Blizzard Preventing Users From Deleting their Accounts

[Deus Voltage]

This was reported on reddit as well as Twitter:

 

This was also reported on Blizzard forums to which a moderator responded by saying:

 

Quote

Deleting a Blizzard Account is an irreversible step that requires a direct web ticket to Blizzard Customer Service. In addition, photo identification must be sent in to confirm the user before an account is completely deleted. Because of this I am anticipating there is an increased flow of web tickets being poured in and there may be a very long wait before such a request is processed. Remember if you rather, you can just uninstall your games and the BattleNet launcher for the time being.

 

A gaming website reported on it and stated the following:

 

Quote

Multiple Blizzard users are saying that when they try to close their account or request a copy of their personal data, they’re being presented with a message that reads: “Due to too many attempts. [Authentication method] has been locked. Please try another method for verification.”

 

Apparently, some people cannot even delete their accounts even after following proper procedures because of their geographical location. This is from a Reddit user belonging to the thread I linked above

 

Quote

I submitted a photo ID, and still got my request denied (message says this method does not work in my country, but offers no other method).

 

Thoughts:

Very troubling. I am unsure on as to what Blizzard is planning. I have never seen this kind of behavior before from a U.S company. I want to avoid making this thread political so please fight the urge if possible and discuss.

[Arika]

Someone call Bethesda because this is some Fallout

[Las0r]

This is the 2nd out of season April fools joke they've pulled.

[WereCatf]

55 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

serious question: what is this for, other than making sure they have nothing personally identifiable to the user...? o_o

Short answer: money.

Long answer: if you e.g. already have a character in WoW that you've spent 100 hours on, you're more likely to return to play WoW in the future than if you had to start all over again from scratch. Preventing you from losing all the time you've already spent in Blizzard's games by completely deleting your account, they're hoping to retain a higher chance of you returning some day.

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Short answer: money.

Long answer: if you e.g. already have a character in WoW that you've spent 100 hours on, you're more likely to return to play WoW in the future than in you had to start all over again from scratch. Preventing you from losing all the time you've already spent in Blizzard's games, they're hoping to retain a higher chance of you returning some day.

also maybe they just want to ensure no one can fuck with you and have your account deleted.  It would be a pretty cruel prank if you could get them to delete 100+ hours of someone else's WoW work by simply submitting a ticket.

[WereCatf]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

also maybe they just want to ensure no one can fuck with you and have your account deleted.  It would be a pretty cruel prank if you could get them to delete 100+ hours of someone else's WoW work by simply submitting a ticket.

They already have had steps to prevent that for years. Completely preventing people from deleting accounts is a new thing.

[williamcll]

Some users have taken into great lengths into getting their account banned instead. I would post screenshots but they are pretty colorful in language.

 

This is some entertainment I never thought would appear.

[Haaselh0ff]

Do users not have the right to delete their accounts? I feel like you should always have the right to delete your account from a site.

[Brooksie359]

This seems sorta overly outraged to me. I honestly don't see what the big deal is. 

[Dujith]

I dont get this, myself and others had to provide copies of ID for various actions over the years. Be it account restore, password reset and other stuff.

So this is nothing new from them. Besides, what would they gain from this?

[Spotty]

Appears they have a manual review process for deleting accounts. They've received a higher than normal amount of requests and the account deletion portal has been disabled temporarily; either because there are simply too many requests for the team to review, because it's a security feature to prevent abuse and attacks on the system, or the system simply crashed due to the extra traffic.

 

If you really want to delete your Blizzard account then just wait a few days and try again. 

[Princess Luna]

3 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

This seems sorta overly outraged to me. I honestly don't see what the big deal is. 

Me neither, I have abandoned accounts before and that worked out just the same way as deleting them practically speaking so I do think this is all exaggerated and people may be just hunting down things to complain and nitpick at this point to keep Blizzard's backlash from the Hong Kong incident.

 

I can imagine that if an account has payment credentials like credit card info stored etc then that can be an issue and you should always have an easy way to delete this sort of information but that aside there's absolutely no draw back simply quit using it and like Blizzard stated just uninstall the launcher and games from you PC.

[ADM-Ntek]

13 minutes ago, Princess Luna said:

Me neither, I have abandoned accounts before and that worked out just the same way as deleting them practically speaking so I do think this is all exaggerated and people may be just hunting down things to complain and nitpick at this point to keep Blizzard's backlash from the Hong Kong incident.

 

I can imagine that if an account has payment credentials like credit card info stored etc then that can be an issue and you should always have an easy way to delete this sort of information but that aside there's absolutely no draw back simply quit using it and like Blizzard stated just uninstall the launcher and games from you PC.

yes but deleting the account is about sending a signal. because those numbers are what matters to blizz. losing accounts is far worse then just losing active users. inactive accounts can still be counted.

[The King of the Undead]

this is shitty behavior.

[MageTank]

3 minutes ago, ADM-Ntek said:

yes but deleting the account is about sending a signal. because those numbers are what matters to blizz. losing accounts is far worse then just losing active users. inactive accounts can still be counted.

Or, stick it to the man by keeping your accounts on their server without using their product. Now they have to pay more to store your data. That's the real big brain strat.

[ADM-Ntek]

6 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Or, stick it to the man by keeping your accounts on their server without using their product. Now they have to pay more to store your data. That's the real big brain strat.

paying for data storage lol.

[JoostinOnline]

Reddit has been going crazy over this lately. It's become a circlejerk over who hates Blizzard the most. I've been downvoted to hell for asking for evidence of people's conspiracy theories.

[jiyeon]

I was pondering if I should too request a deletion of my Blizzard account as I barely touch Overwatch now, but clearly I can't now, at least for the time being. I can deal with just leaving my account alone as long as all my payment credentials and any sensititive information is either removed or scrambled from my account.

 

Either way, as a Hong Kong Chinese immigrant, I'm leaving Blizzard's products alone.

[LeSheen]

33 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Or, stick it to the man by keeping your accounts on their server without using their product. Now they have to pay more to store your data. That's the real big brain strat.

yes, those few mb maybe even just kb will make the difference.... I think the value to your data in profiling,marketing and so on outweigh the few cents it will cost to keep your data around for the years to come.

[MageTank]

1 minute ago, LeSheen said:

yes, those few mb maybe even just kb will make the difference.... I think the value to your data in profiling,marketing and so on outweigh the few cents it will cost to keep your data around for the years to come.

Multiply that by millions of people and it adds up. Besides, there is no guarantee that deleting your account will delete the data they've taken for marketing purposes. Even if companies do not have your data stored in an account format, they buy customer data on a daily basis simply to serve their products to different markets.

 

I've received marketing material and coupons from local stores I have never shopped at. When pressing one retailer in particular as to how they obtained my email address, I was told that a third party marketing solution collects and provides that information. I am assuming money traded hands, because information is valuable, but you get the point.

[RejZoR]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

also maybe they just want to ensure no one can fuck with you and have your account deleted.  It would be a pretty cruel prank if you could get them to delete 100+ hours of someone else's WoW work by simply submitting a ticket.

Submitting a ticket. By being actually logged into that account. You can't just submit a ticket for some other account... So, ultimately you're responsible for account security just like for e-mail, your banking, your Netflix account etc

[pas008]

childish triggers from jumping to conclusions

[RejZoR]

I personally am not going to delete the account, because I paid for the fucking games, but I sure as hell won't be buying any new ones from them.

[pas008]

11 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I personally am not going to delete the account, because I paid for the fucking games, but I sure as hell won't be buying any new ones from them.

why?

cause they banned a player that broke the rules? especially at an event

 

wait many companies ban for less lol

[JoostinOnline]

2 minutes ago, pas008 said:

why?

cause they banned a player that broke the rules? especially at an event

 

wait many companies ban for less lol

Lots of people are sure it's because they're getting money from the Chinese government. Which honestly isn't all that unreasonable, except nobody has been able to find me any proof.