The World of Warcraft’s players are gearing up for a new expansion pack to be released next week, but they’ll have to do it without Iranian players, as Blizzard, the game’s maker and operator, has confirmed they are banning all Iranians from accessing the game because of US sanctions.
Though like many other companies Blizzard was not directly doing business in Iran, the realities of a global network allowed Iranian players to acquire the software and play on European servers. Blizzard insists the move was meant to “ensure compliance” with US law.
It is entirely unclear how US sanctions even theoretically prohibit online roleplaying with Iranians, but Blizzard’s confirmation will end ongoing speculation that the ban was somehow imposed by the Iranian government due to “objectionable” content within the game.
Apparently the US sanctions are also anti-refund, as Blizzard’s confirmation of the banning of all Iranians included saying that the law “prevents us from providing any refunds” to their Iranian customers. Again, it isn’t clear what part of US law actually forbids providing refunds to Iranians for services not provided.
This is absurd! And yet another reason to avoid patronizing Blizzard for "stiffing" customers.
I'm a World of Warcraft player (yes, even us old folks play) and I'm very disappointed in this. I wrote an entry on the WoW forums about this which, if my usual replies on Yahoo! are any indicator, I'll probably be getting hate mail for days assuming they don't drop a forum ban on me for a while.
It's not the Iranian people, stupid- it's the so-called 'leaders' of nations who stir things up and the common man has to pick up the pieces. I have no idea how many WoW players there are in Iran, but I can say with fair certainly that each and every one of them will take this as yet another indicator of Us animosity towards them, and they'll see it as yet another stab in the back from the self-titled 'land of the free'. What a fine example we're setting.
I want to know the names of the directors of Blizzard.
It's about time the US was sanctioned.
It would make more sense to ban people named Hussein from playing war games.
These are obviously part of the targeted sanctions regime; after all, Ahmadinejad is a renouned World of Warcraft fanatic. I'm sure this will be the Iranian government's breaking point. Ridiculous!!!