Blizzard donating illicit Diablo III profits to charity

Blizzard is to donate money obtained by players who exploited an in-game bug in Diablo III to charity.

In a forum post, production director John Hight said that the exploit has since been fixed, and the game’s gold and real-money Auction Houses were now back online.

Previously Blizzard had claimed a “relatively small number” of users had taken advantage of a new bug after a recent game patch that allowed them to increase their gold ten-fold by cancelling a transaction just before it went through.

It said only 415 players had taken advantage of the bug for personal gain, and that the company has managed to redeem more than 85 per cent in excess gold from the accounts involved.

The money from auctions conducted by now suspended or banned players, as well as Blizzard’s transaction fees, will now be donated to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.

“On behalf of the development team, I just want to say thanks again to those of you who took the time to notify us about this situation, as well as apologise for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you personally,” said Hight.

“We highly value fair play, and we’re going to continue to monitor the game and take steps necessary to prevent exploits like this from happening in the future.”