Diablo III Auction House glitch has users in uproar

By Tim G. Villasor

Published May 10, 2013 12:31pm

Almost a year after it was released for PC and Mac platforms, a newfound glitch in Blizzard’s Diablo III may spell disaster for the game’s in-game economy as well as its online following.

As reported by Kotaku, an exploit was found in the Diablo III auction house that allows users to cancel a transaction before it’s completed and to double their in-game gold in the process.

This has caused an uproar in the community, with several complaints being filed by players in the forums for Blizzard to do something about the mess and to possibly roll back the latest update altogether. There is growing concern that the glitch may be systematically eroding confidence in Diablo III's online economy.

The latest patch and version update was 1.0.8. Blizzard noticed the bug on May 7, and systematically took the Auction House offline to fix and address the issue. But instead of rolling back the update, the studio has decided to make a complete audit of all the transactions made since the exploit was found. Even a full 24 hours later, servers have remained unavailable.

Following the discovery of the glitch, Blizzard released the following press statement:

After the release of Patch 1.0.8 this morning, we made the decision to take the gold and real-money Auction Houses offline to investigate a bug that certain players were exploiting to dupe gold. Our team is working hard to fix any outstanding issues and take appropriate actions with the accounts involved. The Auction House services will be restored as soon as the situation is resolved. As always, maintaining a stable, safe, and fun gaming experience for legitimate players is a top priority for us, and we'll continue to monitor activity on Battle.net and take action as needed.

As of Friday noon, complaints continue to trickle in from forum users on Diablo III's official Battle.net site. — TJD, GMA News

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