Diablo Immortal Being Investigated For False Advertising

Bliz­zard’s free-to-play mobile game Dia­blo Immor­tal might find itself in some legal mis­for­tune, as a law firm spe­cial­iz­ing in class-action law­suits is inves­ti­gat­ing the game for false advertising.

The Migli­ac­cio & Rathod law firm has announced it is look­ing for play­ers who pur­chased bun­dles that specif­i­cal­ly held the Leg­endary gem, Bless­ing of Worthy–which could cost up to $100. At the first or sec­ond upgrades, the gem was orig­i­nal­ly described as grant­i­ng the play­er a 20% chance to deal dam­age worth 12% of that play­er’s max­i­mum life. Obvi­ous­ly, this makes it incred­i­bly pow­er­ful, but it’s lev­el three where things go south. The lev­el three descrip­tion orig­i­nal­ly changed to read that it dealt dam­aged based on the user’s cur­rent life, not max­i­mum life.

This if far less use­ful, and becomes sit­u­a­tion­al, as a play­er may already be low on life–reducing the amount of bonus dam­age. It took months for Bliz­zard to clar­i­fy the mis­take, say­ing the descrip­tion of the lev­el three ver­sion was the cor­rect one, adjust­ing lev­el one and two’s descrip­tions accord­ing­ly. Fans have joked the gem should be renamed to “Bless­ing of the Unworthy.”

How­ev­er, many users have already spent mon­ey on this gem, and Bliz­zard is not offer­ing any com­pen­sa­tion or refunds for those pur­chased a bun­dle based on Bless­ing of the Wor­thy’s orig­i­nal descrip­tion. One of Dia­blo Immor­tal’s com­mu­ni­ty man­agers announced the descrip­tion change in a Red­dit post back in Octo­ber, caus­ing a stir-up among play­ers. Numer­ous play­ers called out this ridicu­lous mis­take, ask­ing what Bliz­zard was going to do to right this wrong and if the com­pa­ny’s actions are even legal.

Turns out, Migli­ac­cio & Rathod don’t think so. The law firm is inves­ti­gat­ing the false adver­tis­ing claim, as Bliz­zard took the mon­ey but lat­er changed the gem’s description.

“Rather than offer refunds or some form of com­pen­sa­tion, Bliz­zard has instead respond­ed to the Bliz­zard com­mu­ni­ty by stat­ing that they will change the item’s text descrip­tion to reflect its actu­al effect, at lev­el three,” Migli­ac­cio & Rathod write. “This prac­tice essen­tial­ly amounts to a bait-and-switch, since a pur­chasable item was adver­tised with one effect that play­ers want­ed and end­ed up with some­thing com­plete­ly different.”

With­in the law fir­m’s blog announc­ing this inves­ti­ga­tion, they thanked the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers of Amer­i­ca (CWA) for bring­ing this prob­lem to their atten­tion. CWA is notably asso­ci­at­ed with help­ing groups of devel­op­ers with­in Activi­sion Bliz­zard unionize.