Blizzard Unbans And Then Re-Bans Diablo 3 Account Over RMAH

You may remember a short while ago we covered a case where a player had an account banned after trying to make a purchase from the Real-Money Auction House. The reason for the banning was never properly explained but after Blizzard took the time to unban then account and then shortly thereafter, re-ban the account.

The player hails from Malaysia in the Southeast Asia territories, which is considered part of the American server structure for Diablo III, according to the Terms Of Service for the RMAH. The player managed to deposit a small amount of real money into their account but when they tried making a purchase on the RMAH the account was sent a notice saying access to the RMAH was banned and the account was soon suspended and then banned.

After a back and forth with Blizzard and getting them to take a look at the account, the Malaysian player had their account restored and everything was back to normal...sort of. While most of us would take flight from a game and a company where any little discrepancy results in an account ban for doing nothing more than adding funds to the company's Battle.net account, the player decides to give both Diablo III and Blizzard another try. After adding more funds from PayPal to their Battle.net account and trying to make another purchase from the RMAH, unsurprisingly enough the account was banned again.

As the first screenshot shows, the currency conversion goes through on PayPal's end. Paypal sends a notice saying that the conversion was successful. And shortly after that the account was banned once more.

There's always been fair warnings here about using the Real-Money Auction House. The whole thing is designed more-so to protect Blizzard and then secondly to protect users. Quite naturally, there are a couple of legal loop-holes that fall in favor of Blizzard but probably feel like a kick in the gonads for consumers, such as the account lockout due to the RMAH region policy.

Since the account lock-out recently happened to the player, again, we'll have to wait and see how Blizzard responds to the situation. This could be an extra safety precaution set in place after the recent Battle.net hackings took place, which probably put a lot of people's financial information at risk if they were using the same username or password to access multiple institutions.

We'll keep you posted on any further updates regarding the case, but as always, if you use the RMAH and you're not 100% American, if you travel, if you work outside your home country, if you access your account while you don't have your doors locked and your windows shut, or you're not buckled-down to your computer chair with a condom on your mouse and a rubber tire over your monitor, then it's not unlikely that your account might be locked. Remember, when playing Real-Money Auction House: The Game, the only thing you risk losing is real money.