The Authenticator works in a similar way to Google’s, in that you need access to your phone to gain access to your account, in addition to your username and password. It’s a brilliant system that makes us wonder why more services don’t use such methods.
“We’d like to take a moment to address the recent reports that suggested that Battle.net and Diablo III may have been compromised,” says the official statement. “Historically, the release of a new game – such as a World of Warcraft expansion – will result in an increase in reports of individual account compromises, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing now with Diablo III.”
“We know how frustrating it can be to become the victim of account theft, and as always, we’re dedicated to doing everything we can to help our players keep their Battle.net accounts safe – and we appreciate everyone who’s doing their part to help protect their accounts as well.”
“Despite the claims and theories being made,” says another post, possible referring to Eurogamer’s story, “we have yet to find any situations in which a person’s account was not compromised through traditional means of someone else logging into their account through the use of their password.”
“While the authenticator isn’t a 100% guarantee of account security, we have yet to investigate a compromise report in which an authenticator was attached beforehand.”
JesseDeya
I see they’re taking the Microsoft approach then – deny deny deny, blame the victim, deny some more. Very responsible Blizzard.
One more reason not to buy this game (just yet).
LycanGav
Or they are accurate in their statements? The authenticator is a great way of securing your account and with it being freely available on smartphone platforms there’s little reason not to use it.
Nickboss1
This is the one time i’ll be glad if it has been hacked. Making single player online is asking for trouble. It go’s to show DRM doesnt work!
I do feel for the gamers in all of this crap.
McProley
I fully agree mate, although its a shame that the gamers get the worse end of it all.
I really want this but if its online only then there is no chance its getting a sale from me. I need to be able to play it at work
IAmJacksMedullaOblongata
You feel for the games but you hope it’s been hacked.
Right.
Bladesteel
Gamers, not games.
Hoping for a stupid decision an blizzards part to backfire, at the cost of a few people losing some virtual possessions in a game, with the wanted result being that all the gamers are better off if they drop the online-only-drm. I can’t see how that makes it impossible to feel for the individual victims that are paying the price.
brillerment
Bleh. I’ve been waiting for a good few weeks now for a response on getting my fiance’s battle.net account back. Got stolen, password changed, and then the email address changed without any confirmation request to her.
So no point getting a second copy of Diablo3 for multiplayer. Making a new account would mean giving up on all the WoW addons she’s paid for. Pity cos she’s really enjoying Diablo 3, but we have to take turns on my account instead of playing together.
Guess we’ll have to wait for Torchlight 2.
hazelam
personally i don’t think blizzard’s networks are very secure.
within a day or so of signing up i started getting phishing emails saying my wow account had been hacked.
i’d never got them before that.
also my wow account was hacked once.
my account was banned for posting spam, i told blizzard if my account was used for that it wasn’t by me.
so they reactivated it and i found a load of new level 1 characters in stormwind
i didn’t have anything of value so the hackers didn’t bother taking my gear or anything.
maybe neither of those was down to substandard security, but then again, maybe they were.
Uhyve
My WoW account is the only thing of mine that has ever been hacked. Not only that, it got hacked after I hadn’t used it for 2 or 3 years. Out of the blue I got a “Your account has been suspended” email, and not the phishing kind either (I always log in directly through the websites in that sort of situation rather than clicking any email links just in case).
I didn’t particularly care, just thought it was interesting considering your post.
Bilbo_bobbins
sounds like if they deny if enough they think it will come true.
online SP is a disgrace, I feel sorry for the gamers in all of this, but also glad it happened. Maybe they will think twice about it.
brillerment
What’s worse is that it’s not just DRM, if there are server issues or other things downloading on your pc, the game lags like hell. Steam started a game update and Diablo 3 becomes unplayable. World of Warcraft doesn’t even need this much bandwidth.
An-dz
Iv heard people say that there is a charge for using the authenticater, is that true or just people acting up and all out lieing.
Bladesteel
Based on the description there is no charge for the mobile authenticator unless it’s required by the carrier/appstore. Apart from that whatever you’d have to pay for the data traffic when the app starts (or resyncs).
In this case they should be yelling at the carriers, not blizzard.