The Wall Street Journal reports that Blizzard Entertainment must refund the money of a string of Diablo 3 players located in South Korea due to issues surrounding the game's launch.
The news arrives around three weeks after South Korea's Fair Trade Commission launched an investigation into the company's Seoul office. The investigation was prompted by a huge wave of heated complaints it received about problems with Diablo 3's internet servers caused by overloading.
In a message posted on its website on Monday, Blizzard said that the server overload problem stemmed from a misjudgment about user volume in Asia, leading to frequent server crashes and slow connectivity. This sparked a huge backlash by South Korea’s large online gaming community which makes up two-thirds of all Diablo 3-related traffic in Asia.
To help alleviate the connection problems, Blizzard established additional servers in early June. The company also offered affected Diablo 3 players a 30-day free trial to StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty as compensation. Now it's required to provide a full refund thanks to Korea's consumer protection law which guarantees a refund if there's a problem with a product that's not caused by the actual consumer.
According to Blizzard, Diablo 3 players in Korea who are less than Level 40 can apply for a refund from June 25 to July 3. Blizzard is also accepting returns from any player less than Level 20 within 14 days of purchase from here on out.
