Diablo 3 Trade Scams Will Be Patched In 1.0.4 Update

You know those trade scams we've been reporting on every once in a while? Those scams in Diablo III that results in people losing stuff and then later having that stuff appear on the Real-Money Auction House? Well, Blizzard has finally made a statement about the trade scams/exploits and stated that it's a serious issue and will require an overhaul of the client-side runtime, and that it likely won't appear until patch 1.0.4.

A player on the Diablo III forums made a warning about the trade scams. Scams have been rampant since the launch of the game but made it into the news after many players went public about losing items to the player-to-player trading window.

Community manager Lylirra took to the forums to dissuade people from avoiding trading, making a lengthy post about the trade scams, stating...

“...we are definitely aware of the scams you and other players have reported and are working on improvements to the Trade window that should help prevent those types of scams from occurring in the future. I’ve spoken with our developers about this issue, and I can assure you that they're passionate about finding a resolution and making it so that players can feel safe and confident about trading with each other again. Unfortunately, the kinds of improvements we're making cannot be implemented via hotfix and instead require a full client patch, so please don’t think that because we haven’t made any changes yet that we do not consider this is a priority. We're hoping to get these improvements in as soon as possible (i.e. with 1.0.4), but keep in mind that sometimes schedules can change due to testing and implementation needs.”

This is the same issue that we brought up to Blizzard in our conversation with them a few weeks ago. Quite naturally the rep said that Blizzard would be looking into the issue and taking some of these issues directly to the developers. So far we have yet to receive a response and everyone in the community can only assume that Blizzard is trying to keep a tight lid on this sort of stuff until they can find a way to make it disappear.

We're also still awaiting some sort of response from Blizzard regarding the Linux bans and the gamers who lost their money to the hazy areas of the RMAH region policy. I imagine at some point Blizzard will have to come clean about these things for better or for worse.

Whether the trade scams will be fixed in the upcoming update is something that we'll have to wait and see on, but more than likely it will be fixed just like all the account infiltrations that also managed to instantly stop after patch 1.0.2b.

If you or someone you know lost money to the Real-Money Auction House or was wrongly banned be sure to let the press know or go public about it. The worst thing that can happen is to have this stuff get buried and forgotten about.