay awhile and litigate

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      November 13, 2012 5:14 PM

      Authenticators have been around for a while, but this is the first time I have heard of a company charging for it, as opposed to it being integrated into the game from the start, or through a patch for free.

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        November 13, 2012 8:58 PM

        They're only charging for the physical devices -- which all companies I'm aware of (minus PayPal maybe?) charge for.

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      November 13, 2012 5:14 PM

      herding them to buy? the IOS and android ones were up and free immediately

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        November 13, 2012 5:25 PM

        It's costing us significantly more to create a bot farm since we have to purchase authenticators for the RMAH. Sue!!!!!!

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        November 13, 2012 5:48 PM

        thats exactly what I was thinking

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      November 13, 2012 5:22 PM

      This is retarded, the handheld activators are an alternative for people who don't own a smartphone and can't download the FREE authenticator app. The whole authenticator service is mostly an optional foolproof for customers who download keyloggers or give their account info to third party sites. These two aren't representing the players, they're representing assholes looking for excuses to sue corporations.

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      November 13, 2012 5:23 PM

      [deleted]

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      November 13, 2012 5:23 PM

      Pretty pathetic. It seems some people will look for any avenue to sue just to make money. I hope they get curb stomped for wasting everyone's time.

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      November 13, 2012 6:01 PM

      This still doesn't excuse their passwords not being case sensitive.

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        November 13, 2012 6:14 PM

        That was a rather wtf moment when I typed in my pass for WoW and capslock was on, but I still got in.

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          November 13, 2012 6:20 PM

          At the end of the day, case (in)sensitivity doesn't matter for online services. Putting a rate limit on the order of a dozen tries per minute (which they do) buys you significantly more security from brute force & dictionary attacks than the extra bits or two case sensitivity provides.

          IIRC (my post history includes the actual math & expected times), you're arguing about going from something like a two lifetime expected crack to a four lifetime expected crack, with no improvements due to increased processing power. It's irrelevant.

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      November 13, 2012 9:14 PM

      I'll sign.

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