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Blizzard Should Be Held Accountable For Damaging Player’s Computers

Short and sweet, but I had to chime in on this one.

It seems that Starcraft 2 was released with a devastating bug in the menu system that’s causing some player’s video cards to overheat. Blizzard has acknowledged that the problem is related in menu systems not including any kind of FPS cap, causing some cards to launch into sustained 200+ FPS performance bumps. As you might imagine, this sustained overworking is proving too much for some systems to handle and the cards simply die.

They’re taking the approach any PC gaming company would: patching in a fix.

That’s not enough, though.

Imagine if this happened in the console world. Console gamers would be furious. It would be beyond unacceptable for a game to release that bricks the system. The company that released the game would be derided and criticized for having sub-par Q&A. Most importantly, however, people would demand compensation – and would probably get it through warranty extensions.

We live in an era where players are spending hundreds of dollars on their GPU. Since Blizzard has acknowledged that a fault in their product is causing damage to their user’s hardware, they should have to compensate every effected player. Not only is it the right thing to do personally, but it’s also a matter of business ethics. A company in their position that fails to own up to their mistake doesn’t deserve a ranking higher than “F” with the Better Business Bureau– and Blizzard is better than that.

I like Blizzard. They’re honestly one of my favorite gaming companies and it says a lot that they’ve publically admitted their wrong. We have no way of knowing how many people have been impacted – I’d guess not many – and it would be harder for them to prove a card failed because of this specific software issue. But, ask yourself, if this happened to you, wouldn’t you feel a little ripped off? Asking users to pay $50-500 to make up for failing to test your product is unreasonable. And, I’m sorry, this seems like something that should be standardized.

This, guys, is one of the reasons console gamers are leery of PC gaming. The lack of standardization means the lack of a safety net – and of some much needed accountability from game studios.

PS: A little digging shows that overheating issues have been reported for months.

Starcraft 2 will probably push your graphic card, but the game cannot directly damage your hardware, as always make sure that your using the most up-to-date drivers for your graphic card from the manufacture of your card as recent releases have been more optimal for Starcraft 2.

You could also check to see if the fans on your graphic card are running correctly using RivaTuner. – Blue Source

Well, the game DID directly damage people’s hardware. It’s time to make right, Blizzard.

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