MadCap's Mad Ranting - "Blizzard vs. Greedy Idiot!"

I was sent a link leading to a story of a most idiotic nature. It appears that Blizzard has a class-action lawsuit up against it because someone apparently decided they wanted in on Blizzard's profits for the year Blizzard hasn't been doing its duties to its consumer base playing online games! That's right! Blizzard, the MMORPG titan of the gaming industry has been, to quote the article, "deceptively and unfairly charging some users to secure their data from hackers."

HOW. DARE. THEY?!

My mock rage disguising my irritation at this aside, this looks just like a mad cash grab by one Benjamin Bell, the plantiff leading the suit against Blizzard. He's claiming that the mighty Bliz has failed to properly protect player information, and when hacks did occur, they failed to properly inform players and take steps to help prevent the incident.

I can already say that that's an enormous load of dung for a simple reason that I actually have already mentioned in my mock-enraged paragraph: Blizzard is the MMORPG titan of the gaming industry. It's not an opinion, they really are, just on World of Warcraft alone. They've set a standard and have done very well off of it (which only leads me to believe more and more that Mr. Bell is attempting to force Blizzard to cough up some cash), and the absolute last thing that they would do would be to misinform players about a security risk that might lose them their profits from their consumers. But this also ties into another issue that kind of destroys Mr. Bell's entire argument.

When you sign up for something online, put information into any system, you're taking a risk. Blizzard does what it can to ensure that all information that they take in from players is protected, but there is no such thing as perfect system. Blizzard, as I've stated above, is more than likely to be doing everything they can to protect player information and inform them of any problems that may develop. It's a security issue, and this is an age where people who know how can easily hack into just about any system and take whatever information they like. It's really just common sense. Of course, Mr. Bell seems to want Blizzard to, in addition to paying damages, not make players sign up for a Battlenet account when they buy a Blizzard game for use online.

It's not only an incredibly stupid demand - how do you improve security without a security system? - but it could affect many similiar systems in the gaming industry.  Xbox Live, for example? Or just about any MMORPG out there?  But I doubt that the illustrious Mr. Bell has thought about the long-term repercussions of this on the world of gaming.

So either Benjamin Bell is a complete idiot or he's greedy. And either way, I hope Blizzard's lawyers send him packing when they actually get to court.