It got me thinking, let's say I spend $500 to buy some stuff, found some exploit and with the gear I bought farmed $5000 worth of stuff and sold it. Later I get banned for exploiting, so I get my money back? Now it'd be easy to say 'nope' but the $5000 worth of stuff I sold is can be to legitmate buyers so Blizzard gets $5000 from banning me and that money indirectly comes from legitmate users who might not otherwise have bought this stuff if I didn't exploit the game to generate the extra items. In fact that it's basically like a casino having a proposition player, i.e. they could just hire someone and give him a ton of stuff to sell and then ban him when it gets suspicous. I'm sure a lot of people have no problem if they receive some $ upfront to play/sell stuff supplied by the game maker. Okay some Blizzard is big and probably won't do that, but if what's stopping anyone else from doing that?
So let's say I do get my money back, then obviously the moral of the story is that you should exploit early and exploit often. That's not a good thing either.
In theory the best thing to do would be to reroll the stuff I obtained illegally and then refund the guys who bought this stuff from me but obviously that takes effort and that means it costs them money, so it probably won't be done. Yet it's only a matter of time before something like this happens. I've a feeling Blizzard is going to go with the 'we ban you and keep all your money too in your balance too' approach first, but I see no way that'll hold in court. Blizzard is not an entity that have financial powers and they should not be able to freeze what's equivalent of a money account. They can ban your game account sure but I don't see how it can hold up in court if they're going to take the money in your account too, because if they can then less reputable companies can simply wait until you put in a ton of money in your account and then ban you with no repercussions. After all if you look at the reason people get banned it's always rather arbitary and it's not like you can prove you never hacked if the company claim you hacked.
So let's say I do get my money back, then obviously the moral of the story is that you should exploit early and exploit often. That's not a good thing either.
In theory the best thing to do would be to reroll the stuff I obtained illegally and then refund the guys who bought this stuff from me but obviously that takes effort and that means it costs them money, so it probably won't be done. Yet it's only a matter of time before something like this happens. I've a feeling Blizzard is going to go with the 'we ban you and keep all your money too in your balance too' approach first, but I see no way that'll hold in court. Blizzard is not an entity that have financial powers and they should not be able to freeze what's equivalent of a money account. They can ban your game account sure but I don't see how it can hold up in court if they're going to take the money in your account too, because if they can then less reputable companies can simply wait until you put in a ton of money in your account and then ban you with no repercussions. After all if you look at the reason people get banned it's always rather arbitary and it's not like you can prove you never hacked if the company claim you hacked.
